RAPID/Collaborative Research: Disaster Migration and Civil Infrastructure: The Impacts of Sudden Population Influxes on Water and Sanitation Infrastructure

这一快速反应研究(RAPID)赠款项目将探讨人口突然大量涌入对供水和卫生设施造成的规范和文化认知扰动的影响。水和废水基础设施对于城市环境的持续运转是必要的。这一基础设施必须容纳大规模和突然的人口涌入，以避免受影响人口遭受二次公共卫生灾难。这项研究将为那些发现自己为短暂的、有时是大量的人口(特别是那些突然出现的人口)提供服务的公用事业公司创造出具有影响的知识。这些知识将使更具弹性的规划、政策和技术设计能够适应潜在的灾难迁移和其他需要的极端人口增长。该项目将确定和探索公用事业公司组织结构和流程的变化，以应对欧洲难民涌入，这引发了前所未有的难民涌入欧洲各国。这种情况提供了一个独特的机会，可以收集关于灾害引发的人口突然增加可能对现有的供水和卫生设施造成的体制影响的易腐烂数据。这项工作将为规范和文化/认知力量如何影响公用事业的形态和功能提供新的见解。将收集有关这些现象的人为和技术方面的数据，包括采访、观察和视觉记录，以包括德国慕尼黑、柏林和莱比锡等城市供水和卫生设施的决策者。即使在正常情况下，也很难获得有关这些现象的数据。因此，需要立即作出有重点的努力，为这项研究收集组织数据，并将这些数据置于全面的社会技术背景下。

This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) Grant project will explore the impact of normative and cultural-cognitive perturbations on water and sanitation utilities caused by sudden and large population influxes. Water and wastewater infrastructures are necessary for the continued functioning of urban environments. Large and sudden population influxes must be accommodated by this infrastructure in order to avoid secondary public health disasters for impacted populations. This research will create knowledge with implications for utilities that find themselves serving transient, sometimes large populations (particularly those which arise suddenly). This knowledge will enable more resilient planning, policy, and technical design that can accommodate potential disaster migration and other extreme population growth as required.This project will identify and explore changes in the organizational structure and processes of utilities in response to the European refugee influx, which has triggered an unprecedented flow of refugees to various European nations. This situation provides a unique opportunity to capture perishable data on the institutional impacts that sudden, disaster-triggered population increases may have on established water and sanitation utilities. This work will yield new insights into how normative and cultural/cognitive forces can influence the shape and function of public utilities. Data on both human and technological aspects of these phenomena will be collected, to include interviews, observations and visual documentation, to include decision makers in the water and sanitation utilities in the German cities of Munich, Berlin, and Leipzig. Even under normal conditions, data on these phenomena can be difficult to obtain. As such, immediate and focused efforts are needed to collect the organizational data for this study, and to situate these data within a holistic socio-technical context.