RAPID: A Longitudinal Assessment of Risk and Resilience in the Gulf of Mexico Following Hurricane Harvey

2017年8月下旬，飓风哈维成为十多年来登陆美国的第一个大飓风，对德克萨斯州沿海社区造成严重破坏。这个项目研究德克萨斯州的居民是如何遇到飓风的威胁及其后果，决定如何准备和应对它。该项目推进了美国国家科学基金会的核心任务。这个项目确实通过考察灾难对人类的影响“促进了科学的进步”，而且是为数不多的几个准备在灾难发生前后从同一个人那里获得见解的研究之一。该项目通过深入了解灾害如何影响人们的决策和福祉，从而为减轻不利影响的政策提供信息，“促进国家健康、繁荣和福利”。该研究项目扩展了2016年对墨西哥湾沿岸居民进行的现有电话调查，以调查与个人和社区抗灾能力相关的一系列健康、社会和经济因素。研究人员重新联系了德克萨斯州的受访者，以收集第二波数据，这些数据收集了关于飓风哈维对风险认知的影响以及如何改善灾后逆境的决策的纵向证据。在第二波数据收集中，研究小组将第一波调查中的问题与新问题结合起来，评估人们在哈维之前的飓风准备工作，他们在哈维期间的暴露情况，以及他们在哈维之后的经历。此外，来自两波调查的数据与县级变量合并，这些变量提供了飓风暴露的客观测量。研究人员利用来自同一个人的事件前后数据，进行分析，以更好地了解哈维飓风前后的行为、态度和其他变化。这些分析与过去的研究相比是一个显著的进步，过去的研究通常没有基线测量。具体来说，该团队测试了三个假设：(1)不良后果是由飓风暴露增加引起的；(2)飓风前条件可以放大或抑制飓风暴露对结果的影响；(3)特定的亚群体在灾难发生后面临更大的不良后果风险。该研究至少从两个方面解决了自然灾害领域先前研究的重要局限性：(1)侧重于灾害的人的层面，特别是与应急反应以外的问题有关的方面；(2)提供了关于风险认知或其他人类经验如何在应对灾害时发生变化以及人们如何参与或不参与减灾行为的纵向数据。这项工作将有助于对人们如何对影响健康、社区福祉和经济的危害作出决定有一个现实的理解。帮助我们更好地理解人类灾害相关行为的研究，也可能为政策辩论提供信息，讨论如何在长期遭受创伤和压力的情况下，最好地建立社区复原力。

In late August 2017, Hurricane Harvey became the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in over a decade, wreaking havoc on Texas's coastal communities. This project researches how Texas residents who encountered the threat of the hurricane and its aftermath made decisions about how they would prepare for and respond to it. This project advances core missions of the National Science Foundation. This project does "promote the progress of science" by examining the human dimensions of disasters and is one of the only studies poised to gain insights from the same individuals shortly before and after a disaster. This project does "advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare" by providing insights into how disasters affect peoples' decision making and well-being and thereby informs policies to mitigate adverse effects. This research project extends an existing telephone survey administered originally to Gulf Coast residents in 2016 to investigate a range of health, social, and economic factors related to individual and community disaster resilience. The researchers re-contact respondents in Texas to collect a second wave of data that captures longitudinal evidence regarding the impact of Hurricane Harvey on risk perceptions as well as decision making about how to ameliorate post-disaster adversities. In the second wave of data collection, the research team combines questions from the original Wave 1 survey with new questions assessing people's hurricane preparations before Harvey, their exposures during Harvey, and their experiences immediately thereafter. In addition, data from both waves of the survey are merged with county-level variables that provide objective measures of hurricane exposure. Poised with both pre-and post-event data from the same individuals, the researchers pursue analyses to better understand behavioral, attitudinal, and other changes pre- to post-Hurricane Harvey. These analyses are a marked improvement from past research that typically has no baseline measures. Specifically, the team tests three hypotheses: (1) adverse outcomes are caused by increased exposure to the hurricane; (2) pre-hurricane conditions can amplify or suppress the effect of hurricane exposure on outcomes; and (3) specific subgroups are at increased risk of adverse outcomes in the wake of a disaster. The research addresses important limitations of prior studies in the domain of natural hazards in at least two ways:(1) by focusing on the human dimensions of disasters, particularly relating to issues beyond emergency response, and (2) by providing longitudinal data on how risk perceptions or other human experiences change in response to a disaster and how, consequently, people engage or do not engage in mitigation behaviors. The work will help to develop a realistic understanding of how people make decisions about hazards that affect the health, the well-being of communities, and the economy. Research that helps us better understand human disaster-related behavior may also inform policy debates about how best to build community resilience in the face of chronic exposure to trauma and stress.