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主要飓风，给德克萨斯州的沿海社区造成了严重破坏。这个项目研究了遇到飓风及其后果威胁的德克萨斯州居民如何做出决定，他们将如何准备和应对飓风。该项目推进了国家科学基金的核心任务。这个项目确实通过研究灾难的人类层面来“促进科学的进步”，是仅有的几项准备在灾难发生前后不久从同一个人那里获得洞察力的研究之一。这个项目确实“促进了国家的健康、繁荣和福利”，因为它提供了关于灾难如何影响人们的决策和福祉的见解，从而为减轻不利影响的政策提供信息。该研究项目扩展了一项现有的电话调查，该调查最初于2016年对墨西哥湾沿岸居民进行，以调查与个人和社区抗灾能力有关的一系列健康、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，这些数据捕获了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，研究团队将最初第一波调查中的问题与评估人们在哈维之前的飓风准备情况、他们在哈维期间暴露的情况以及他们在哈维之后立即经历的新问题结合起来。此外，调查的两波数据都与县级变量合并在一起，这些变量提供了飓风暴露的客观衡量标准。准备好来自同一个人的事件前和事件后的数据，研究人员进行分析，以更好地理解飓风哈维之前的行为、态度和其他变化。与过去通常没有基线衡量标准的研究相比，这些分析是一个显著的进步。具体地说，该团队测试了三个假设：(1)不良后果是由增加对飓风的暴露引起的；(2)飓风前的条件可以放大或抑制飓风暴露对后果的影响；(3)特定的亚群在灾难发生后不良后果的风险增加。这项研究至少从两个方面解决了以前在自然灾害领域的研究的重要局限性：(1)关注灾害的人为方面，特别是与应急以外的问题有关的问题；(2)提供关于风险认知或其他人类经验如何随着灾害的反应而变化，以及人们因此如何参与或不参与缓解行为的纵向数据。这项工作将有助于人们对影响健康、社区福祉和经济的危险做出决定的现实理解。帮助我们更好地理解人类灾难相关行为的研究也可能为政策辩论提供信息，即如何最好地建立社区在面对长期创伤和压力时的韧性。

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.