RAPID: Collaborative Research: Role of Extending, Expanding, and Emergent Groups in Relief Distribution Efforts in the Aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria

RAPID：协作研究：哈维、艾尔玛和玛丽亚飓风后扩展、扩展和新兴团体在救济分配工作中的作用

• 批准号: 1807416
• 负责人: Earthea Nance
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: Texas Southern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-03-15 至 2019-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1807416&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Collaborative; Research; Role; Extending

Responding to large disasters and catastrophes is an extremely difficult endeavor. This challenge is a direct consequence of the devastating effects that disasters can produce on societies. These effects impact all facets of the socio-technical processes at the core of modern life. Disaster mitigation, preparedness, and response plans must be improved to minimize vulnerabilities, and to ensure that what is known can be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of future efforts. Disaster logistics should be a whole-society effort, where the civic and public sectors participate to minimize the negative impacts of disasters. Disaster researchers have already established that the civic society plays a major role in all aspects of the response to extreme events, from search and rescue and relief distribution, to rebuilding efforts. They are often credited with being the first respondents due to their proximity to the impacted area. These groups are a very heterogeneous collection of formal and informal organizations with different structures and levels of expertise in disaster response. Previous field work has also shown that the civic society can provide effective response to their communities by means of leveraging their connections to access logistical resources and efficiently respond to the disaster. Frequently, these groups delivered relief supplies faster, and more effectively, than any of the large relief organizations. On the other hand, the activities of some groups can prove troublesome, such as the gathering of donations of non-priority supplies. The reality is that the majority of the donations that arrive at a disaster site are non-priority goods that severely complicate disaster response efforts. The main goal of this project is to identify lessons, both positive and negative, that the disaster community should learn from the experiences of the civic society during the responses to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Identifying these lessons will help future disaster responders to conduct more effective operations, and reduce the impacts of disasters on local communities, the economy, and the environment. This project studies the socio-technical factors that hamper the integration of Non-Established Relief Groups (NERGs) efforts and that of relief efforts that come from the outside to help. In addition, the research provides crucial knowledge about the role that NERGs play in the humanitarian logistics, and about how best to structure the interactions among the established groups, the official response and the NERGs, for maximum effectiveness. The data collected about the difficulties of relief groups to deliver supplies will help identify mechanisms to prevent these problems from happening in future disasters. The research documents the logistic structures that emerge in support of relief/early recovery efforts after a major extreme event and enable future model development based on these different relief approaches. The findings enhance theoretical understandings of organizations participating in these extreme event environments. The research focuses on both formal and informal mechanisms through which NERGs identify, gather, deliver, and distribute relief items. Data collection includes short and informal as well as in-depth interviews with individuals involved in the logistics efforts, at all levels of action (e.g., international, national, re-gional, local, and community levels), from NERGs, and at all levels of power. In order to gain better understandings about the motivations behind physical donations, the team creates a directory of donation drives taking place across the US to support the relief efforts. The goal is to conduct longitudinal tracking of their operations, and perform in-depth studies of how these efforts are created, their evolution, and their decision-making patterns. This effort serves as the basis for more in-depth behavioral research. The researchers promote multidisciplinary collaboration, engages undergraduate and graduate students,and disseminate and integrate research findings into disaster courses. Improving humanitarian logistics operations can reduce human suffering and loss of life in disastersThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

应对特大灾害和灾难是一项极其艰巨的任务。这一挑战是灾害对社会造成破坏性影响的直接后果。这些影响影响着现代生活核心的社会技术进程的各个方面。必须改进减灾、备灾和响应计划，以最大程度地减少脆弱性，并确保可以利用已知的信息来提高未来工作的有效性。灾害物流应该是全社会的努力，公民和公共部门参与其中，以尽量减少灾害的负面影响。灾害研究人员已经确定，公民社会在应对极端事件的各个方面发挥着重要作用，从搜救、救济物资分配到重建工作。由于靠近受影响地区，他们通常被认为是第一批受访者。这些团体是正式和非正式组织的非常多样化的集合，在灾害应对方面具有不同的结构和专业知识水平。先前的实地工作还表明，公民社会可以通过利用他们的联系来获取后勤资源并有效应对灾难，从而为社区提供有效的应对措施。通常，这些团体比任何大型救援组织更快、更有效地运送救援物资。另一方面，一些团体的活动可能会带来麻烦，例如收集非优先物资的捐赠。现实情况是，到达灾区的大部分捐赠品都是非优先物资，这使救灾工作严重复杂化。该项目的主要目标是找出灾难社区在应对飓风哈维、艾尔玛和玛丽亚期间应从公民社会的经验中吸取的积极和消极的教训。总结这些经验教训将有助于未来的救灾人员开展更有效的行动，并减少灾害对当地社区、经济和环境的影响。该项目研究了阻碍非既定救济组织 (NERG) 的努力与外部援助的救济工作整合的社会技术因素。此外，该研究还提供了关于 NERG 在人道主义后勤中发挥的作用的重要知识，以及如何最好地构建现有团体、官方反应和 NERG 之间的互动，以实现最大效率的知识。收集的有关救援团体运送物资困难的数据将有助于确定防止未来灾难中发生这些问题的机制。该研究记录了重大极端事件后为支持救援/早期恢复工作而出现的后勤结构，并支持基于这些不同救援方法的未来模型开发。这些发现增强了对参与这些极端事件环境的组织的理论理解。该研究重点关注 NERG 识别、收集、交付和分发救援物品的正式和非正式机制。数据收集包括对参与后勤工作、各级行动（例如国际、国家、区域、地方和社区级别）、NERG 和各级权力的个人进行简短、非正式和深入的访谈。为了更好地了解实物捐赠背后的动机，该团队创建了美国各地发生的捐赠活动目录，以支持救援工作。目标是对他们的运营进行纵向跟踪，并深入研究这些努力是如何创建的、它们的演变以及它们的决策模式。这项工作是更深入的行为研究的基础。研究人员促进多学科合作，吸引本科生和研究生参与，传播研究成果并将其整合到灾害课程中。改善人道主义后勤运作可以减少灾难中的人类痛苦和生命损失。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。