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

应对大型灾害和灾难是一项极其困难的工作。这一挑战是灾害对社会可能产生的破坏性影响的直接后果。这些影响影响了现代生活核心社会技术过程的各个方面。必须改进减灾、备灾和救灾计划，以尽量减少脆弱性，并确保可以利用已知的情况来提高未来工作的有效性。灾害后勤应该是一个全社会的努力，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都发挥着重要作用，从搜救、救灾分发到重建工作。由于他们靠近受影响的地区，他们通常被认为是第一批回应者。这些团体是正式和非正式组织的异质集合，具有不同的结构和灾害应对方面的专业知识水平。以前的实地工作也表明，公民社会可以通过利用其联系来获得后勤资源并有效地应对灾害，从而为其社区提供有效的反应。这些团体运送救援物资的速度往往比任何大型救援组织都快，也更有效。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款都是非优先物资，这严重复杂化了救灾工作。该项目的主要目标是找出灾难社区应该从公民社会应对哈维、厄玛和玛丽亚飓风的经验中吸取的积极和消极的教训。认识到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。这个项目研究阻碍非成立救济团体的努力与来自外部的救济努力相结合的社会技术因素。此外，该研究还提供了关于NERGs在人道主义后勤中所起作用的关键知识，以及如何最好地构建已建立的团体、官方反应和NERGs之间的互动，以实现最大效果。收集到的有关救援组织运送物资的困难的数据将有助于确定防止这些问题在未来灾害中发生的机制。该研究记录了在重大极端事件发生后为支持救灾/早期恢复工作而出现的后勤结构，并使基于这些不同救灾方法的未来模型开发成为可能。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。该研究侧重于NERGs识别、收集、交付和分发救济物品的正式和非正式机制。数据收集包括对参与后勤工作的个人进行简短、非正式和深入的访谈，访谈涉及各级行动（例如，国际、国家、区域、地方和社区各级），来自neergs和各级权力机构。为了更好地了解实物捐赠背后的动机，该团队创建了一个在美国各地进行的捐赠活动目录，以支持救灾工作。目标是对它们的操作进行纵向跟踪，并对这些工作是如何创建的、它们的演变以及它们的决策模式进行深入的研究。这一努力为更深入的行为研究奠定了基础。研究人员促进多学科合作，吸引本科生和研究生，并将研究成果传播和整合到灾害课程中。改善人道主义后勤运作可以减少灾难中人类的痛苦和生命损失。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.