An Analysis of the Integration of Place Attachment into Visualizations of Hurricane Storm Surge Threats

本项目研究减少飓风相关风暴潮对社区安全和福祉的破坏性影响的方法。由于风暴潮灾害的复杂性和风暴潮预报固有的不确定性，减少和管理风暴潮风险具有挑战性。天气预报员和应急管理人员经常使用地图和动画（可视化）向公众传达风暴潮的风险和威胁。然而，人们对这些可视化如何影响人们对风险的理解和反应知之甚少。该项目将有助于可视化研究，以及这些研究如何有效地传达危险天气风险。通过关注沿海社区背景下对地点的依恋，调查人员将提高对人们如何与沿海灾害信息互动的理解，以及可视化在理解和决策中发挥的作用。从规划阶段到研究成果的传播，研究人员将在整个项目中与从业人员和利益相关者接触，确保项目的相关性，并为受影响社区的需求建立强大的社会效益。该项目将通过对包括少数民族学院和大学在内的各种机构的学生和教师进行跨学科培训来支持教育活动。该项目将侧重于可视化在以相关和可用的方式传播复杂科学概念方面的作用，从而促进提高公众科学素养的更广泛努力。该项目将促进地理学、地理空间科学、制图学以及决策、风险和管理科学及其与危险天气风险通报的交叉领域的基础理论和方法进步。这项研究将弥合科学家传达的空间上明确的风暴潮信息与处于危险中的沿海社区公众对其的解释和使用之间的差距。研究人员将考虑空间和地点等概念在数据表示中的作用，并假设通过理论和经验信息可视化将人与地点联系起来，将增强风险人群对风暴潮危险威胁的理解和反应。该项目的研究问题是：当危险的风暴潮威胁时，沿海社区的居民如何在日常生活中感知地方感？如何将地点感构建整合到风暴潮威胁的可视化中？在风暴潮可视化中，不同的空间和地点表现方式如何与人们对灾害的理解和反应相互作用？研究人员将采用多方法跨学科方法，包括实验性参与式认知绘图过程、创新风暴潮可视化的研究和开发、风险感知的迭代焦点小组以及对决策因素的依恋程度，以及在线调查来测试不同类型可视化的影响。这一套方法将能够告知可视化、对地点的依恋和其他因素如何影响人们对风暴潮危险的理解和反应。这项研究包括了沿海地区的利益相关者和几个相关政府机构的专家的参与。虽然该项目侧重于沿海的乔治亚州和南卡罗来纳州，但其方法、技术和可视化概念将与美国其他易受飓风风暴潮影响的沿海社区相关。此外，理论和实证研究结果将与非沿海社区相关，通过理解如何利用可视化中的地方依恋来改善风险危害和决策的沟通。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用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。

This project investigates ways of reducing the devastating effects that hurricane related storm surges can have on the safety and well-being of communities. Reducing and managing risks from storm surge are challenging because of the complex nature of the hazard and the inherent uncertainty in storm surge forecasting. Weather forecasters and emergency managers often use maps and animations (visualizations) to communicate storm surge risks and threats to the public. However, little is known about how these visualizations influence people's understanding and response to risk. This project will contribute to research on visualizations and how well these work for the communication of hazardous weather risks. By focusing on attachment to place within the context of coastal communities, the investigators will improve understanding of how people interact with information about coastal hazards and what role visualizations play in understanding and decision-making. The investigators will engage with practitioners and stakeholders throughout the project, from the planning stages to dissemination of the research results, ensuring project relevancy and building strong societal benefit for the needs of affected communities. This project will support educational activities through interdisciplinary training of students and faculty at a variety of institutions including from minority serving colleges and universities. The project will contribute to broader efforts to increase public scientific literacy by focusing on the role of visualizations in communicating complex scientific concepts in a relatable and usable manner. This project will contribute to fundamental theoretical and methodological advances in geography, geospatial science, cartography, as well as decision, risk and management science and their intersection with communication of hazardous weather risks. The research will bridge the gap between how spatially explicit storm surge information is being conveyed by scientists and their interpretation and use by members of the public in at-risk coastal communities. The investigators will consider the role of concepts such as space and place in data representation and hypothesize that connecting people to place through theoretically and empirically informed visualizations will enhance at-risk populations' understandings of and responses to storm surge hazard threats. The project's research questions are: How do residents of coastal communities perceive a sense of place in their everyday lives and when hazardous storm surge threatens? How can sense of place constructs be integrated into visualization of storm surge threats? How do different ways of representing space and place in storm surge visualizations interact with people's understandings of and responses to the hazards? The investigators will use a multi-method interdisciplinary approach that employs an experimental participatory cognitive mapping process, research on and development of innovative storm surge visualizations, iterative focus groups on risk perception and the degree to which attachment to place factors in to decision-making, and an online survey to test the impact of different types of visualizations. Together this suite of methods will be able to inform how the visualizations, attachment to place, and other factors influence people's understandings of and responses to storm surge hazards. The research includes stakeholder engagement in coastal areas and experts from several related government agencies. Although the project focuses on coastal Georgia and South Carolina, the methods, technology, and visualization concepts will be relevant to other coastal communities in the U.S. vulnerable to hurricane storm surge. Furthermore, the theories and empirical findings will be relevant to non-coastal communities by understanding how attachment to place within visualizations can be used to improve communication of risk hazards and decision-making.This 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.