SCC-PG: Pilot Study and Workshop For Enhancing Rural-to-Urban Disaster Resilience by Integrating Social, Spatial and Digital Networks

组成我们当地社区的社交网络对于帮助个人、家庭和企业应对、克服洪水等自然灾害并从中恢复至关重要。传统上，这些网络是基于直接和间接的面对面的人际关系，通常集中在地理上界定的社区内。然而，在数字时代，我们看到社交网络的迅速转变对传统的社区概念以及我们对基于社区的社交网络在灾害情况下所发挥作用的理解提出了挑战。如果数字技术在促进新一波社交网络方面发挥了关键作用，那么这些网络将如何扩大和加强更多基于社区的网络对灾害的反应？在灾害情况下，人们和家庭是否会利用其传统社区或基于地理的网络与数字/虚拟网络？这些网络在多大程度上相互重叠和加强？而且，可以并且应该建立什么样的基础设施来创建增强的社会空间在线网络系统，以提高抗灾能力？为了研究这些问题和相关问题，这个智能互联社区（SCC）项目将对灾害情况下信息传播的多层社交网络模式进行跨学科调查，地理和数字网络，并组织一个多州社区-参与研讨会，这将有助于建立一个框架，以评估数字和地理上互不相关的社区。该项目将针对位于美国中西部三个分水岭地区的农村到城市社区，这些地区经常受到堪萨斯、密苏里州和内布拉斯加州自然灾害的影响。试点研究的结果将通过一系列社区互动进行分享、评估和完善，包括社区研讨会和直接研究活动。最终，该项目将在服务不足的易受灾害的美国社区促进STEM工作人员之间的新研究合作，这些合作可以帮助开发跨学科的技术创新，以建立增强的社交网络系统，增强美国的灾害响应和恢复能力。该项目的具体目标是：（1）研究统计模型，这些模型反映了多个在线社交网络中的信息传播情况，以及社区的地理连通性在信息传播过程中的作用;（2）了解传统社区社交网络的结构，沿着这些网络中信息传播的统计模型;以及（3）研究不同类型的网络如何组成不同的社区灾害相关场景。目前关于灾害的许多文献都侧重于众包社交媒体，这表明社区结构缺乏地方性、空间性和社会性的差异。研究人员将深入了解地理方法如何有助于在线社交网络模型。我们的研究将提供一个新的和跨学科的方法，连接当前的社会网络模型，传统的社区配置在不同的社会和物理环境的多方面评估建模与混合统计，空间和时间模型。该项目的一个关键要素是更好地了解加强抗灾能力的空间和数字社会网络所需的技术创新。最终，通过解决目前信息传播系统的局限性，该项目将有助于提高在线和物理基础设施系统的健壮性，以实现广泛的社区结构的灾难恢复能力。该奖项反映了NSF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。

The social networks that comprise our local communities can be critical for helping individuals, households, and business respond, overcome, and recover from natural disasters such as floods. Traditionally these networks are based on direct and indirect face-to-face interpersonal relationships often clustered within geographically defined communities. However, in the digital era we have seen the rapid transformation of social networks challenging traditional notions of community and our understanding of the roles community-based social networks play in disaster situations. If digital technologies play a crucial role in facilitating a new wave of social networking, how might these networks augment and enhance more community based networks' response to disasters? Will people and households utilize their traditional community or geographical based vs digital/virtual networks in disaster contexts? To what extent do these networks overlap and reinforce each other? And, what kinds of infrastructure can, and should, be built to create an augmented social-spatial-online network system for disaster resilience? To study these and related questions this Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) project will conduct an interdisciplinary investigation into multi-layer social networking patterns for information dissemination in disaster situations overlaying social, geographical and digital networks and organize a multi-state community-engaged workshop that will help build a framework for evaluating the infrastructure needs and robustness of augmented social networking for digitally and geographically disconnected communities. The project will target rural-to-urban communities located within three Midwest US watershed regions, which have been frequently affected by natural disasters in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. The results of the pilot study will be shared, evaluated, and refined through a series of community interactions, including the community workshop and direct research engagements. Ultimately, this project will catalyze new research collaborations within the STEM work force in the under-served disaster-prone US communities that can help develop interdisciplinary technological innovations for building augmented social networking systems enhancing disaster response and resilience in the United States. The specific aims of the project are: (1) to study statistical models that capture the dissemination of information in multiple online social networks, and the roles of geographical connectedness of the communities during the information dissemination; (2) to learn the structure of traditional community-based social networks, along with statistical models for information propagation in these networks; and, (3) to investigate how different types of networks compose for different community-disaster related scenarios. Much of the current literature on disaster focuses on crowdsourced social media which shows a lack of localized, spatial and social variations of community structures. The investigators will develop robust insights into how a geographical approach contributes to online social network models. Our study will provide a new and interdisciplinary approach for connecting the current social network models to the traditional community configurations in different social and physical circumstances by multifaceted evaluation of modeling with hybrid statistical, spatial and temporal models. A key element in this project is to better understand the technological innovations necessary to enhance spatial and digital social network for disaster resilience. Ultimately, by addressing the current limitations of information propagation systems, this project will help increase the robustness of online and physical infrastructure systems for disaster resilience across a wide range of community structures.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.