EAGER: SAI: A Study of Mitigation Decisions for America's Coastal Residential Infrastructure

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是美国国家科学基金会的一个项目，旨在促进以人为本的基础研究和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门的创新，发展经济，创造就业机会，使公共部门提供的服务更有效率，加强社区，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，加强国家安全，并推动美国的领导地位。为了实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效基础设施的建设和维护成为可能，从而改善生活和社会，并以技术和工程的进步为基础。本研究考察了居住在遭受极端天气事件（如飓风）影响的沿海社区的房主的观点和决定。居民有机会加固他们的房屋以抵御飓风的风险，而进行这些投资的决定在一定程度上取决于他们对风险和可能后果的评估。为了做出明智的决定，房主不仅需要知道极端天气的风险，还需要知道不同类型的房屋和建筑材料如何受到极端天气的影响。为了评估这些决策的认知基础，研究人员旨在通过对沿海地区房主（包括直接受飓风影响的居民）进行的多样化、有代表性的调查来评估观点和经验。这项研究支持了极端天气地区可持续住宅基础设施的发展。该研究还为研究生在科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训提供了机会。通过利用跨学科的方法和数据档案，该项目开发了一种新的方法框架，可以识别研究区域的房屋特征、它们在飓风中遭受的破坏以及住宅家庭的推断特征。有了这些数据，研究人员就可以采用可靠的抽样方法，他们的目标是管理一项标准化的调查，其中的模块适合于测试关于大飓风过后房主决策过程的特定地点和特定事件的假设。这些抽样和调查数据使研究人员能够在不同沿海社区的主要飓风之后有效地部署这种方法。调查参与者的回答允许研究人员检查多个研究问题。例如，房主是否意识到灾难性损失的风险，或者建筑规范无意中培养了一种虚假的安全感？直接损失与间接影响的经历如何影响房主对风险的认知和对增强建筑标准的自愿接受？家庭经济和社会动态如何影响通过提高建筑标准来降低飓风风险的决定？这些问题的答案可以帮助当地利益相关者制定政策，激励房主加强受自然灾害影响地区的住宅基础设施。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。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.This study examines the perspectives and decisions of homeowners who reside in coastal communities that are subject to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes. Residents have opportunities to strengthen their homes against the risk of hurricanes, and the decisions to make these investments depend in part on their assessments of the risks and possible consequences. To make informed decisions, homeowners need to know not only the risks of extreme weather, but also how different types of homes and building materials are impacted by extreme weather. In order to assess the cognitive basis for these decisions, the researchers aim to assess perspectives and experiences via a diverse, representative survey of homeowners in a coastal region that includes residents who have been directly impacted by hurricanes. This study supports the development of sustainable residential infrastructure in regions that are subject to extreme weather. The study also provides opportunities for the training of graduate students in the methods of scientific data collection and analysis.By drawing on interdisciplinary methods and data archives, this project develops a new methodological framework that identifies features of homes in the study region, the damage they sustained in a hurricane, and the inferred characteristics of residential households. Equipped with these data, which allow for robust sampling methods, the researchers aim to administer a standardized survey with modules suitable for testing site-specific and event-specific hypotheses regarding homeowner decision processes following a major hurricane. These sampling and survey data enable researchers to efficiently deploy this methodology following major hurricanes across different coastal communities. The responses of survey participants allow the researchers to examine multiple research questions. For instance, do homeowners perceive the risk of catastrophic loss, or have building codes unintentionally fostered a false sense of security? How do experiences of direct losses versus indirect impacts influence risk perceptions and voluntary uptake of enhanced construction standards among homeowners? How do household economic and social dynamics influence the decision to reduce hurricane risks through enhanced construction standards? The answers to these questions can help local stakeholders to craft policies that incentivize homeowners to strengthen residential infrastructure in areas that are subject to natural disasters.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.