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

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性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创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI专注于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效的基础设施的建设和维护改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程进步的基础上。这项研究考察了居住在易受飓风等极端天气事件影响的沿海社区的房主的观点和决定。居民有机会加固自己的家园，以抵御飓风的风险，而做出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。为了评估这些决定的认知基础，研究人员的目标是通过对沿海地区的房主进行一项多样化的、具有代表性的调查来评估观点和经历，调查对象包括直接受到飓风影响的居民。这项研究支持在受极端天气影响的地区发展可持续的住宅基础设施。这项研究还为研究生提供了在科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训机会。该项目利用跨学科方法和数据档案，开发了一个新的方法框架，以确定研究区域内房屋的特征、它们在飓风中遭受的破坏，以及推断出的住宅家庭的特征。配备了这些数据，允许采用稳健的抽样方法，研究人员的目标是管理一项标准化调查，其中包括适合测试关于大飓风后房主决策过程的特定地点和特定事件的假设的模块。这些抽样和调查数据使研究人员能够在不同沿海社区发生重大飓风后有效地采用这一方法。调查参与者的回答使研究人员能够检查多个研究问题。例如，房主是否意识到了灾难性损失的风险，或者建筑法规无意中培养了一种错误的安全感？直接损失相对于间接影响的经历如何影响房主对提高建筑标准的风险认知和自愿接受？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？对这些问题的回答可以帮助当地利益相关者制定政策，激励房主在易受自然灾害影响的地区加强住宅基础设施。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.