Collaborative Research: Social Networks and Mitigation in Areas of Chronic Disasters

世界人口的一半以上，大约34亿人，生活在灾害易发地区，许多人生活在长期危险的条件下。问题不在于人们为什么生活在高度危险的地区，而在于人们如何应对相关的困难？在这个合作研究项目中，北卡罗来纳州格林斯伯勒大学的亚瑟墨菲博士和琳达M。南佛罗里达大学的怀特福德和格雷厄姆A托宾博士提出了这样一个问题：由子群体组成的个人网络以及这些子群体之间的联系，是否为灾难受害者提供了那些网络连接更紧密或分布更稀疏的人所没有的优势。这项研究建立在以前关于长期危害、灾害和恢复的研究基础上。这项研究将集中在墨西哥南部暴露在一座活火山下的社区，这座活火山定期在整个景观中沉积火山灰。关于暴露、影响、风险感知、幸福感和个人关系的正式和半正式访谈数据将使研究人员能够确定不同结构的网络如何限制个人的结果和幸福感。研究网络结构作为减少火山有害影响的潜在策略是一个重要的研究领域，可能有助于预测人们对持续暴露于危险的反应。除了灾害研究，潜在的应用还包括社区和国际发展，以及社区复原力研究。此外，为这项研究提出的方法创新，一旦经过测试，就可以适用于其他社会科学，并通过概述如何加强现有网络，应用于减灾和恢复工作。

More than half the world's population, apprxomiately 3.4 billion people, live in disaster-prone areas, and many reside under chronically hazardous conditions. The question is not why people live in highly hazardous zones, but how do people deal with associated difficulties? In this collobarative research project, Dr. Arthur Murphy of the University of North Carolina Greensboro and Dr. Linda M. Whiteford and Dr. Graham A Tobin of the University of South Florida, ask whether personal networks composed of subgroups, and links between those subgroups, provide disaster victims with advantages not available to people with either more tightly connected or sparsely distributed networks. The study builds on prior research on chronic hazards, disasters and recovery. The research will focus on communities in southern Mexico exposed to an active volcano that regularly deposits ash across the landscape. Formal and semi-formal interview data on exposure, impact, risk-perception, well-being, and personal relationships will allow researchers to ascertain how differently structured networks constrain individual outcomes and well-being. Investigating network structures as potential strategies for decreasing the harmful effects of volcanoes poses a significant area of research and may help predict how well people respond to continual exposure to a hazard. Beyond disaster research, potential applications include community and international development, plus community resilience research. In addition, the methodological innovations proposed for this study, once tested, could be adapted to other social sciences, as well as applied to disaster mitigation and recovery efforts by outlining out how to strengthen networks that are already in existence.