HSD: Collaborative Research: Hydrology and Social Interactions: A Focus on Conflict in Africa

许多学者假设，水资源短缺可能会导致国内政治暴力的可能性，但很难对这一命题进行实证检验。这项研究项目将利用非洲的数据，控制社会、经济和政治因素，测试气候和水文变化是否影响内战爆发的模式。我们在这个项目中的目标是(1)测试将缺水和变化性与内战爆发联系起来的假设，等等，(2)开发和测试一种将网格环境时间序列数据与空间时间序列冲突数据相结合的方法，(3)将结果和影响传达给决策者，以及(4)产生一种数据收集，将对广泛的内战、人类安全和其他对缺水对人类福祉和行为的影响感兴趣的学者有用。调查人员将汇集非洲过去三十年的国家以下水文和冲突指标，并进行统计测试，从而进行测试。研究团队包括水文学家、政治学家和地理学家；这种跨学科的方法寻求利用在这一主题的研究中很少发挥的协同作用。这项研究将产生许多重大的学术影响。它将展示一种将关于自然资源的空间时间序列数据与广泛使用的关于内战的社会科学数据集相结合的方法。这一方法论预计将适用于一系列社会科学研究问题。它将有力地回答有关缺水和水的可变性对内战发生率的影响的问题。该项目将产生一套国家一级和国家以下一级的水指标，这些指标将有助于一系列社会科学研究需要，包括公共卫生、经济发展、人口学和土地利用/土地覆盖变化。该项目还将产生更广泛的影响，在预警、人道主义援助和发展规划等领域具有重要的政策影响。2006财年全美自然基金会人类和社会动力学竞赛(HSD)颁发的奖项支持这一项目。NSF的所有董事和办公室都参与了HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理。

Many scholars have hypothesized that water scarcity might contribute to the likelihood of internal political violence, yet it has been difficult to subject this proposition to an empirical test. This research project will test whether climatic and hydrologic variability influence patterns of civil war outbreak, using data for Africa, controlling for social, economic and political factors. Our goals in this project are (1) to test hypotheses linking water scarcity and variability to civil war outbreak, ceteris paribus, (2) to develop and test a methodology for combining gridded environmental time series data with spatial time series conflict data, (3) to communicate the findings and implications to decision-makers, and (4) to produce a data collection that will be useful to a wide range of civil war, human security, and other scholars interested in the impacts of water scarcity on human wellbeing and behavior. The investigators will carry out the test by bringing together subnational indicators of hydrology and conflict in Africa over the past three decades and carrying out statistical tests. The research team includes hydrologists, political scientists and geographers; this interdisciplinary approach seeks to capitalize on synergies seldom exercised in research on this topic.The research will have a number of significant intellectual impacts. It will demonstrate a methodology for combining spatial time-series data on natural resources with a widely used social science data set on internal war. This methodology is expected to have relevance across a range of social science research questions. It will provide robust answers to questions about the impact of water scarcity and water variability on the incidence of civil war. The project will generate a set of country-level and subnational-level water indicators that will be useful to a range of social science research needs, including public health, economic development, demography, and land-use/land -over change. The project will have broader impact as well, with vital policy implications in fields such as early warning, humanitarian assistance, and development planning. An award resulting from the FY 2006 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.