Scholars Award: An Empirical Study of the Making and Re-Making of Knowledge About Risk

该奖项旨在支持一个组织对知识创造实践的实证调查，该组织最近启动了一项雄心勃勃的研究计划，旨在通过识别风险来源，制定缓解策略，并引发广泛的变化，使建筑施工对恶劣天气更具弹性。该组织是家庭和商业安全保险研究所，一个由财产和意外伤害保险公司资助的非营利组织，2010年在南卡罗来纳州农村开设了一个独特的研究中心。该中心的目的是产生和传播有关如何减轻极端天气事件（如飓风，野火，冰雹和风致降雨）造成的损害的知识。该中心的核心是一个巨大的风洞，大到足以测试全尺寸的建筑物。该中心的研究得到了该奖项的支持，其总体目标是了解有关风险的知识是如何形成和重塑的，以获得更广泛的风险概念。该项目的主要成果是为一本书的手稿提供了一个案例研究;这本书主要是社会科学读者感兴趣的，特别是对风险感兴趣的多学科学者。PI还将为政策制定者和风险管理者撰写至少一篇文章，为科学政策论坛撰写一篇观点文章，为一般感兴趣的读者撰写至少一篇文章。该项目的结果将对公共政策、保险业和减轻损害产生影响;考虑到气候变化的前景，这一点尤其重要。 该项目旨在推进有关专家工作的理论和经验知识，这些专家自觉地着手改变社会应对特定危害的概念框架和管理做法。了解风险知识是如何形成和重塑的，无论从知识层面还是实践层面都很重要。实证研究将使PI能够进一步发展关于风险成因和控制知识的动态变化如何塑造技术工件，系统和基础设施的理论。这项研究还将阐明产生有说服力的结果的挑战，以及减缓知识的接收、吸收和重新包装。

This award is to support an empirical investigation of knowledge-making practices in an organization that has recently launched an ambitious research program intended to make building construction more resilient to severe weather by identifying sources of risk, develop mitigation strategies, and trigger widespread change. That organization is the Insurance Institute for Home and Business Safety, a nonprofit funded by property and casualty insurance companies, which opened a unique research center in rural South Carolina in 2010. The purpose of the center is to produce and communicate knowledge about how to mitigate damage from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, hailstorms, and wind-driven rain. The centerpiece of the center is an enormous wind tunnel large enough to test full-scale buildings. The study of this center that is being supported by this award has as its overarching goal to understand how knowledge about risk is made and remade as a way of getting at broader conceptions of risk. The primary outcome of this project is its contribution of a case study for a book manuscript; the book will mainly be of interest to social science audiences, particularly the multi-disciplinary community of scholars interested in risk. The PI will also produce at least one article for policy makers and risk managers, a perspective piece for a science policy forum, at least one article for a general interest audience. The results of this project will have implications for public policy, the insurance industry, and damage mitigation; this is particularly so given the prospects of climate change. This project aims to advance theory and empirical knowledge about the work of experts who self-consciously set out to transform the conceptual frameworks and management practices through which society copes with a specific set of hazards. Understanding how knowledge about risk is made and remade is important for both intellectual and practical reasons. The empirical research will enable the PI to further develop theory about how dynamic change in knowledge about causation and control of risk shapes technological artifacts, systems, and infrastructures. The research will also shed light on the challenges of producing persuasive results and on the reception, uptake, and repackaging of mitigation knowledge.