RAPID: Understanding Evacuation, Sheltering, and Reentry Decisions During the Dual Threat of Hurricane and the COVID-19 Pandemic

该快速反应研究（RAPID）项目将研究紧急情况管理人员和家庭的疏散决定以及他们在飓风劳拉期间科普COVID-19大流行的避难考虑。科学界、政策制定者和应急管理人员必须了解飓风和流行病的同时威胁如何影响个人和家庭在这些事件中保护自己的决定。该项目的研究结果将帮助应急管理人员和决策者制定适当的公共卫生和人口保护战略，以帮助社区为未来的事件做好准备。通过更好地了解飓风和流行病防护行动（例如疏散、社交距离、避难）合规性的决定因素，应急管理人员可以制定更好的疏散计划和警告信息，以帮助减少流行病和飓风的影响，并促进国民健康和福利。更具体地说，这项研究所产生的科学进步将增加对应急管理人员和公民在流行病期间对避难所维护、避难地点（公共避难所、酒店、朋友和亲戚家）、疏散路线和疏散模型的关注之间差异的理解。应急管理人员将能够更好地设计和定位避难所，并鼓励家庭在未来面临类似威胁时采取适当的保护行动。本计画将利用序贯混合方法设计，提升住户与紧急事件管理人员防护行动决策过程的科学性。这项研究将使用调查和访谈方法，收集定量和定性数据，从应急管理人员和家庭在飓风劳拉风险地区在得克萨斯州和路易斯安那州。由于事件的复杂性，本项目需要整合保护动机理论和保护行动决策模型中的变量。本研究的结果将建立一个新的理论模型，捕捉个人的保护行动决策过程中的双重危险环境（飓风和流行病）。该项目将有助于对美国流行病和灾害的新兴研究，但重点是流行病如何影响保护行动决策，这对其他复合事件具有普遍性。该奖项反映了NSF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。

This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project will study emergency mangers’ and households’ evacuation decisions and their sheltering considerations during Hurricane Laura as individuals cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important for the scientific community, policymakers, and emergency managers to understand how the simultaneous threats of a hurricane and a pandemic affect individual and household decisions about protecting themselves during these events. The findings from this project will help emergency managers and policymakers develop appropriate public health and population protection strategies to help communities be prepared for future events. With a better understating of the determinants of hurricane and pandemic protective actions (e.g. evacuation, social distancing, sheltering) compliance, emergency managers can develop better evacuation plans and warning messages to help reduce the impact of both the pandemic and hurricane, as well as to advance national health and welfare. More specifically, the scientific progress generated by this research will increase understanding of differences between emergency mangers’ and citizens’ concerns regarding the maintenance of shelters, sheltering locations (public shelters, hotels, friends’, and relatives’ house), evacuation routing, and evacuation modeling during a pandemic. Emergency managers will be able to better design and locate shelters and encourage households to take appropriate protective actions in the future when facing similar threats. This project will advance the state of science about households’ and emergency mangers’ protective action decision-making processes by using a sequential mixed methods design. This study will use survey and interview methodologies to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from emergency managers and households in the Hurricane Laura risk areas in Texas and Louisiana. Because of the complexity of the event, this project requires the integration of variables in both the Protection Motivation Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model. The results of this study will build a new theoretical model that captures individuals’ protective action decision-making process in a dual hazard environment (hurricane and pandemic). This project will contribute to emerging research on pandemics and disasters in the United States, but with a focus on how the pandemic is shaping protective action decision-making, which has generalizability to other compound events.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.