RAPID: Hurricane Evacuations in the Age of COVID-19

在自然灾害期间，流行病对许多人构成潜在的致命威胁。了解风险认知和对这些风险的反应对应急管理人员至关重要。该项目将分析公众对感染致命病毒的风险的看法，这些风险将告知在飓风期间选择在适当的地方避难，或在公共避难所寻求安全。因此，COVID-19对飓风多发的沿海地区以及受内陆洪水影响的地区的疏散构成了前所未有的公共卫生挑战。 应急管理人员和公共卫生规划人员，包括联邦官员、私营部门和非营利组织，需要了解飓风疏散计划在大流行期间如何变化。这项研究将有助于提高飓风疏散行为，风险和决策的知识，以预测关键的资源需求，揭示互助协议的必要性，并改善流行病期间的公共信息。这项研究记录了那些在2020年飓风季节做出疏散决定的人的风险认知，从受飓风劳拉影响的人收集的数据开始。这些飓风后的风险认知将与飓风前从生活在飓风易发地区的7 102名居民那里收集的风险认知数据进行比较。飓风前的调查发现，近一半的受访者认为自己容易受到COVID-19的影响，74.3%的人认为在大流行期间呆在避难所的风险比呆在原地更危险。这项RAPID研究将利用类似的调查来收集有关2020年经历飓风的居民如何评估风险的数据，以及他们如何应对感染COVID-19的风险和他们对避难所的利用。官员们可以利用这项研究的结果，以更好地为避难所准备和流行病风险缓解战略提供信息，以最大限度地减少那些在强制疏散令期间可能受到飓风影响的人的风险。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。

Pandemics pose a potentially lethal threat to large numbers of people during a natural disaster. Understanding risk perception and responses to those risks is critical for emergency managers. This project will analyze public perceptions of risk of contracting a lethal virus that inform the choice to shelter in place during a hurricane, or to seek safety in a public shelter. As such, COVID-19 represents an unprecedented public health challenge to evacuation in hurricane-prone coastal areas as well as areas impacted by inland flooding. Emergency managers and public health planners, including federal officials, private sector, and nonprofit organizations need to understand how hurricane evacuation plans change during a pandemic. This study will help advance knowledge of hurricane evacuation behavior, risk, and decision making to anticipate crucial resource needs, to reveal the need for mutual aid agreements, and to improve public messaging during pandemics. This study documents risk perceptions from those who made evacuation decisions from threatening hurricanes in the active 2020 hurricane season, starting with data collected from those impacted by Hurricane Laura. These post-hurricane risk perceptions will be compared to pre-hurricane risk perception data collected from 7,102 residents that that live in hurricane prone regions. The pre-hurricane survey found that almost half the respondents viewed themselves as vulnerable to COVID-19, and that 74.3% of individuals viewed the risk of being in a shelter during the pandemic as more dangerous than sheltering in place. This RAPID study will utilize a similar survey to collect data about how residents that experienced a hurricane in 2020, starting with Hurricane Laura actually evaluated risk and how they responded to their perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 and their utilization of shelters. Officials can use the results of this study to better inform strategies of shelter preparedness and pandemic risk mitigation to minimize risk to those who may be affected by hurricanes during a mandatory evacuation order.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.