CAREER: Evolution of Collective Disaster Memory: A Dynamic Behavioral and Systems Analysis toward Community Resilience

人们回忆和分享关于过去自然灾害的信息。当这种信息在同时代人中广泛分享，或者通过对话、历史文本或建筑环境特征传递给后代时，就会出现一种称为集体灾难记忆的文化特征。尽管集体记忆有可能通过改变人们的准备和思维方式来显著塑造他们对未来类似事件的脆弱性/防御能力，但对于在什么条件下灾难记忆可以被集体遗忘或在多代人中保持下去，缺乏经验上的理解。该学院早期职业发展计划(CALEAR)奖支持在洪水灾害、洪水记忆和防洪建筑环境的背景下研究这一谜题。多种方法，包括基于不同风险环境(波特兰、俄勒冈州和德克萨斯州休斯顿)的调查和案例研究，以及人类受试者行为实验，将被用来测试与解释集体灾难记忆耐久性变化相关的假设。基于经验数据，将开发系统级别的模型，以计算测试不同形式的记忆传递和人们的适应如何影响不同环境和社会环境中集体记忆的动态和区域脆弱性。该项目还将通过两种方式促进教育：开发一种新的方法和工具，用于评估学生学习土木工程对社会和集体记忆的影响；以及通过有指导的研究经验和新的课程单元，为灾害科学和复原力研究领域的下一代工作人员提供教育和培训机会。该项目将解决两个关键问题：1)不同配置的记忆传递形式以及物理和社会背景因素将如何导致集体洪水记忆的持久性差异；以及2)这种记忆的状态如何反过来影响人们应对未来洪水事件的集体行动。这将通过由行为实验、调查和案例数据收集以及系统建模组成的多方法方法来实现。这项研究将从两个不同地区(俄勒冈州波特兰和德克萨斯州休斯顿)的案例研究开始，以产生针对具体案例的见解，确定每个地区历史洪水事件的细节及其记忆。将在每个案例地区以具有代表性的普通公众随机抽样进行调查，以评估历史洪水目前的集体记忆状态，以及人们如何了解它们。随后将对不同的人群进行受控行为实验，以测试不同形式的记忆或文化传播对集体记忆的持久性和解决被框定为公共堤坝维护问题的集体风险社会困境的群体能力的影响。将对由此产生的经验结果进行比较和三角测量，以获得结果的一般性和可转移性。最后，将开发和测试原型人类洪水系统中集体记忆动力学的通用系统级模型，以进行综合和概括性理解。这个项目有望为灾害科学和复原力研究带来新的知识、工具和研究轨迹，这些研究考虑了集体灾难记忆的影响及其与建筑和社会环境特征的相互作用。该项目的意义在于其严谨的实验和建模工作，旨在理清和测试与灾难记忆的持久性、不同形式的文化传播、基础设施和危险属性以及潜在的社会结构之间的关系的未解决的假设。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People recollect and share information about past natural disasters. A cultural trait known as collective disaster memory emerges when such information is widely shared among contemporaries or passed down to subsequent generations through conversations, historical texts, or built environment features. Although collective memory has a potential to significantly shape people’s vulnerability/ defense to future similar events through changes in their preparations and ways of thinking, there is a lack of empirical understanding of under what set of conditions disaster memories can be collectively forgotten or sustained over multiple generations. This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports research to study this puzzle in the context of flood hazards, flood memory, and the built environment for flood protection. Multiple methods, comprised of surveys and case studies based in distinct risk settings (Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas) and human-subject behavioral experiments, will be used to test hypotheses related to explaining variation in the durability of collective disaster memory. Based on the empirical data, system-level models will be developed to computationally test how different forms of memory transmission and people’s adaptations affect the dynamics of collective memory and regional vulnerability in different environmental and social settings. The project will also contribute to education in two ways: developing a new method and tools for evaluation of students’ learning about social and collective memory implications of civil engineering; and offering education and training opportunities for the next-generation workforce in disaster science and resilience studies through mentored research experiences and new course modules. This project will address two key questions: 1) how different configurations of memory transmission forms and physical and social contextual factors will lead to differences in the durability of collective flood memory and 2) how the state of such memory, in turn, affects people’s collective action to deal with future flood events. This will be achieved through a multi-method approach comprised of behavioral experiments, surveys and case data collection, and systems modeling. The research will begin with case studies of two distinct areas (Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas) to generate case specific insights, identifying the details of each area’s historical flood events and their memories. A survey will be conducted in each case area with the representative random sample of the general public to assess the current collective memory states of the historical floods and how people learned about them. This will be followed by controlled behavioral experiments with different populations to test effects of different forms of memory or cultural transmission on the durability of collective memory and group ability to solve a collective-risk social dilemma framed as a public levee maintenance problem. The resulting empirical findings will be compared and triangulated for the generality and transferability of the results. Finally, generic system-level models of collective memory dynamics in a prototypical human-flood system will be developed and tested for synthesis and generalizable understanding. This project is expected to lead to new knowledge, tools, and research trajectory for disaster science and resilience studies that consider the effects of collective disaster memory and its interplay with built and social environmental features. The project’s significance lies in its rigorous experimental and modeling work that seeks to disentangle and test unresolved hypotheses related to the relationship among the durability of disaster memory, different forms of cultural transmission, infrastructure and hazard attributes, and underlying social structures.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.