DRC Research

DRC has a well-established research tradition, built on a strong foundation in the social sciences; rich interdisciplinary research; a capacity for quick response field research; and a culture of collaboration between faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. Building on this rich history, DRC continuously enhances its research activities.

DRC Research

DRC has a well-established research tradition, built on a strong foundation in the social sciences; rich interdisciplinary research; a capacity for quick response field research; and a culture of collaboration between faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. Building on this rich history, DRC continuously enhances its research activities.

DRC Research

DRC has a well-established research tradition, built on a strong foundation in the social sciences; rich interdisciplinary research; a capacity for quick response field research; and a culture of collaboration between faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. Building on this rich history, DRC continuously enhances its research activities.

DRC Research

DRC has a well-established research tradition, built on a strong foundation in the social sciences; rich interdisciplinary research; a capacity for quick response field research; and a culture of collaboration between faculty, staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. Building on this rich history, DRC continuously enhances its research activities.

DRC Research 

DRC projects have been supported by diverse sources, including: National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sea Grant Program, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI).

DRC Director Tricia Wachtendorf presenting "Improvising Disaster" at the Resilient Calgary Symposium at Mount Royal University, in Calgary, Canada. (05/18/2017)
Research Spotlight

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Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic Prosperity and Resilience (CHEER)

DURATION: September 1, 2022 –
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Sarah DeYoung, Joseph Trainor, A.R. Siders[/if 449]

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The UD-led hub — Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity and Resilience (CHEER) — is one of five NSF-funded projects announced recently as part of the agency’s Coastlines and People program, which is concentrating its research efforts to protect the natural, social and economic resources of U.S. coasts, and to help create more resilient coastal communities.

This five-year project will be led by Rachel Davidson, a core DRC faculty member and UD professor of civil and environmental engineering. Co-principal investigators include Sarah DeYoung, core DRC faculty member and associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at UD; Linda Nozick, professor and director of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University; Brian Colle, professor and division head of atmospheric sciences at Stony Brook University; and Meghan Millea, professor of economics at East Carolina University.

READ MORE

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COVID-19: Community Impacts and Adaptation To Crisis: Delawareans Living With HIV/Aids

RESEARCHERS: Tricia Wachtendorf

FUNDING: Internally Funded, Delaware HIV Consortium

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The crisis surrounding COVID-19 impacted communities across the globe. Appreciating that disasters have differential impacts on those affected, this study examined the impact the crisis had on Delawareans living with HIV/AIDS. The study explored issues of preparedness, response, adaptation, and decision-making, among other social consequences, as well as challenges related to health, housing, finances, and support. Over 50 interviews were conducted with clients of the Delaware HIV Consortium to better understand their experiences and needs over the course of the pandemic.

READ MORE

Research Projects

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An Interdisciplinary Approach to Modeling Multiple Stakeholder Decision Making to Reduce Regional Natural Disaster Risk

RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Joseph Trainor

FUNDING: Department of Homeland Security, National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The project will result in a new framework of interacting mathematical models that can be used to better understand, design, and evaluate government natural disaster risk management policies, such as providing funds to help homeowners strengthen their homes or requiring homeowners to buy natural disaster insurance. By supporting improved design and evaluation of public policies, the project will help the country better manage its risk. By considering the individual, sometimes competing stakeholder points-of-view up front, as an integral part of the analysis, the new framework will make it easier to identify those win-win system-wide solutions that are most likely to be put into action and to be effective. Engaging representatives of the relevant government agencies, and insurance and home building industries as partners at the beginning of the project will help ensure that the research offers usable results that can be put into practice as quickly and effectively as possible.

Co-Principal Investigators: Jamie Kruse, East Carolina University; Linda Nozick, Cornell University

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Business Continuity as Entrepreneurship

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Now into its second year, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt community life by forcing small organizations like businesses, non-profits, and neighborhood committees to adapt in ways that they never could have imagined. This study seeks to engage with the owners, managers, and employees of small organizations across two sets of interviews to understand how they’ve been updating their processes, products, and services to preserve their value and spur recovery.

image

Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic Prosperity and Resilience (CHEER)

DURATION: September 1, 2022 –
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Sarah DeYoung, Joseph Trainor, A.R. Siders

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The UD-led hub — Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity and Resilience (CHEER) — is one of five NSF-funded projects announced recently as part of the agency’s Coastlines and People program, which is concentrating its research efforts to protect the natural, social and economic resources of U.S. coasts, and to help create more resilient coastal communities.

This five-year project will be led by Rachel Davidson, a core DRC faculty member and UD professor of civil and environmental engineering. Co-principal investigators include Sarah DeYoung, core DRC faculty member and associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at UD; Linda Nozick, professor and director of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University; Brian Colle, professor and division head of atmospheric sciences at Stony Brook University; and Meghan Millea, professor of economics at East Carolina University.

READ MORE

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COVID-19: Community Impacts and Adaptation To Crisis: Delawareans Living With HIV/Aids

RESEARCHERS: Tricia Wachtendorf

FUNDING: Internally Funded, Delaware HIV Consortium

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The crisis surrounding COVID-19 impacted communities across the globe. Appreciating that disasters have differential impacts on those affected, this study examined the impact the crisis had on Delawareans living with HIV/AIDS. The study explored issues of preparedness, response, adaptation, and decision-making, among other social consequences, as well as challenges related to health, housing, finances, and support. Over 50 interviews were conducted with clients of the Delaware HIV Consortium to better understand their experiences and needs over the course of the pandemic.

READ MORE

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DRC COVID-19: Community Impacts and Adaptation to Crisis

RESEARCHERS: Tricia Wachtendorf, James Kendra

FUNDING: Internally Funded

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The crisis surrounding COVID-19 impacted communities across the globe. This effort examined the impact of the crisis on community in the early stages of the pandemic, exploring issues of preparedness, response, adaptation, and decision-making, among other social consequences. A concentric approach to data collection began with the impact of the crisis on an institution of higher education – the University of Delaware and its population. The examination spanned outward to include others who have relationships with the institution (e.g. community members, businesses, faith-based organizations, agencies, among others). We then circle back to those involved with the community around the core institution, to examine in greater depth core questions around impact, decision-making, and adaptation under crisis. Several hundred in-depth interviews were conducted with people impacted by the crisis, with the potential to follow up with participants at a later date.

image

Justice and Evaluation of U.S. Managed Retreat

RESEARCHERS: A.R. Siders

FUNDING: Internally Funded

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Managed retreat – the purposeful movement of people and assets away from hazardous areas – is a controversial and potentially transformative climate adaptation strategy. A series of projects are exploring the environmental justice implications of managed retreat in practice and theory; the potential for managed retreat to promote transformative adaptation; how narratives of retreat in media affect public perceptions; and what lessons can be learned from historic examples.

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NSF LEAP HI: Embedding Regional Hurricane Risk Management in the Life of a Community: A Computational Framework

DURATION: September 1, 2018 – August 31, 2023
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Joseph Trainor

FUNDING: Cornell University, East Carolina University, National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
A breakthrough in disaster risk reduction will require an approach that views disasters not as abnormal events but as a regular part of a community’s evolution, and disaster risk management as inextricably interwoven with the normal activities of everyday life. In this project, a novel computational modeling framework will be developed using this approach to improve understanding of the underlying dynamics that lead to escalating regional natural disaster risk, and to support design and analysis of public policy interventions to address them. In a system-wide analysis, the Multistakeholder Disaster Risk Management (MDRM) framework will explicitly consider perspectives of and interactions among multiple key stakeholders (government, primary insurers, and homeowners), multiple diverse interventions (e.g., home strengthening, insurance, land use planning), and not just actions that are explicitly risk-focused but “risk-influential” actions as well. The MDRM computational framework will include seven interacting mathematical models representing physically-based simulation of damage, losses, and ways to strengthen homes; decision-making by each main stakeholder type including oligopolistic competition among insurers; and the changing building inventory and regional economy that provide the context. It will be developed with a full-scale application for hurricanes in North Carolina. This project promises improved understanding of the creation and management of regional natural disaster risk by, for the first time, uniting the conceptualization of disasters as part of the normal life of a community with the power of quantitative, dynamic engineering modeling of risk, decision-making, and economics. Principal Investigators: Linda Nozick, Cornell University, and Jamie Kruse, East Carolina University

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NSF: Information Chain Support for Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery

RESEARCHERS: James Kendra

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
This project seeks to develop and implement a tuple based information retrieval system that efficiently retrieves information from the big data environment, i.e. InfoChain. This system is being designed for practical application in the emergency management information environment and is being evaluated as it interfaces with the Disaster Research Center’s existing Resource Collection catalog database, DISCAT. Currently, a new search engine is being developed that will provide enhanced functionality and capabilities to DISCAT. The platform is also being designed with broader applications beyond emergency management information mining in mind.

image

TNC: Legal Tools for Floodplain Management

RESEARCHERS: A.R. Siders

FUNDING: The Nature Conservancy

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Climate change and development are exacerbating flood-risk across the United States. Numerous legal tools exist to help local governments minimize flood risk, and this project seeks to understand and address challenges that limit the ability of local governments to use these tools or shape the outcomes they are able to achieve. The team developed communication tools to facilitate conversations about managed retreat with government officials and members of the public. Interviews with officials who have administered floodplain property acquisition programs explore how federal policy shapes local decisions and how variations in local administration affect participant outcomes. Case studies of municipalities that have adopted progressive development regulations explore what factors enable the adoption and enforcement of progressive laws.

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UM/NSF CRISP TYPE 2: Interdependencies in Community Resilience (ICOR): A Simulation Framework

DURATION: September 1, 2016 – August 31, 2021
RESEARCHERS: Ben Aguirre

FUNDING: National Science Foundation, University of Michigan

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Natural hazards engineering, and disaster science more broadly, have evolved into a multitude of highly specialized disciplines, each dedicated to handling a subset of the overall challenge of mitigating the effects of natural hazards. While progress in each discipline has varied by the historical size of its research community and amount of resources devoted to it, a common observation is that computational research is widespread in all fields. By exploiting this state of affairs and using computational modeling as a common language to link disparate disciplines, this project’s proposed computational platform will open the door for researchers to collaborate in new ways. Users will be able to connect their individual computational models (simulators) to the proposed integrative platform and simultaneously run them with simulators from other disciplines to explore the complex interactions that take place between the different systems of society during and after natural hazard disasters. The ability to seamlessly interface with other models with minimal effort will foster entirely new collaborations between researchers who do not traditionally work together, enabling as-of- yet unimagined studies within and contributions to the natural hazards engineering and disaster science fields. The new understanding that will result from this effort will shed light on the complex interactions that take place between policy, casualty rates and community resilience and clarify to what extent policy changes need to be implemented to significantly influence a community’s level of resilience to natural disasters. The work will also have a substantial impact on the development of human resources. By bridging civil engineering, social science and computer science, the students who will work on this project will attain a truly multi-disciplinary education at the intersection of these disciplines. Co-Principal Investigator: Sherif El-Tawil, Professor and Associate Chair, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan

DRC RESEARCH PROJECTS: 12

FILTER BY RESEARCH AREA:
4 Climate Change | 5 Humanitarian Assistance | 6 Infrastructure Risk Management | 12 Protective Actions | 14 Public Health | 15 Response | 3 Social Vulnerability | 4 Warning and Risk Perception | CLEAR ALL

FILTER BY CLASSIFICATION:
11 Active Research | 19 Past Research | 5 Student Research | CLEAR ALL

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An Interdisciplinary Approach to Modeling Multiple Stakeholder Decision Making to Reduce Regional Natural Disaster Risk

RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Joseph Trainor

FUNDING: Department of Homeland Security, National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The project will result in a new framework of interacting mathematical models that can be used to better understand, design, and evaluate government natural disaster risk management policies, such as providing funds to help homeowners strengthen their homes or requiring homeowners to buy natural disaster insurance. By supporting improved design and evaluation of public policies, the project will help the country better manage its risk. By considering the individual, sometimes competing stakeholder points-of-view up front, as an integral part of the analysis, the new framework will make it easier to identify those win-win system-wide solutions that are most likely to be put into action and to be effective. Engaging representatives of the relevant government agencies, and insurance and home building industries as partners at the beginning of the project will help ensure that the research offers usable results that can be put into practice as quickly and effectively as possible.

Co-Principal Investigators: Jamie Kruse, East Carolina University; Linda Nozick, Cornell University

image

Business Continuity as Entrepreneurship

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Now into its second year, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt community life by forcing small organizations like businesses, non-profits, and neighborhood committees to adapt in ways that they never could have imagined. This study seeks to engage with the owners, managers, and employees of small organizations across two sets of interviews to understand how they’ve been updating their processes, products, and services to preserve their value and spur recovery.

image

Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic Prosperity and Resilience (CHEER)

DURATION: September 1, 2022 –
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Sarah DeYoung, Joseph Trainor, A.R. Siders[/if 449]

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The UD-led hub — Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity and Resilience (CHEER) — is one of five NSF-funded projects announced recently as part of the agency’s Coastlines and People program, which is concentrating its research efforts to protect the natural, social and economic resources of U.S. coasts, and to help create more resilient coastal communities.

This five-year project will be led by Rachel Davidson, a core DRC faculty member and UD professor of civil and environmental engineering. Co-principal investigators include Sarah DeYoung, core DRC faculty member and associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at UD; Linda Nozick, professor and director of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University; Brian Colle, professor and division head of atmospheric sciences at Stony Brook University; and Meghan Millea, professor of economics at East Carolina University.

READ MORE

image

COVID-19: Community Impacts and Adaptation To Crisis: Delawareans Living With HIV/Aids

RESEARCHERS: Tricia Wachtendorf

FUNDING: Internally Funded, Delaware HIV Consortium

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The crisis surrounding COVID-19 impacted communities across the globe. Appreciating that disasters have differential impacts on those affected, this study examined the impact the crisis had on Delawareans living with HIV/AIDS. The study explored issues of preparedness, response, adaptation, and decision-making, among other social consequences, as well as challenges related to health, housing, finances, and support. Over 50 interviews were conducted with clients of the Delaware HIV Consortium to better understand their experiences and needs over the course of the pandemic.

READ MORE

image

DRC COVID-19: Community Impacts and Adaptation to Crisis

RESEARCHERS: Tricia Wachtendorf, James Kendra

FUNDING: Internally Funded

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The crisis surrounding COVID-19 impacted communities across the globe. This effort examined the impact of the crisis on community in the early stages of the pandemic, exploring issues of preparedness, response, adaptation, and decision-making, among other social consequences. A concentric approach to data collection began with the impact of the crisis on an institution of higher education – the University of Delaware and its population. The examination spanned outward to include others who have relationships with the institution (e.g. community members, businesses, faith-based organizations, agencies, among others). We then circle back to those involved with the community around the core institution, to examine in greater depth core questions around impact, decision-making, and adaptation under crisis. Several hundred in-depth interviews were conducted with people impacted by the crisis, with the potential to follow up with participants at a later date.

image

Justice and Evaluation of U.S. Managed Retreat

RESEARCHERS: A.R. Siders

FUNDING: Internally Funded

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Managed retreat – the purposeful movement of people and assets away from hazardous areas – is a controversial and potentially transformative climate adaptation strategy. A series of projects are exploring the environmental justice implications of managed retreat in practice and theory; the potential for managed retreat to promote transformative adaptation; how narratives of retreat in media affect public perceptions; and what lessons can be learned from historic examples.

image

NSF LEAP HI: Embedding Regional Hurricane Risk Management in the Life of a Community: A Computational Framework

DURATION: September 1, 2018 – August 31, 2023
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Joseph Trainor

FUNDING: Cornell University, East Carolina University, National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
A breakthrough in disaster risk reduction will require an approach that views disasters not as abnormal events but as a regular part of a community’s evolution, and disaster risk management as inextricably interwoven with the normal activities of everyday life. In this project, a novel computational modeling framework will be developed using this approach to improve understanding of the underlying dynamics that lead to escalating regional natural disaster risk, and to support design and analysis of public policy interventions to address them. In a system-wide analysis, the Multistakeholder Disaster Risk Management (MDRM) framework will explicitly consider perspectives of and interactions among multiple key stakeholders (government, primary insurers, and homeowners), multiple diverse interventions (e.g., home strengthening, insurance, land use planning), and not just actions that are explicitly risk-focused but “risk-influential” actions as well. The MDRM computational framework will include seven interacting mathematical models representing physically-based simulation of damage, losses, and ways to strengthen homes; decision-making by each main stakeholder type including oligopolistic competition among insurers; and the changing building inventory and regional economy that provide the context. It will be developed with a full-scale application for hurricanes in North Carolina. This project promises improved understanding of the creation and management of regional natural disaster risk by, for the first time, uniting the conceptualization of disasters as part of the normal life of a community with the power of quantitative, dynamic engineering modeling of risk, decision-making, and economics. Principal Investigators: Linda Nozick, Cornell University, and Jamie Kruse, East Carolina University

image

NSF: Information Chain Support for Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery

RESEARCHERS: James Kendra

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
This project seeks to develop and implement a tuple based information retrieval system that efficiently retrieves information from the big data environment, i.e. InfoChain. This system is being designed for practical application in the emergency management information environment and is being evaluated as it interfaces with the Disaster Research Center’s existing Resource Collection catalog database, DISCAT. Currently, a new search engine is being developed that will provide enhanced functionality and capabilities to DISCAT. The platform is also being designed with broader applications beyond emergency management information mining in mind.

image

TNC: Legal Tools for Floodplain Management

RESEARCHERS: A.R. Siders

FUNDING: The Nature Conservancy

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Climate change and development are exacerbating flood-risk across the United States. Numerous legal tools exist to help local governments minimize flood risk, and this project seeks to understand and address challenges that limit the ability of local governments to use these tools or shape the outcomes they are able to achieve. The team developed communication tools to facilitate conversations about managed retreat with government officials and members of the public. Interviews with officials who have administered floodplain property acquisition programs explore how federal policy shapes local decisions and how variations in local administration affect participant outcomes. Case studies of municipalities that have adopted progressive development regulations explore what factors enable the adoption and enforcement of progressive laws.

image

UM/NSF CRISP TYPE 2: Interdependencies in Community Resilience (ICOR): A Simulation Framework

DURATION: September 1, 2016 – August 31, 2021
RESEARCHERS: Ben Aguirre

FUNDING: National Science Foundation, University of Michigan

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Natural hazards engineering, and disaster science more broadly, have evolved into a multitude of highly specialized disciplines, each dedicated to handling a subset of the overall challenge of mitigating the effects of natural hazards. While progress in each discipline has varied by the historical size of its research community and amount of resources devoted to it, a common observation is that computational research is widespread in all fields. By exploiting this state of affairs and using computational modeling as a common language to link disparate disciplines, this project’s proposed computational platform will open the door for researchers to collaborate in new ways. Users will be able to connect their individual computational models (simulators) to the proposed integrative platform and simultaneously run them with simulators from other disciplines to explore the complex interactions that take place between the different systems of society during and after natural hazard disasters. The ability to seamlessly interface with other models with minimal effort will foster entirely new collaborations between researchers who do not traditionally work together, enabling as-of- yet unimagined studies within and contributions to the natural hazards engineering and disaster science fields. The new understanding that will result from this effort will shed light on the complex interactions that take place between policy, casualty rates and community resilience and clarify to what extent policy changes need to be implemented to significantly influence a community’s level of resilience to natural disasters. The work will also have a substantial impact on the development of human resources. By bridging civil engineering, social science and computer science, the students who will work on this project will attain a truly multi-disciplinary education at the intersection of these disciplines. Co-Principal Investigator: Sherif El-Tawil, Professor and Associate Chair, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan