DISASTER RESEARCH CENTER

NSF COLLAB RSH CRISP TYPE 2: Defining and Optimizing Societal Objectives for the Earthquake Risk Management of Critical Infrastructure

DURATION: September 1, 2017 – August 31, 2021
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, James Kendra

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Critical infrastructure systems, such as electric power and water supply, must be designed, managed, and operated so they function reliably and efficiently even in the case of an extreme event. Nevertheless, the way infrastructure system services meet societal needs and the way disruptions of those services impair the ability to meet societal needs are not well understood. In this project, we will define the societal objectives for infrastructure system performance in earthquakes and develop a method to comprehensively optimize a broad range of risk management strategies to meet them, including component design, upgrading, and repair and restoration planning. Specific project tasks include: (1) Developing a probabilistic scenario-based model of the risk of multiple infrastructure systems to earthquakes with the ability to evaluate alternative risk management strategies; (2) Integrating the complementary strengths of social media, household surveys, and economic impact analyses to empirically assess societal objectives, users’ adaptive strategies in responding to disruptions, and the relationships between them and traditional measures of system functioning; (3) Developing an optimization model to optimize risk management to meet societal objectives; and (4) Demonstrating models through a full-scale case study for electric power and water in collaboration with our partners at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

NSF HAZARD SEES TYPE 2: Next Generation, Resilient Warning Systems For Tornados And Flash Floods

RESEARCHERS: Joseph Trainor
ADDITIONAL INVESTIGATOR: Brenda Philips, Umass Amherst)
FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
On this project, researchers are working as part of a collaborative, multi-disciplinary team to explore the basic science to support the next generation of warning systems for rapid-onset hazards such as tornadoes and flash floods.  In particular, we are working to better understand how to predict and disseminate warnings in shorter time windows and with smaller warning spaces.  In order to do this, the project combines new radar and mobile phone technology with an improved understanding of human responses to warnings in order to better meet the goal of keeping people and property safe. DRC researchers are using focus groups, surveys, and short questionnaires on a cell phone app to better understand how people decide if specific weather is threatening or not.  In addition to other factors, we are specifically focused on how different times and places people find themselves in when they receive warnings might change how they respond to them.  We are also exploring how warnings delivered on mobile phones differ from other types of dissemination methods.  For example, we are examining the ability of apps to deliver individualized storm warning information to people and whether people give their attention differently to warnings received through their phones than they might to more traditional methods of warning delivery.

NSF HDBE: Collaborative Research: Leveraging Massive Smartphone Location Data to Improve Understanding and Prediction of Behavior in Hurricanes

DURATION: September 1, 2020 – August 31, 2023
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Tricia Wachtendorf, Sarah DeYoung

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
In this project, newly available anonymous smartphone location data will be used to dramatically improve understanding of how people behave during hurricanes (e.g., how many people will evacuate, when, how, from where, and to where). In this project, we will promote the progress of science by capitalizing on the availability of a new type of data—anonymous location information from smartphones—to make a leap forward in understanding and predicting the behavior of the population during hurricane evacuations. The project will advance national welfare and benefit society by substantially improving the ability to manage future evacuations. During a hurricane, officials make many highly consequential decisions, including issuing official evacuation orders, messaging the public, opening shelters, staging materials, and staff, implementing special traffic plans, executing support for vehicle-less populations, and preparing to undertake rescues. All of these depend directly on how many people are expected to evacuate, when, how, from where, and to where. By providing a more accurate and nuanced prediction of population behavior during hurricanes, this project will enable officials to make those decisions in a more informed and effective way. Our practitioner partners from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Florida and North Carolina state emergency management agencies will also help us share findings with the larger emergency management community. Combining the power of the new data with domain expertise based on traditional survey and interview data will advance the science.

NSF SCC-CIVIC-PG TRACK B: An Integrated Scenario-Based Hurricane Evacuation Management Tool to Support Community Preparedness

DURATION: February 1, 2021 – May 31, 2021
RESEARCHERS: Rachel Davidson, Tricia Wachtendorf

FUNDING: National Science Foundation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
As a hurricane approaches, emergency managers must determine when and where to issue official evacuation orders. It requires integrating large amounts of uncertain, changing information to make consequential decisions in a short time frame under pressure, and the stakes are high. An opportunity exists to leverage recent research—in particular, the Integrated Scenario-based Evacuation (ISE) tool—to help meet that challenge. This team designed the ISE tool to be run for a particular hurricane as it approaches the U.S. When run at a point in time, it generates a set of contingency plans and defines the circumstances under which to implement each, depending on how the hurricane evolves. Each plan includes recommendations about whether or not to issue an evacuation order for each geographic evacuation zone, and if so, when. While the new technology has promise, moving from research to practice brings its own challenges. The objectives of Stage 1, therefore, are to: (1) Determine how the new tool and its output can support emergency managers’ natural decision-making process; (2) Conduct a needs assessment for the tool; and (3) Advance understanding of community innovation in disaster management. The Stage 2 objective is to implement an operational prototype of the ISE-based decision support tool for North Carolina. The emergency manager partners will ensure the tool is of practical use; the researchers will ensure it reflects the best science, and the industry partner will ensure its impact is sustainable by hosting it on their platform.