Facing Hazards and Disasters Understanding Human Dimensions (2006) / Chapter Skim
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2 Societal Changes Influencing the Context of Research
2 Societal Changes Influencing the Context of Research
Pages 41-70
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From page 41... ...
White, and the social scientific study of natural hazards began in earnest. World War II and, in particular, the United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (Fritz, 1961)
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From page 42... ...
A discussion of the influences of societal changes would not be complete without a consideration of quality-of-life and social equity patterns and issues as they relate to social vulnerability. To complete its context-setting function for the report, this chapter closes with discussions of technological change and global environmental patterns.
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The impacts of Hurricane Charley in August 2004 (see Box 2.1) illustrate how the changing age structure of Americans affects what hazards and disaster researchers study.
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The geographic distribution of this racially and ethnically diverse population has also influenced the kinds of research that hazards and disaster researchers pursue. For example, there is increasing research interest in racial and ethnic disparities in disaster impacts as well as differences in coping responses and longer term recovery capabilities based on race and ethnicity (Bolin and Bolton, 1986; Bolin and Klenow, 1988; Peacock et al.,
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From page 45... ...
. Finally, interesting questions arise from the differential use of foreign language media by emergency managers and the receptivity of different language media to disseminate warning messages.
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From page 46... ...
Although the socioeconomic status picture has improved generally, these improvements are not consistent across all portions of the population or by geographic region. Such differences are important to hazards and disaster researchers, because they can lead to an understanding of how communities and their diverse residents prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters (see Chapters 3 and 4)
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From page 47... ...
are found in the traditional manufacturing belt in the Northeast and Midwest, but not in "right-towork" states in the South where unions have less traction. Thus, the changing economic structure in which employment and output in services has expanded faster than manufacturing or agriculture influences hazard vulnerability, although some of the effect is likely due to the change in location of economic activity that has accompanied these sectoral shifts, rather than to fluctuations in the size of the sectors themselves (Berry et al., 1996; Clark et al., 2000)
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There is evidence that owner-occupants fail to renew National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) insurance even when there is a significant subsidy in the pricing of that insurance.
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Moreover, these macro trends have influenced the evolution of the emergency management system in the United States. The emergency management system in the United States evolved from preparations taken during World War II and postwar concerns about nuclear weapons (Kreps, 1990)
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There were more than 100 federal agencies with responsibility for some aspect of hazards and risks and at least five federal agencies with direct responsibility for emergency management response functions (Haddow and Bullock,
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Instead, FEMA's leadership reflected Reagan era commitments to civil defense and preparedness for limited as well as full-scale nuclear war. By the late 1980s, relations with the Soviet Union had improved somewhat, and emergency management moved from a civil defense mentality to again focus attention on natural hazards.
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Singular events such as the September 11, 2001 attacks can profoundly alter the organization of emergency management in the United States (Box 2.3)
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Regardless of FEMA's location in the federal bureaucracy, its response to disasters will be under careful scrutiny from victims, their elected officials, the news media, and researchers. Social science research is needed to address a number of issues about the new organizational structure.
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There were some positive developments; in particular, FEMA created a Mitigation Directorate to manage the HMGP and promote the idea of mitigation among state and local governments. Yet mitigation has not become an important part of broader natural hazards policy (Godschalk et al., 1999)
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. Local governments, as the regulators of land use and building construction, are politically susceptible to blame for restricting land development and requir
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Finally, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States led to a wide range of policy changes that may affect all phases of emergency management. In addition to the newly created DHS (see Box 2.3)
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, which created the Homeland Security Advisory System and the National Incident Management System are of considerable concern to social scientists (see Chapter 8)
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Federal mitigation policies generally ignore risk avoidance (public land acquisition in hazardous areas or relocation from hazard areas) and, instead, have focused on risk reduction (building codes, seawalls)
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tering the societal ills associated with sprawl. Both have important implications for the way society copes with future threats posed by environmental hazards and the types of needed research from the social science community.
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Emergency preparedness and hazard mitigation practices are costly, however, and they are not likely to be applied to individual development projects without ample evidence of the threat from New Urban developments (Box 2.6)
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Data from the Congress of New Urbanism indicate that local governments in 41 states are currently experimenting with specific plans, policies, codes, and development standards that promote New Urban projects (Congress of New Urbanism, 2004)
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State Smart Growth legislation has to date offered limited guidance on how to integrate emergency management and hazard mitigation practices into local land-use plans and development ordinances that promote Smart Growth. WELL-BEING AND QUALITY OF LIFE The health of populations and the provision of health care have both changed significantly in the past 50 years.
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SOCIETAL CHANGES INFLUENCING THE CONTEXT OF RESEARCH 63 causes of childhood mortality and morbidity are unintentional injuries and life-style-related diseases such as obesity. The provision of health care in the United States has also changed dramatically in the past 50 years.
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The implications of these changes in health care and its cost directly influence the availability of services to highly diverse population groups, as noted earlier in the chapter. The differential in access to emergency services between urban and rural places, among different racial or ethnic groups, or based on socioeconomic status portends significant emergency preparedness and disaster response problems for the future.
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From page 65... ...
These broader based social movements occurred at a time when the vast majority of hazards and disaster researchers were beginning their research careers and thus provided the context for the ways in which research problems were defined and studied. Not only did the subject matter change (expansion of hazards from natural hazards to technological events)
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66 FACING HAZARDS AND DISASTERS What empirical research exists is fragmented, inconclusive, and inconsistent in its results. While there has been a marked increase in the number of methodologically sophisticated articles, especially those employing spatial analytical techniques (Stockwell et al., 1993; Chakraborty and Armstrong, 1997; McMaster et al., 1997; Cutter et al., 2001; Mennis, 2002; Pine et al., 2002)
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. While the technological advances illustrated below certainly support hazards and disaster research (see Chapter 7)
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The management of disaster response has been aided by improvements in computing and computer systems. Easy to use software, laptop computers, and wireless communications are now the norm in post-event responses.
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The effects of global changes on local places, generally, and the uneven distributions of these impacts, especially as they relate to vulnerable populations provide an additional research context for hazards and disaster research (AAG GCLP, 2003)
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The very nature of the problems that are studied and the approaches that social scientists take are set within this broader context of change. Researchers are able to respond to opportunities to extract lessons from particular disaster experiences as well as to draw theoretical, conceptual, and methodological understanding of human adjustments to hazard vulnerability.
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