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3 Social Science Research on Hazard Mitigation, Emergency Preparedness, and Recovery Preparedness
Pages 71-123

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From page 71...
... , is employed. Within that conceptual model the catalytic impacts of disaster events are determined by conditions of systemic vulnerability, disaster event characteristics, and the actions of what the committee has termed the hazards and disaster management system.
From page 72...
... Hazard exposure arises from people's occupancy of geographical areas where they could be affected by extreme events that threaten their lives or property. Social scientists have made contributions to understanding hazard exposure principally by examining the distribution of hazardous conditions and the human occupancy of hazardous zones (Burton et al., 1993; Monmonier, 1997)
From page 73...
... It is a complex process involving a number of significant social, economic and political issues. Social scientists in the hazards and disaster field that study such issues are in a position to provide guidance to policy makers and practitioners who make decisions about how to protect life and property in at-risk communities.
From page 74...
... . GIS-based approaches to vulnerability assessments were initially developed under NEHRP by social scientists (Mitchell et al., 1997; Morrow, 1999; Cutter et al., 2000)
From page 75...
... For example, some social scientists supported under NEHRP have argued that technological hazards are fundamentally different from natural hazards in their impacts on the human, natural, and built environments (Kroll-Smith and Couch, 1991) , whereas others have suggested that natural disasters elicit a therapeutic community response and technological hazards elicit a nontherapeutic response.
From page 76...
... DISASTER IMPACTS Physical Impacts Damage to the built environment can be classified broadly as affecting residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure, or community services sectors. Moreover, damage within each of these sectors can be divided into damage to structures and damage to contents.
From page 77...
... Social Impacts Social impacts -- which can be psychological, demographic, economic, or political -- can result directly from physical impact and be seen immediately or can arise indirectly and develop over shorter to longer periods of chronological and social time. For many years, research on the social
From page 78...
... in disasters of different magnitudes. Such research could reveal how long it takes for the horizontal and vertical linkages in American society to produce disaster recovery resources for those in need.
From page 79...
... . The findings from the research on psychological impacts of disasters indicate that there is no need for communities to revise their recovery plans to include widespread assessments of direct and indirect psychological impacts following disasters, nor does there appear to be a major need for research on interventions for the general population.
From page 80...
... It is widely anticipated that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the case of New Orleans will also be an exception. As noted earlier, the highly aggregated level of analysis in the Friesma and Wright studies does not preclude the possibility of significant impacts at lower levels of analysis such as the census tract, block group, or block levels.
From page 81...
... In addition to direct economic losses, there are indirect losses that arise from the interdependence of community subunits. Research, including that supported by NEHRP, on the socioeconomic impacts of disasters (Dacy and Kunreuther, 1969; Durkin, 1984; Kroll et al., 1991; Alesch et al., 1993; Gordon et al., 1995; Dalhamer and D'Sousa, 1997)
From page 82...
... There have been significant advances under NEHRP in modeling the regional economic impacts of disasters. Thirty years ago, the literature consisted of a single conceptual discussion of the applicability of inputoutput models to disasters (Cochrane, 1974)
From page 83...
... They are also able to assess, but to a much more limited degree, the potential economic benefits of specific predisaster mitigations and post-disaster responses. Although there is an emerging technology for projecting the economic impacts of a disaster in the immediate aftermath of physical impact -- or even for a disaster hypothesized in advance -- local emergency managers and community economic development planners need to be able to identify the specific types of businesses in different sectors of the disaster impact area (or even in unaffected areas nearby; see Zhang et al., 2004b)
From page 84...
... versus social-emotional (interpersonal relationships/emotional well-being) orientation toward recovery activities.
From page 85...
... There is a limited amount of research on the political information effects of disasters, and it is not entirely clear how existing research findings would apply to future events because there has been a clear pattern over time of disaster victims' decreasing tolerance for extended disruptions to their daily lives. Whether or not victims believe natural disasters are "acts of God," there seems to be an increasing tendency for them to hold government responsible for effective emergency response and rapid disaster recovery.
From page 86...
... By contrast, emergency preparedness practices involve the development of plans and procedures, the recruitment and training of staff, and the acquisition of facilities, equipment, and materials needed to provide active protection during emergency response. Disaster recovery preparedness practices involve the development of plans and procedures, the recruitment and training of staff, and acquisition of facilities, equipment, and materials needed to provide rapid and equitable disaster recovery after an incident no longer poses an imminent threat to health and safety.
From page 87...
... to excluding all development. Finally, hazard mitigation can be achieved through building construction practices that make individual structures less vulnerable to natural hazards.
From page 88...
... examined a range of seismic hazard mitigation measures and ranked them according to effectiveness, political feasibility, cost (both public and private) , administrative cost, and ease of enforcement.
From page 89...
... Further research is needed to develop methods for more comprehensively assessing the full costs and benefits of different mitigation actions, to build a knowledge base of the relative cost-effectiveness of different types of pre- and post-disaster interventions, and to develop approaches for incorporating such methods and knowledge into a decision-making process that reflects the needs of all stakeholders. The Process of Local Hazard Mitigation Scholars, including many supported by NEHRP, have long noted the potential for disaster mitigation to be highly politicized, especially when multiple layers of government and multiple jurisdictions at a given level (e.g., states, counties, or cities)
From page 90...
... . Thus, this figure indicates that hazard mitigation is a much more complex process than government mandates "trickling down" from the federal government.
From page 91...
... Rather, they can exist as conditions for some time before the emergence of feasible coping strategies moves them into the realm of public discussion as problems that are amenable to solutions (Rochefort and Cobb, 1994)
From page 92...
... It is well understood that a proposed mitigation policy should make a significant contribution to solving the problem of hazard vulnerability yet must avoid generating significant opposition by other stakeholders. In fact, this is a major dilemma because hazard mitigation policies typically benefit a diffuse constituency (taxpayers at large)
From page 93...
... , these mandates have a measurable impact on the reduction of disaster losses. Moreover, a cross-sectional analysis of disaster recovery of communities after the Northridge earthquake found that the quality of mitigation elements in local comprehensive plans has a positive influence on implementation of mitigation practices and on the reduction of property loss (Burby et al., 1998)
From page 94...
... Even after a policy has been developed, there are many veto points at which interests can block the implementation of policies they consider undesirable. There has been a significant amount of research under NEHRP on the adoption of hazard mitigation measures, but there are also significant limitations to that research.
From page 95...
... , the first step in emergency response preparedness is to identify the demands that different types of disasters will place upon the community and, thus, the need to perform four basic emergency response functions -- emergency assessment, expedient hazard mitigation, population protection, and incident management (Lindell and Perry, 1992, 1996)
From page 96...
... These failures occurred despite the fact that this problem had been anticipated for quite some time. Social scientists are now investigating these and related preparedness and response problems exposed by Hurricane Katrina for lessons that might be learned.
From page 97...
... Emergency Response Functions. As discussed in Chapter 4, there is a long history of social science research on some aspects of disaster response, especially population protection and incident management.
From page 98...
... . The population protection function is distinctive in that it has generated the greatest amount of social science research on disaster response, including that supported by NEHRP -- undoubtedly due to the fact that this function involves the risk area population's degree of compliance with emergency responders' protective action recommendations.
From page 99...
... . Emergency response organizations also must be prepared to transmit warning messages that describe the threat, an appropriate protective action, and sources of additional information.
From page 100...
... . As is the case for local emergency management agency notification, research is needed to estimate warning time distributions that would be found under a variety of conditions for hurricanes and tsunamis.
From page 101...
... review of the research on this topic was used as the basis for planning hurricane emergency response, primarily because hazards researchers drafted the planning documents for the emergency management agency. Incident Management.
From page 102...
... . COMMUNITY DISASTER RECOVERY PREPAREDNESS PRACTICES After a disaster, many tasks need to be accomplished very quickly, and virtually simultaneously, so pre-impact planning for disaster recovery is as critical as planning for disaster response (Schwab et al., 1998)
From page 103...
... Coordinated pre-impact planning can also decrease the probability of conflicts arising due to competition over scarce resources during the recovery period. The necessary coordination between pre-impact emergency response planning and pre-impact disaster recovery planning can be achieved by establishing organizational contacts, and perhaps overlapping membership, between the entities responsible for these two activities.
From page 104...
... (1993) to refer to all actions that reduce hazard vulnerability -- hazard mitigation, emergency response preparedness, and disaster recovery preparedness.
From page 105...
... Moreover, much of the existing research has neglected the problems of erroneous beliefs (Turner et al., 1986; Whitney et al., 2004) and pseudo-attitudes (Converse, 1964; Schuman and Kalton, 1985; Lindell and Perry, 1990)
From page 106...
... Previous research generally has reported statistically significant relations between perceived hazard characteristics and hazard adjustment, but the size of the correlation coefficients is modest. One potential explanation for the small correlations is that researchers have failed to accurately capture risk area residents' cognitive representations of the hazard.
From page 107...
... SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH 107 ing respondents' comparisons of their household members' vulnerability to that of the average household. Some researchers have measured risk area residents' hazard concern in terms of a single global item (e.g., Dooley et al., 1992)
From page 108...
... 108 FACING HAZARDS AND DISASTERS nally reported by Turner and his colleagues (1986) and replicated by some (Dooley et al., 1992)
From page 109...
... Larger businesses are significantly more likely to engage in preparedness activities than smaller ones -- a pattern that is thought to be related to the fact that larger firms are more likely to have additional resources to devote to loss reduction activities and more likely to have specialized positions that are specifically
From page 110...
... . Government Agency Hazard Adjustments There has been little research on the hazard adjustments by government agencies that do not have emergency management responsibilities but, nonetheless, will be expected to provide their normal services after a disaster strikes.
From page 111...
... Building on earlier hazards research (see Burton et al., 1993, for a summary) and psychological research on judgment and decision making (see Slovic et al., 1974, for an early statement, and Kahneman et al., 1982)
From page 112...
... report concluded that federal disaster relief policy creates this condition by relieving households of the responsibility for providing their own disaster recovery resources. This might be a significant reason why only 20 percent of structures affected by the 1993 Mississippi floods were insured.
From page 113...
... (alternative actions) 4 What is the best method of Protective action Adaptive plan protection?
From page 114...
... . Two empirical studies on public risk communication campaigns are illustrative of NEHRP-sponsored research in this area.
From page 115...
... A recent report developed by social scientists affiliated with the three earthquake engineering research centers was designed specifically to provide guidance to earthquake safety advocates -- including advice on risk communication and the design of strategies for educating the public (Alesch et al., 2004)
From page 116...
... Recommendation 3.1: Research should be conducted to assess the degree to which hazard event characteristics affect physical and social impacts of disasters and, thus, hazard mitigation and preparedness for disaster response and recovery. This very broad recommendation is essentially a call for comprehensive tests of the model described in Figure 1.2.
From page 117...
... In addition to assessing risk perceptions, these studies also should assess the degree to which users can and do make use of the work that physical scientists and engineers produce on hazard exposure and structural vulnerability, respectively. Finally, research is needed to better understand the concept of social vulnerability.
From page 118...
... More research is needed on other mitigation measures -- community protection works and building construction practices. In connection with the latter, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute conducted a study of factors affecting building code compliance, but more research is needed on this topic (Hoover and Greene, 1996)
From page 119...
... A principle intellectual tool relating public policy to social science research is benefit-cost analysis. In general, benefit-cost analysis of natural hazards policies has lagged.
From page 120...
... Such research will require social scientists to collaborate with transportation planners and engineers on evacuation modeling and with mechanical engineers on shelter-in-place modeling. Specifically, research is needed to assess emergency managers' and responders' preparedness for protective action selection, warning, protective action implementation, impact zone access control and security, reception and care of victims, search and rescue, emergency medical care and morgues, and hazard exposure control.
From page 121...
... found to be quite relevant to disaster response, but there is no evidence that this literature has been addressed by disaster researchers or utilized by practitioners. Analysis of the role of training and exercising before Hurricane Katrina should provide needed insight (see Box 3.4 for discussion on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita)
From page 122...
... There must be some public constraints on private choices, but there is a delicate balance between the near term acceptability and the long-term effec BOX 3.4 Research Implications of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita The impact of Hurricane Katrina underscores a number of the recommenda tions in this chapter. First, the failure to evacuate a significant number of transit dependent households during Katrina calls attention to the need for research to assess social vulnerability and its relation to hazard exposure and physical vulnerability.
From page 123...
... Even greater safety can be provided by better evacuation demand management that uses more effec tive risk communication, improved structural protection works, better land-use practices, and better building construction practices to sharply reduce the number of evacuating vehicles. A significant amount of research will be needed to support the development of feasible hurricane hazard mitigation and emergency response preparedness plans.


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