RAPID: Disaster Preparedness and Response within Communities Affected by Hurricane Harvey

Sam Houston State University, Huntsville TX

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate emergent community actions to prepare and respond to Hurricane Harvey and to explore the ability of groups to choose different strategies in reacting to a disaster. By studying how and when people engage in evolving instances of collective actions, the project will document the behavior of people in disasters, what tools and technologies are being used, who becomes neglected during a disaster and how this marginalization happens. The project will also train graduate students in qualitative research methods and community engagement. Research findings will be of interest to policymakers at the local and federal levels, scholars and communities preparing for or responding to disaster. This rapid proposal will use auto-ethnography and participatory action research to interview, observe and collect data from homeland security institutions, citizen responders and affected publics. Findings will be co-constructed by the two PIs in consort with a variety of participants that are either affected by response and recovery, or engaged in preparing, responding or studying it. Interview, observational, and other data will be analyzed both individually and collaboratively using the traditions of autoethnography and participatory action research. The research will study the homeland security regimes that include socio-technical outlets,security technology infrastructures and the relations between community swarming and expertise. A question central to the project is how do processes and structures of security regimes marginalize people in evolving disaster contexts. The findings from the empirical work will problematize how preparedness, response, and resilience may exacerbate social marginalization in disaster. In addition, the findings will be of interest to policymakers using practice-centric approaches wanting to broaden their work through theoretical, humanistic, and critical lenses.