RAPID: An interdisciplinary study of winds, surge, damage, risk analysis and psychosocial response before and after Hurricane Irma

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Hurricanes rank among the most damaging natural hazards affecting the United States, the worst of which (e.g. Galveston 1900, Andrew 1992, Katrina 2005) caused some of the highest U.S. death tolls and insured dollar losses of any natural disaster. Given estimates of $83 billion in economic losses, Hurricane Irma will likely join this list. Hurricanes threaten the sustainability of entire communities: recovery is often slow or incomplete, residents may be permanently displaced, and physical destruction may cause long-term economic hardship. Human losses, including mental and physical health outcomes, may be affected by structural damage to the community and by individual- and community-level choices made before, during and after the hurricane reaches land. Yet many deleterious consequences of hurricanes may be mitigated through more effective and appropriately targeted evacuation efforts, improved decision making, and building codes/practices. Prior research suggests that human responses to hurricanes are influenced by variability in storm exposure, demographics, prior evacuation behavior, and type and perceived trustworthiness of disaster messaging. Moreover, real-time perceptions of risk may be related to actual wind and storm surge conditions and ongoing evolving damage to infrastructure, as well as to how these events are communicated. The investigators in this project have been at the forefront of developing and maintaining a sample (with prior NSF support) of Florida residents, including both pre- and post-Irma mental, physical, psychological and behavioral responses. This project examines how physical indicators of the storm and media exposure interact and influence those responses. To facilitate future mitigation efforts in places vulnerable to hurricanes and other hazards, gaining an integrated understanding of the physical nature of, and human responses to, these devastating storms is critical. In this project, an interdisciplinary team of investigators leverages a recent NSF RAPID-funded survey of a representative sample of Florida residents in the 3 days before Hurricane Irma made landfall across the State of Florida and again a few weeks after the storm passed. The team examines the role played by the physical parameters of the storm (wind, surge, damage) and media communications in understanding psychological and behavioral responses to the hurricane. The investigators collect relevant time-stamped physical and media data in places where the sample resided in the days leading up to and after Hurricane Irma made landfall. The researchers explore three questions: 1) What are the effects of spatially- and temporally-varying winds and surge that result in varying and evolving damage on the evolving perception and decisions made by people affected by these physical inputs? 2) What proportion of individual variability in pre-storm risk perceptions, decisions, and distress levels are accounted for by these physical inputs compared to respondents' personal histories, exposure to previous risks, exposure to evolving media communications, and other non-meteorological, non-damage factors? and, 3) To what extent is variability in the post-hurricane response a function of the decision to evacuate, exposure to evolving media communications, or other psychosocial variables, as compared to physical parameters of the storm? Results will inform decision making about the allocation of resources for disaster preparation, mobilization, and recovery, as well as provide emergency managers and other officials with insight into how to improve responses to future severe weather events. The integration of physical parameters, media, and human response data leads to increased sustainability of at-risk communities, while also informing theories and policies relevant to other natural disasters.