| NSF Org: |
CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 23, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 23, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1559687 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
David Mendonca
CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $46,327.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $46,327.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
4200 FIFTH AVENUE PITTSBURGH PA US 15260-0001 (412)624-7400 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
PA US 15213-2303 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and th |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
Understanding recovery processes after disaster is critical to building disaster resilient communities. As the frequency, cost, and scope of disaster events increase, the need escalates for incorporating planning for recovery from such events into updated plans for mitigation and response. This integrated effort is essential at all levels of governmental jurisdiction: municipal, county/district/regional, state/provincial, national, and international. Such planning will identify the conditions that accelerate a community's cumulative exposure to risk, the points at which this exposure can be interrupted or slowed, and the sequence of steps that can most effectively and quickly restore a damaged community to functional operation. Developing a viable model for community recovery after disaster represents a global need, one that is especially relevant to US cities like New Orleans that is still struggling with recovery ten years after the devastating hurricane and flood of 2005. Other US cities, like Seattle and Los Angeles, face recurring seismic risk, while Miami and Houston anticipate destructive storms accompanied by sea level rise in the coming decades. Charleston copes with both hurricanes and seismic risk. Anticipating thresholds of risk as they accrue over time at different scales of operation, and planning appropriate mechanisms for risk reduction and recovery are basic strategies for designing sustainable communities that are resilient to hazards, a national imperative. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) study, carefully executed, will show the threshold points of decision that lead to sustainable recovery and resilience in environments exposed to continuing risk, and, conversely, the points at which a community's cumulative exposure to risk threatens to slide back into vulnerable conditions that trigger other hazards, leading to accelerated risk and potential disaster. Pre-emptive recovery planning will benefit not only the community at risk, but the entire nation.
Determining the criteria that enable communities to recover from destructive events quickly in sustainable ways represents a major intellectual challenge. This study of disaster recovery will be based on the actual context of seismic risk in Nepal, and the issues that are involved in incorporating mitigation of multihazard risk into disaster recovery processes as investment for a sustainable community. The study will examine recovery from disaster as a process that occurs at multiple scales of organizational and jurisdictional decision making over a one-year period, from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. It will analyze especially the uses of information technology as a primary tool for engaging communities in their own recovery. The model draws on three major concepts that have informed the study of organizational decision making: collective action, or how people learn to work together; information systems, or how information flows effectively within and among people and organizations to guide informed action; and fields of action, or how values and personal examples of leadership shape actions in uncertain environments. The study will use different methods of analysis, including Bayesian influence diagrams and system dynamics, to track the flow of information, influence, technical change, types of knowledge, level of skills, and gaps in performance that characterize a society recovering from disaster. The model, carefully developed, will have a global impact for communities at risk.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Project Outcomes Report: Scalability and Sustainability in Uncertain Environments: Recovery from the Nepal Earthquakes, April 25 and May 12, 2015
This study examined the process of decision making initiated at national, regional, district, and municipal levels in Nepal following the April 25 and May 12, 2015 earthquakes to rebuild the social, economic, and political infrastructure and reconstruct damaged technical infrastructure to enable affected communities to return to daily operations. This field study built on an initial brief reconnaissance trip to Nepal, June 30 – July 10, 2015, just as response operations were ending and the transition to recovery was beginning. The study team expected to return to Nepal in November, 2015 to observe the recovery in process. Instead, the recovery was stalled for six months due to an external crisis that halted the transport of gasoline into Nepal, a condition that severely limited transportation in a nation largely dependent upon gas-powered vehicles. Members of the study team returned to Nepal in March, 2016 and in April 24 – May 1, 2016, to continue the investigation as the recovery process resumed, a full year after the April 25, 2015 event.
The field study documented the transition process as it unfolded in the context of internal tensions among ethnic groups within Nepal over distribution of authority in its long-awaited formal constitution and external tensions with neighboring India over the import of gasoline. Using three primary sources of data – documentary records, electronic media reports, and expert interviews – the research team identified the principal organizational structures through which operational decisions were made in practice during this difficult transition period. In doing so, the study focused specifically on what information processes were used, what gaps in information hindered the process, and how information technology did or did not facilitate information search and exchange among the key groups of participants. These findings contribute to understanding what communication and coordination processes enhance or impede recovery in the continuing search to manage recurring risk in more resilient, sustainable ways.
The study has produced five products: 1) article manuscript presenting results of the study, submitted to Earthquake Spectra for a special issue on the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes, currently under review; 2) poster presented at the 2015 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco; 3) student presentation at the 2016 Association of Public Policy and Management (APPAM) conference in Washington, DC; 4) presentation at the International Workshop on Collaborative Internet Computing for Disaster Management in Pittsburgh, PA; and 5) student paper included in the Working Paper Series of the Center for Disaster Management, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. Findings from the study are also included in a book manuscript, The Dynamics of Risk: Changing Technologies, Complex Systems, and Collective Action, currently in progress.
Intellectual Merit
Study findings contributed to a substantive understanding of the complexities of the recovery process following extreme events, and the social, economic, and political vulnerabilities that are created when there are discrepancies between plans and practice in disaster risk reduction. These discrepancies are presented in detail in the products from this research noted above, but they fall largely under four main themes: 1) centralized disaster plans, but a decentralized society; 2) scaling disaster operations from local to global activities, and back again; 3) integrating information technology into disaster mitigation, response, and recovery to enhance effective decision making; and 4) managing the politics of the reconstruction process. Each of these four themes was shaped by the geophysical, historical, and technological context of Nepal, underscoring the dynamic interactions among actors that altered performance in practice. The documented interaction among the four themes illustrated how power struggles in one area of recovery can block performance in other, interdependent areas, creating stasis for the entire process. Conversely, the results indicate how timely adaptation to changing conditions could increase performance outcomes, particularly in areas of constrained resources, as in Nepal.
Broader Impact
The findings from this study are widely applicable to communities that have experienced severe disasters, and offer insights for including the design of community platforms for search and exchange of relevant information regarding disaster risk reduction into local community preparedness activities. Such community platforms for information sharing, exchange, updating and correction of error enable diverse community groups to bridge the transition from response to recovery operations in a more coherent and less conflictual process. Specifically, this project enabled three doctoral students at the University of Pittsburgh to engage directly in the data collection and analysis for this study, contributing to their understanding of the dynamics of interacting networks of organizations engaged in disaster response and recovery operations. This project has also initiated discussions to develop continuing educational programs in disaster management between the University of Pittsburgh and Kathmandu and Tribhuvan Universities in Nepal to support emerging professional leadership in both countries.
Last Modified: 12/30/2016
Modified by: Louise K Comfort
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