Browsing by Department "Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Collaborative Research: Evaluating the Potential for Urban Resilience Planning to Mitigate Long-term Flood Risks
Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/557; National Science Foundation
Costs from flooding continue to rise because of the isolation in most communities of hazard mitigation planning from land use planning processes. Resilience planning that recognizes the interdependencies between disasters and the constant stressors cities face, such as poverty, aging infrastructure, and social inequity, has emerged as a new framework to coordinate flood mitigation and planning. This project examines how resilience is translated into practice, whether it fosters collaboration across city departments and stakeholders, and if this collaboration leads to more integrative plans that reduce vulnerability to flooding. New knowledge will be acquired regarding how resilience planning shapes urban governance at a time when flooding poses an increasingly serious threat for communities. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the benefits will be insights for local practitioners about the governance of resilience efforts and for federal, state, and non-profit officials on how to foster local resilience. The project will educate future resilience planning professionals through the development and implementation of educational case studies and participation of graduate students throughout the research process. By combining surveys, interviews, social network analysis, and plan evaluation in four cities at the forefront of resilience planning, this study provides critical and timely information about the governance structures and planning processes that address long-term flood risk. Specifically, the objectives of this study are to: (1) examine how public, private, and community actors who are engaged in flood mitigation efforts interpret and operationalize the concept of resilience; (2) characterize inter-organizational connectivity around flood resilience planning by analyzing urban governance networks with social network analysis; (3) assess and compare the quality, consistency, and level of integration among different types of city plans that impact flooding; and (4) evaluate the influence of different conceptualizations of resilience and governance network structures on cities? plans and policies. The project will combine social network analysis with assessment of plan quality and integration. By comparing plan quality and integration with measures of network collaboration, results will address the widely cited claim that collaboration leads to better and more integrated plans that are more likely to reduce flood damages. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Collaborative Research: Organizational Development, Operations, and New Media Among Civilian Flood-Rescue Groups
Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/218; National Science Foundation
In this project, the stability or formalization and growth of volunteer groups and the use of social media in these processes will be investigated. Specifically, processes of conducting volunteer flood rescues, factors that affect immediate decision-making during rescues, decisions about volunteer group development, and use of social media for rescuing and group development will be researched through intense interviewing and participation with rescuers. Disasters are unique opportunities to study social processes, and they are also becoming more frequent social problems. Disasters of recent years have introduced volunteer organizations supported by social media and new technologies. Limited scholarly research has studied this volunteer rescue movement, these volunteers, or these rescue operations. Findings will contribute to scholarly understanding of group formation and development and how this may be affected by new technologies. They also will contribute to public welfare by being integrated in courses such as on emergency management and hazard mitigation and recovery, and by being directly shared with organizations that do rescues as well as the broader emergency management and public communities. To address the research goal, ethnographic research will be conducted that includes participation with volunteer organizations that conduct rescues, 20-40 interviews with emergency management officials, 30-60 interviews with volunteer rescuers, and 20-30 interviews with persons rescued by civilian volunteers. Over the life of the project, this will involve training and traveling with volunteer organizations as they respond to disasters, such as the three to which these organizations responded in 2018, Hurricanes Florence and Michael and floods in Southeast Texas. Participation will be in three different roles: boat rescuer, dispatcher, and leadership coordination. In addition, available social media data and media articles will be collected and analyzed inductively. GIS technology will be used to analyze available geospatial data on rescue locations, which will be related to hazard data. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Collaborative Research: Organizational Development, Operations, and New Media Among Civilian Flood-Rescue Groups
Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/218; National Science Foundation
In this project, the stability or formalization and growth of volunteer groups and the use of social media in these processes will be investigated. Specifically, processes of conducting volunteer flood rescues, factors that affect immediate decision-making during rescues, decisions about volunteer group development, and use of social media for rescuing and group development will be researched through intense interviewing and participation with rescuers. Disasters are unique opportunities to study social processes, and they are also becoming more frequent social problems. Disasters of recent years have introduced volunteer organizations supported by social media and new technologies. Limited scholarly research has studied this volunteer rescue movement, these volunteers, or these rescue operations. Findings will contribute to scholarly understanding of group formation and development and how this may be affected by new technologies. They also will contribute to public welfare by being integrated in courses such as on emergency management and hazard mitigation and recovery, and by being directly shared with organizations that do rescues as well as the broader emergency management and public communities. To address the research goal, ethnographic research will be conducted that includes participation with volunteer organizations that conduct rescues, 20-40 interviews with emergency management officials, 30-60 interviews with volunteer rescuers, and 20-30 interviews with persons rescued by civilian volunteers. Over the life of the project, this will involve training and traveling with volunteer organizations as they respond to disasters, such as the three to which these organizations responded in 2018, Hurricanes Florence and Michael and floods in Southeast Texas. Participation will be in three different roles: boat rescuer, dispatcher, and leadership coordination. In addition, available social media data and media articles will be collected and analyzed inductively. GIS technology will be used to analyze available geospatial data on rescue locations, which will be related to hazard data. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
COVID: RAPID: Disparities in Business and Nonprofit Impact and Recovery from Hurricane Harvey, COVID-19, and Hurricane Laura
Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/218; National Science Foundation
Reducing the effects of disasters on businesses and nonprofits is growing in importance as disasters are more frequent. However, understanding of disaster impacts and recovery across a variety of organizational types is still relatively limited. For example, while disparities in recovery for organizations owned by women, veterans, or racial minorities have been observed, the underlying mechanisms are not well established. In addition, understanding of how businesses and nonprofits recover from multiple and cascading impacts (such as hurricanes followed by a pandemic followed by another hurricane) is also only beginning to develop. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project extends preliminary research conducted following Hurricane Harvey to examine disaster impacts, including cumulative impacts, and disparate recovery processes associated with the current pandemic and additional coastal storms along the Gulf Coast. Findings will have implications for improved strategies for organizational survival and recovery, provide evidence that can be used for coordinated outreach and educational programs to support organizational planning and adaptation, and enable cross-case research. This study integrates theory and findings from the disaster recovery literature with a social vulnerability perspective. The research team will geographically and conceptually expand beyond previous surveys and interviews of for-profit and nonprofit organizations after Hurricane Harvey, collecting data on organizational performance during COVID-19 and Hurricane Laura in Beaumont, TX, Port Arthur, TX, and Lake Charles, LA. The study will test how social vulnerability factors affect organizational impacts, survival, and recovery, controlling for resources, organizational characteristics, damage, and adaptive actions. It will also examine how disparities in organizational recovery propagate through multiple events, controlling for resources, organizational characteristics, damage, and adaptive actions. The team is uniquely poised to collect data quickly as it has conducted pre-disaster survey and sample verification in Beaumont and Port Arthur, tested survey methodology and best practices for this region, and has administered a previous multi-hazard survey that can be tailored for this context. This research team will work to gather data quickly in order to minimize survivor bias (i.e., before some of the vulnerable organizations fail and therefore are not represented in the study sample). Results will be relevant to the literature on cumulative disaster impacts and adaptation, social vulnerability, and organizational continuity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
CRISP Type 2/Collaborative Research: Scalable Decision Model to Achieve Local and Regional Resilience of Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems and Communities.
Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/456; National Science Foundation
The US economy and social wellbeing depend on interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICISs) such as transportation, energy, water, and food systems. These ICISs shape the countrys ability to meet community needs often successful, but not for all, and are susceptible to disruptions due to extreme natural events. This interplay between normal operation, chronic issues, and disaster-induced challenges is clearly evident when considering food security issues. Food access and affordability are persistent problems for more than 14 percent of Americans in normal times and are greatly exacerbated following disasters. Frameworks for understanding ICIS interdependencies, their interface with social and economic networks in response to natural hazards, and their roles in disaster recovery for vulnerable populations and food security are nascent. The food security of a community is a function of the pre-event vulnerabilities and the resilience of its food distribution network including the vulnerabilities of its infrastructural systems in isolation and their interdependencies. Furthermore, the demands posed by different hazards, the capacity of each physical network and system to respond to these demands, and the interactions between physical and social systems are highly uncertain. Accordingly, risk-informed approaches that can guide decision methods are crucial to characterize demand and impact on a community, to predict community response, and for designing community infrastructure systems that are resilient. Well-integrated decision methods that account for and integrate the performance of different ICISs in response to disasters have broad impacts. First, such methodologies will better frame questions on disaster mitigation and recovery, and will facilitate disaster planning activities and training for various disaster scenarios. Second, they will encourage policies that address chronic and acute food-security issues, balancing the mitigation of vulnerability with the promotion of resiliency. Finally, they will foster a shared language among social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientists, computational scientists, and engineers on the causes and characterization of hazards and risks and mitigation solutions. This project will engage a diverse set of students, including women and minorities, and in student-centered learning. It will integrate research and education throughout the project, and effectively disseminate the results. The methodologies developed will be integrated into courses such as Engineering Risk Analysis and Structural Reliability, Disaster Mitigation and Recovery and Planning Methods, and Risk and Regulation and into two NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) summer institutes which blend geography, computer science, health, planning and social science undergraduate students in food security, disparities, and health research projects. This research will develop a decision platform that integrates computational models of ICISs at different spatial and temporal scales. These computational models will focus on the food distribution networks and include analytics of the socioeconomic causes of vulnerability. The decision platform may be used to examine issues related to reducing the risks associated with extreme hazards while enhancing community resilience with respect to food security. The project brings together three distinct disciplines: Engineering, SBE sciences, and Computer/Computational Sciences. Achieving project goals requires a deep collaboration between these three broad disciplines. Engineering is needed to understand and model the physical components of each sector and their interdependencies. SBE sciences are essential to understand and model food distribution from wholesale to households with a focus on vulnerable populations. Computer and Computational Science are needed to develop comprehensive models representing communities and their infrastructure and are the basis for assessing policy and organizational interventions that lead to greater robustness and resilience. The interdisciplinary nature of this research will also forge new channels of communication through models that integrate social and physical aspects of risk and vulnerability.