CAREER: Risk-Sharing Communication Networks for Compound Disasters.

Communities share information about disaster risks differently, likely resulting in uneven distributions of survival resources, confusion over who is responsible, and communication that fails to foster trust. Understanding how people are connected in a community can reveal who lacks access to resources, who plays a key role, and how information about risks and resources can spread during disasters. This project introduces a new concept, the Risk-Sharing Commons, to address these communication issues in disaster research and provide complementary pathways to resilience. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods to incorporate new and understudied factors of risk-sharing decisions, this project derives and validates a fundamental understanding of the Commons framework for risk communication in times of disasters. The project offers educational and training activities in disaster risk management and engages stakeholders and community volunteers for better self-organization and decision-making in disaster-induced chaotic environments. The actionable knowledge derived from this project applies to different forms and combinations of disasters, informing policies to enhance the effectiveness of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts in disaster-prone communities. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project investigates the Risk-Sharing Commons, exploring how people and communities when facing disasters, navigate the inherent complexities of gathering and sharing critical information and resources. This project (a) establishes the relationships between local social and social media networks in disaster risk communication; (b) identifies how people use a diverse set of information sources and how social networks weigh into risk-sharing decisions before and following disaster events; (c) conducts inductive ethnographic research followed by a household network survey and decision-making experiments to incorporate new factors of risk-sharing decisions into a quantitative data and modeling plan that can make inferences validated in terms of scale and place; and (d) captures the variability in network composition and the spatiotemporal dynamics of trust formation and information cascades in risk communication using advanced network science and data-driven methods. Findings from the integrated research, education, and community engagement framework of this project can inform decision-makers on disaster management policy interventions to collectively improvise and identify pathways to resilience. This project is jointly funded by Human-Environment and Geographic Sciences (HEGS), Human Networks and Data Science (HNDS), and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). 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.