Collaborative Research: Innovating Decision Aids for Sheltering for Natural Hazard Risks

The aim of this project is to advance disaster decision making, risk assessment, and management science by incorporating access to shelters and the ability to seek shelter into the national disaster risk assessment. Management decisions on resource allocation and emergency preparedness planning are hindered when disaster risk is not well understood. The existing tools and resources available to emergency managers often lack measures of shelter accessibility and the ability to seek shelter, which can escalate natural disasters into human disasters. By advancing existing measures, this translational project equips emergency managers with the knowledge and tools needed to cope proactively with disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and coastal floods. The potential societal benefits in this project include engaging emergency directors, planners, and operators to minimize redundancy and tool fatigue and ensure that outcomes align with their needs, and improving the well-being and survival of populations by identifying gaps in shelter access and prioritizing the allocation of shelter and mobility resources. This effort is guided by a vision of improving disaster risk understanding within a framework that integrates community resources and capabilities into risk assessment, management, and decision making. The research team achieves this goal through three research activities, co-produced in close collaboration with emergency managers across the nation. First, the research team develops a comprehensive, risk-based national shelter accessibility model to advance the state of the art in shelter accessibility measurement by accounting for both the availability and accessibility of shelters, as not all shelters remain functional during disasters. Second, the research augments existing national measures by integrating shelter accessibility and evacuation capabilities to enhance both short-term and long-term emergency management decisions. Third, the researchers create a science-informed decision-making tool to test risk perception and decision making in emergency management, enabling emergency directors, planners, and operators to explore how short-term and long-term strategies can provide evacuees with a better chance to survive. 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.