[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
RESEARCH IN DISASTER
PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 10, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-32
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/science
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
24-463PS WASHINGTON : 2006
_________________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York, Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas BART GORDON, Tennessee
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANA ROHRABACHER, California LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
KEN CALVERT, California DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland MARK UDALL, Colorado
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan DAVID WU, Oregon
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia BRAD SHERMAN, California
JO BONNER, Alabama BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TOM FEENEY, Florida JIM MATHESON, Utah
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina JIM COSTA, California
DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington AL GREEN, Texas
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
JOHN J.H. ``JOE'' SCHWARZ, Michigan DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
VACANCY
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Research
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina, Chairman
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana VACANCY
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas VACANCY
VACANCY
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York BART GORDON, Tennessee
ELIZABETH GROSSMAN Subcommittee Staff Director
JIM WILSON Democratic Professional Staff Member
MELE WILLIAMS Professional Staff Member/Chairman's Designee
AVITAL BAR-SHALOM, KARA HAAS Professional Staff Members
RACHEL JAGODA BRUNETTE Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
November 10, 2005
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Research, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives.. 9
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Darlene Hooley, Ranking Minority
Member, Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Prepared Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Member, Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 11
Prepared Statement by Representative Russ Carnahan, Member,
Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 12
Witnesses:
Dr. Susan L. Cutter, Carolina Distinguished Professor and
Director, Hazards Research Lab, University of South Carolina
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 15
Biography.................................................... 24
Financial Disclosure......................................... 25
Dr. Shirley Laska, Professor, Environmental Sociology; Director,
Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology,
University of New Orleans
Oral Statement............................................... 26
Written Statement............................................ 28
Biography.................................................... 46
Dr. H. Dan O'Hair, Chairman, Department of Communications,
University of Oklahoma
Oral Statement............................................... 47
Written Statement............................................ 49
Biography.................................................... 58
Financial Disclosure......................................... 59
Dr. Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor, Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior and the Department of Medicine, University of
California, Irvine
Oral Statement............................................... 59
Written Statement............................................ 61
Biography.................................................... 64
Financial Disclosure......................................... 65
Discussion....................................................... 66
Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Susan L. Cutter, Carolina Distinguished Professor and
Director, Hazards Research Lab, University of South Carolina... 82
Dr. Shirley Laska, Professor, Environmental Sociology; Director,
Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology,
University of New Orleans...................................... 84
Dr. H. Dan O'Hair, Chairman, Department of Communications,
University of Oklahoma......................................... 87
Dr. Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor, Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior and the Department of Medicine, University of
California, Irvine............................................. 94
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND
RESPONSE
----------
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bob Inglis
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
HEARING CHARTER
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Role of Social Science
Research in Disaster
Preparedness and Response
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005
10:00 A.M.-12:00 P.M.
2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
1. Purpose
On Thursday, November 10, 2005, the Research Subcommittee of the
Committee on Science of the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a
hearing to better understand how the social sciences can inform
planning for, response to, and recovery from natural hazards and
disasters.
2. Witnesses
Dr. Susan Cutter is a Professor of Geography at the University of South
Carolina, and the Director of the Hazard Research Laboratory.
Dr. Roxane Silver is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior in the Department of Medicine at the University of
California, Irvine.
Dr. H. Dan O'Hair is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of
Communication at the University of Oklahoma. He is also the current
Vice President of the National Communications Association.
Dr. Shirley Laska is a Professor of Environmental Sociology and
Director of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology
at the University of New Orleans.
3. Overarching Questions
How do individuals perceive risk and respond to
warnings and other crisis communications? What role does the
media play in risk communication and the formation of public
views and behavior?
How do individuals respond to traumatic experiences,
such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters? How can
insights into fundamental questions of cooperation, social
order and resilience improve preparation for and response to
new threats and disasters?
How is local or regional vulnerability to natural
hazards and disasters assessed? How does the natural and built
environment affect the perception of risk and subsequent
behavior?
What are the priority social science research areas
related to disaster preparedness and response? How are the
results of such research being translated into practice?
4. Brief Overview
The U.S. is exposed to a wide range of natural
hazards, such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, as well as
the continuing threat of terrorism and other technological
disasters. While new tools and technologies have improved the
prediction of many natural hazards, complete preparedness and
response also requires an understanding of human behavior,
particularly in emergency situations. This is the domain of the
social sciences.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) accounts for
nearly half ($106 million in fiscal year 2004) of the overall
federal investment in basic social sciences research at
colleges and universities. In the areas of disaster
preparedness and response, NSF supports short-term research
projects immediately after disasters to gather and analyze
information about public attitudes and behavior. NSF also
supports longer-term studies on individual and group perception
of risk, the vulnerability of different regions and populations
to particular dangers, and individual and group resiliency in
the aftermath of a natural or other disaster.
While there is a body of social science knowledge on
disasters, particularly in the context of natural hazards, the
lack of connections between researchers and emergency planners
and responders has led to uneven or incomplete application of
lessons learned to improve current disaster preparedness.
5. Background
Because of its natural, climatic and geographic diversity, the U.S.
is exposed to a wide range of natural hazards, such as hurricanes,
floods and earthquakes, as well as the continuing threat of terrorism
and other technological disasters. These risks, combined with increased
population densities and the development of flood plains, coasts, and
other vulnerable areas, have raised the disaster risk for the U.S. to
an all time high.
The Federal Government has been investing in science and technology
to combat terrorism and manage natural hazards. As a result, new tools
have been developed to improve the detection and remediation of
biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear threat agents, and new
technologies, such as satellites and Doppler radar systems, have
improved the prediction of hurricane, tornado and other storm paths.
These tools are an important part of managing a disaster, but a
complete response also requires an understanding of human behavior,
particularly in emergency situations.
Disaster Research at the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences
Most social science research at NSF is funded through the Social,
Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate. For more than
thirty years, NSF has supported disaster research that immediately
dispatches scientists and engineers in the wake of crises ranging from
hurricanes to terrorist attacks. NSF has a variety of mechanisms
available to support this type of research, including the Small Grants
for Exploratory Research (SGER, pronounced ``sugar''). These SGER
grants are offered across the foundation and they are awarded quickly
to allow scientists to gather data that is likely to disappear over
time.
Within SBE, SGER grants are used to focus on such issues as
organizational preparedness for and response to social crises, risk
assessment and vulnerability analysis, and resilience. In the aftermath
of hurricane Katrina, for instance, SBE awarded 35 SGER grants to study
decision-making and political mobilization before, during, and after
the hurricane, the economic and psychological dimensions of recovery on
children and adults, and the breakdown of law and order following
Katrina and its effects on recovery efforts and on victims. Similarly,
after the terrorist attacks of 2001, SBE SGER grants funded research on
issues predicting affective reactions to collective loss, understanding
individual response to a salient and pervasive health threat such as
anthrax, and resiliency and coping in the wake of the attacks and
ongoing threats.
SBE also funds longer-term research that is relevant to natural
hazards and disasters. SBE research on how human emotion drives
decisions can help emergency planners understand how personal choices
can turn a crisis into a disaster. For instance, one NSF study found
that most people living in areas prone to floods, earthquakes, and
other devastating natural disasters take no steps to protect themselves
or their property--important information for federal, State and local
emergency managers. In addition, according to NSF-supported research,
there are several myths about public response to crisis warnings,
including the belief that people are confused if given too much
information, that ``crying wolf'' leads to inaction, and that people
automatically follow instructions. Other research into risk perception
has highlighted how the genders react differently--white males perceive
risks as much smaller and much more acceptable than other groups do,
while women are more likely than men to seek out information from the
media and then take responsibility for adapting in a crisis.
Other SBE supported research is helping gain insights into the
origins of terrorism and the after effects of an attack. For instance,
the intelligence community and NSF are sponsoring research on the
detection of deception that includes investigation and development of
behavioral biometrics, content analysis of foreign documents and
speech, alternatives to the polygraph, and improvements in intelligence
analysis by increasing understanding of thought processes, learning and
decision-making in individuals and teams. In addition, and in an
attempt to better understand the beliefs of people in Islamic
societies, SBE recently supported an analysis of attitudes and values
of the Islamic public in Egypt, Iran and Morocco. Researchers concluded
that there is considerable and unexpected variation in values. Despite
living under a religious regime for more than two decades, Iranians
appear to be less religious and more nationalistic than either
Egyptians or Jordanians, who live under secular regimes. They also
found that Iranians have more liberal attitudes toward marriage and
women working outside the home than the respondents from the other two
countries.
National Science and Technology Council Reports on Research Related to
Disasters and Counterterrorism
Interagency coordination of research related to disaster
preparedness and response and to combating terrorism occurs through
meetings and reports of the National Science and Technology Council
(NSTC), a cabinet-level council tasked with coordinating federal
policies for science and technology. In July 2003, the NSTC's
Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction issued a report on Reducing Disaster
Vulnerability Through Science and Technology which identified six areas
critical for meeting the challenges of future hazard risk reduction for
the Nation.\1\ They are:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ NSTC's report Reducing Disaster Vulnerability Through Science
and Technology can be found on line at http://www.ostp.gov/NSTC/html/
SDR-Report-ReducingDisasterVulnerability
2003.pdf.
1. Leverage existing knowledge of natural and technological
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
hazards to address terrorism events;
2. Improve hazard information data collection and prediction
capability;
3. Ensure the development and widespread use of improved
hazard and risk assessment models and their incorporation into
decision support tools and systems;
4. Speed the transition from hazard research to hazard
management application;
5. Increase mitigation activities and incentives; and
6. Expand risk communication capabilities, especially public
warning systems and techniques.
Social science research plays a critical role in the each of these
areas, from development of vulnerability assessment techniques (area 2)
to determination of effective incentives for risk mitigation (area 5)
and evaluation of effective risk communication (area 6).
In February 2005, NSTC's Subcommittee on Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences released a report entitled Combating Terrorism:
Research Priorities in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.\2\
The report found that the social sciences have much to contribute to
the development of strategies that enhance the Nation's capacity to
predict, prevent, prepare for and recover from a terrorist attack. The
immediate priorities for social science research include:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ NSTC's report Combating Terrorism: Research Priorities in the
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences can be found on line at http:/
/www.ostp.gov/nstc/html/terror.pdf.
collection of data, such as the outcomes of threat
scenario exercises and health surveillance data, that can be
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
used to inform and model preparation strategies;
application of modeling methods to complex problems
such as understanding the intersections of terrorists and
victims and the vulnerabilities of terrorist networks;
application of decision science research to risk
communication strategies, including assessing people's risk
perception and educating those who deliver risk and
vulnerability messages about how to increase their
effectiveness; and
application of risk, threat and vulnerability
assessment and vulnerability models in the creation and
evaluation of response plans.
NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE)
supports basic research, education and infrastructure in the
behavioral, cognitive, social and economic sciences, referred to
collectively as the social sciences. The Fiscal Year 2006 (FY06) budget
seeks $198.79 million for SBE, nearly $2 million over the FY05 level,
or about 4.2 percent of overall funding for NSF research. SBE accounts
for nearly half of all federal support for basic research in the social
sciences at colleges and universities, and, in some fields, such as
anthropology, SBE is the predominant or exclusive source of federal
support.
SBE comprises two research divisions: Social and Economic Sciences
(SES) and Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). Research in
economics, sociology, political science, decision-making and risk
analysis, supported by SES, has yielded theories and information that
have helped inform and improve public policy, business management, and
economic and regulatory action. Research into the psychological,
cognitive anthropological and geographic sciences, supported by BCS,
has improved understanding of human cognition, action and development,
helping scientists answer fundamental questions, including how the
human brain learns. SBE also supports the collection and dissemination
of statistics related to the science and engineering enterprise through
the Science Resources Statistics Division.
Other NSF Disaster Research
Outside of SBE, most of NSF's long-term research into natural
hazards, disasters and their mitigation takes place within the
Geosciences and Engineering Directorates. Specifically, the Engineering
Directorate funds research on the impact of natural and technological
hazards on buildings and the environment, including studies of the
mechanisms of structural failures. The Geosciences Directorate supports
research into the mechanisms that cause tornadoes, windstorms, and
hurricanes through the collection and analysis of meteorological data,
including wind speeds and storm surge. Like SBE, the Engineering and
the Geosciences Directorates use SGER grants to fund research in the
immediate aftermath of disasters.
NSF also funds research into Human and Social Dynamics, an NSF-wide
priority area which supports research on human actions and development
as well as on organizational, cultural, and societal adaptation.
Although responsibility for Human and Social Dynamics priority area,
and the bulk of the $40 million in funding, comes from SBE, other NSF
Directorates contribute support and expertise to the research on how
humans and societies understand and cope with change, including natural
hazards and disasters.
Other Federal Support for the Social Sciences
Outside of NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the
Department of Defense (DOD) provide the bulk of federal funding for
social science research. At NIH, behavioral and social science research
is integrated into most NIH institutes and centers, with the largest
amounts of funding being used to study the impact of behavior and
society on diseases and illnesses such as drug abuse, mental health,
cancer, and alcohol abuse. Now that budget increases are more modest,
most of this research is associated with a specific disease and more
projects are becoming clinical or applied in nature. The National
Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) has developed a research program to
assess the mental health impact of the World Trade Center and Pentagon
attacks, it has convened a major national workshop on mental health
needs in disaster response and it is currently exploring additional
behavioral/mental health research aimed at the treatment of trauma in
individuals and communication during public health crises and other
traumatic events.
At DOD, the social and behavioral sciences fund research in the
broad categories of personnel training, leadership development, war-
fighter sustainment and physical performance, and systems interfaces
and cognitive processing. This research is typically more applied and
more specific to DOD's mission. Similarly, federal support for social
science research closely tied to their missions also comes from the
Departments of Agriculture and Justice.
A new source of funding for basic social science research related
to natural hazards and disasters is emerging at the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). In January 2005, DHS established a Center of
Excellence for Behavioral and Social Research on Terrorism and Counter-
Terrorism at the University of Maryland. The $12 million, three-year
grant supports basic research in the social sciences, including studies
on the sources of, and responses to, terrorism, the psychological
impact of terrorism on society, and how to increase the American
public's preparedness, response, and resilience in the face of threat.
In addition, in 2003, DHS established the Center for Risk and Economic
Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California
to support the development and application of tools for assessing the
risks and consequences of terrorism. Also, the DHS Scholars and Fellows
Program supports the development and mentoring of the next generation
of scientists, including social scientists, as they study ways to
prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S., reduce America's
vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recovery
efforts from attacks that do occur.
6. Witness Expertise and Questions:
Susan Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the
University of South Carolina. She is also the Director of the Hazards
Research Lab, a research and training center that integrates
geographical information science with hazards analysis and management.
Dr. Cutter's primary research interests are in the area of
vulnerability science--what makes people and the places where they live
vulnerable to extreme events and how this is measured, monitored, and
assessed. In response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, Dr. Cutter led a
team of researchers who examined the use of geographical information
science techniques (e.g., geographical information systems, remote
sensing) in the World Trade Center rescue and relief efforts. Dr.
Cutter has also led post-event field studies of evacuation behavior
from the 2005 Graniteville, SC train derailment and chlorine spill, and
the geographic extent of the storm surge inundation along the
Mississippi and Alabama coastline after hurricane Katrina.
Dr. Cutter has been asked to address the following questions in her
testimony:
How do you assess local or regional vulnerability to
environmental hazards? How can differences in vulnerability and
losses be anticipated and embodied in mitigation and response
to lessen the impact on individuals and places? And what are
the limitations of risk modeling in emergency management or
response or in determining overall vulnerability?
How does the natural and built environment impact the
perception of risk and subsequent behavior?
What role do technologies, such as geographic
information systems and remote sensing, contribute to
forecasting and managing a disaster? How can lessons learned
mitigate the consequences of natural hazards and disasters?
What are the top remaining research questions in this
area?
Shirley Laska is a Professor of Environmental Sociology at the
University of New Orleans and the Director of the Center for Hazards
Assessment, Response and Technology. Dr. Laska's work has drawn
attention to the need for more sub-regional analysis of hurricane
evacuation behavior; more consideration to flood-proofing structures
for less than 100-year floods to complement more stringent protection;
more attention to considering local area drainage solutions to
repetitive flood loss rather than demolition of individual repeatedly
flooded structures; inclusion of the human/social impacts of coastal
restoration rather than only the ecological; and also improving hazard
mitigation outcomes by including community members and stakeholders as
full participants in efforts to reduce the human risk to hazards. In
November 2004, she published an article in Natural Hazards Observer
entitled ``What If Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans?''
Dr. Laska has been asked to address the following questions in her
testimony:
How do you assess local or regional vulnerability to
environmental hazards? How can differences in vulnerability and
losses be anticipated and embodied in mitigation and response
to lessen the impact on individuals and places?
What are the top remaining research questions in this
area?
How is social science research on disaster
preparedness and response being translated into practice? What
are the barriers to the implementation of research findings and
how can these barriers be overcome or removed?
H. Dan O'Hair is Professor in the Department of Communication at the
University of Oklahoma. His teaching and research interests include
organizational communication, health systems, risk communication, and
terrorism. Dr. O'Hair has published over 70 research articles and
scholarly book chapters in communication, health, management, and
psychology journals and volumes, and has authored and edited 12 books
in the areas of communication, business, and health. In 2006, Dr.
O'Hair will serve as president of the National Communication
Association, the world's largest professional association devoted to
the scholarly study of communication.
Dr. O'Hair has been asked to address the following questions in his
testimony:
How do individuals respond to warnings and other risk
communications? How important is the perception of risk--rather
than a quantitative estimate of it--in determining individual
or societal response to a natural hazard or disaster? And how
do responses vary, based on individual cultural, economic and
experiential differences?
How is risk communicated in an uncertain environment?
What role does the media play in risk communication and the
formation of public views and behavior?
What lessons have we learned from effective--and
ineffective--risk communications about natural hazards or
disasters? How are these lessons being used to improve future
risk communications?
What are the top remaining research questions in this
area?
Roxane Cohen Silver is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior at the Department of Medicine at the University of
California, Irvine. Dr. Silver is an expert in acute and long-term
psychological reactions to stressful events, ranging from the loss of a
child to war and natural disasters, and she has researched and written
extensively on the predictors of effective coping and the general theme
of individual and community resiliency. Dr. Silver recently completed a
three-year national longitudinal study of responses to the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In 2003, Dr. Silver was appointed to the
Department of Homeland Security's Academe and Policy Research Senior
Advisory Committee. More recently, she was appointed to the Department
of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Advisory Council's Weapons of
Mass Effect Prevention Task Force.
Dr. Silver has been asked to address the following questions in her
testimony:
How do individuals respond to traumatic experiences,
such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters? Are there
common misperceptions about the coping process and its outcome?
Is misinformation about response to a traumatic experience a
problem in terms of managing a natural hazard or disaster?
What explains the variability in response to a
traumatic experience by individuals and by communities?
What lessons have we learned about individual and
community resiliency following a trauma? And how are these
lessons being used to design effective interventions for
response and recovery?
What are the top remaining research questions in this
area?
Chairman Inglis. Good morning. I would like to call this
meeting of the Research Subcommittee to order, and I appreciate
the presence of our witnesses this morning, and have an opening
statement.
Today's hearing on The Role of Social Science Research in
Disaster Preparedness and Response is one that we undertake
even as we are beginning to understand the physical and
emotional consequences of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
From the 2001 terrorist attacks to the 2004 Asian tsunami,
to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and now, to the devastating
earthquake in Kashmir, we have been inundated with natural
disasters and other events recently. Even as this nation comes
to terms with the human and economic toll of these events, we
continue to face the threat of terrorism, and inevitable other
natural disasters that will come our way, as well as potential
pandemics like the avian flu.
This committee has heard from experts who can forecast the
paths of hurricanes with great accuracy, monitor fault lines to
determine potential danger from earthquakes, and identify
potential cyberinfrastructure vulnerabilities. It is reassuring
to know that science and technology can and have aided our
ability to predict and manage natural hazards and disasters. To
effectively plan for, mitigate against, and respond to natural
hazards and disasters, we may also benefit from a better
understanding of human behavior, and how that behavior can turn
a localized hazard into a full-blown catastrophe.
This hearing will focus on the social, behavioral, and
economic aspects of disaster planning. Among other things, our
witnesses will discuss how the social sciences assess the
vulnerability of a group or region, how individuals perceive
and respond to risk and disaster warnings, and how disasters
impact individuals and groups. I hope this hearing will
contribute to a better understanding of the social and
psychological impacts of a disaster, the complexities of
disaster response and relief, and the issues that affect the
physical, social, and economic recovery of individuals and
communities in general.
Mark Twain once said that everyone talks about the weather,
but nobody does anything about it. Well, we will be talking
about the weather a bit today, and educating ourselves on what
the social sciences have to offer on these difficult problems
we face, and how these lessons, especially about the weather
and other extreme events, can help us plan and prepare for
additional, more complex hazards and disasters.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Inglis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Bob Inglis
Good morning. Today's hearing on ``The Role of Social Science
Research in Disaster Preparedness and Response'' is one that we
undertake even as we are only beginning to understand the physical and
emotional consequences of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
From the 2001 terrorist attacks, to the 2004 Asian tsunami, to
hurricanes Katrina and Rita and now to the devastating earthquake in
Kashmir, we have been inundated with natural hazards and other
disasters recently. Even as this nation comes to terms with the human
and economic toll of these events, we continue to face the threat of
terrorism and inevitable other natural disasters, as well as new
threats, such as Avian Flu.
This committee has heard from experts who can forecast the path of
hurricanes with accuracy, monitor fault lines to determine potential
danger from earthquakes, and identify potential cyber infrastructure
vulnerabilities. It's reassuring to know that science and technology
can and have aided our ability to predict and manage natural hazards
and disasters. To effectively plan for, mitigate against, and respond
to natural hazards and disasters, we may also benefit from a better
understanding of human behavior--and how that behavior can turn a
localized hazard into a catastrophe.
This hearing will focus on the social, behavior and economic
aspects of disaster planning. Among other things, our witnesses will
discuss how the social sciences assess the vulnerability of a group or
region, how individuals perceive and respond to risk and disaster
warnings, and how disasters impact individuals and groups.
I hope this hearing will contribute to a better understanding of
the social and psychological impacts of a disaster, the complexities of
disaster response and relief, and the issues that affect the physical,
social and economic recovery of individuals and communities in general.
Mark Twain once said, ``Everyone talks about the weather but nobody
does anything about it.'' We'll be ``talking about the weather'' a bit
today and educating ourselves on what the social sciences have to offer
on the difficult problems we face--and how these lessons, especially
about the weather and other extreme events, can help us plan and
prepare for additional, more complex hazards and disasters.
With that, I'd like to welcome the witnesses who have joined us
today, and I would turn to the senior Democratic Member, Ms. Hooley,
for any opening statement she may wish to make.
Chairman Inglis. With that, I would like to welcome the
witnesses who have joined us today, and I would turn to our
Ranking Member, Ms. Hooley, for any opening statement she may
wish to offer.
Ms. Hooley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to join you in welcoming our witnesses today
to this hearing on the role of social and behavioral sciences,
and understanding how better to prepare for, respond to, and
recover from natural and manmade disasters. The events of the
past year bring the importance of this subject sharply into
focus.
Greater attention to coping with disasters is prudent when
one considers the increased vulnerability of the Nation to
larger disasters associated with growing population
concentrated in hazardous coastal zones and earthquake-prone
regions, such as Oregon. And in addition to natural hazards,
including the threat of avian flu pandemic, we now have the
ever-present specter of terrorist attacks. We need to develop
the knowledgebase about the nature of risks, what can be done
to mitigate them, and how relevant stakeholders can apply that
knowledge effectively.
Social science research has a long history of contributing
to our understanding of the factors and influencing the way
individuals, communities, and organizations respond to
disasters. The focus of research has broadened over time to
tackle various aspects spanning the entire hazard cycle, from
pre-disaster mitigation through preparedness, response, and
recovery.
But in addition to research aimed at increasing
understanding, attention must be directed and appropriate
processes put in place to ensure that this increased
understanding is acted upon by individuals and organizations.
The main goal of reducing human suffering and physical damage
is linked to the degree of success that is achieved in applying
research results.
Today, I hope to hear from our panel of experts about the
important research that has been done in the social and
behavioral sciences, and the research opportunities that are
being pursued. I am also interested in the state of health of
the research community that studies disasters, and whether or
not important research issues are not being adequately
addressed because of funding shortfalls or faulty priorities.
But equally important, I am very interested in your
experiences and thoughts on how research is translated into
practice. My question would be what is working and what isn't
working? Are there impediments to applying the findings from
social and behavioral sciences to disaster planning, recovery
and response activities of the responsible public and private
sector organizations?
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this hearing,
and I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before the
Subcommittee today, and I look forward to our discussion.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hooley follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Darlene Hooley
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join you in welcoming our witnesses
today to this hearing on the role of the social and behavioral sciences
in understanding how better to prepare for, respond to, and recover
from natural and man-made disasters. The events of the past year bring
the importance of this subject sharply into focus.
Greater attention to coping with disasters is prudent when one
considers the increased vulnerability of the Nation to larger disasters
associated with a growing population concentrated in hazardous coastal
zones and earthquake prone regions--such as Oregon. And, in addition to
natural hazards, including the threat of an Avian flu pandemic, we now
have the ever-present specter of terrorist attack.
We certainly need to develop the knowledge base about the nature of
risks; what can be done to mitigate them; and how relevant stakeholders
can apply that knowledge effectively.
Social science research has a long history of contributing to our
understanding of the factors that influence the way individuals,
communities, and organizations respond to disasters. The focus of
research has broadened over time to tackle various aspects spanning the
entire hazards cycle, from pre-disaster mitigation through
preparedness, response and recovery.
But in addition to research aimed at increasing understanding,
attention must be directed and appropriate processes put in place to
ensure that this increased understanding is acted upon by individuals
and organizations. The main goal of reducing human suffering and
physical damage is linked to the degree success is achieved in applying
research results.
Therefore, today I hope to hear from our panel of experts about the
important research that has been done in the social and behavioral
sciences and the research opportunities that are being pursued. I am
also interested in the state of health of the research community that
studies disasters and in whether there are important research issues
that are not being adequately addressed because of funding shortfalls
or faulty priorities.
But equally important, I am very interested in your experiences and
thoughts on how research is translated into practice. My questions
would be: What is working, and what isn't working? Are there
impediments to applying the findings from the social and behavioral
sciences to the disaster planning, recovery, and response activities of
the responsible public and private sector organizations?
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this hearing and
thank our witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee today. I look
forward to our discussion.
Chairman Inglis. And we thank you, Ms. Hooley. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
As the third-ranking Democrat on the Full Committee and former
Ranking Member of the Research Subcommittee, I am pleased to see the
Committee's interest in a variety of research sub-specialties,
including the social sciences.
We as a nation are limited in disaster preparedness planning unless
we can better understand human behavior, particularly in emergency
situations.
The National Science Foundation accounts for nearly half of the
federal investment in basic social sciences research at colleges and
universities. Although NSF will receive an increase in research funding
for next year, the NSF budget it not nearly where it needs to be.
It is my hope that today's hearing will uncover how great the needs
are for social sciences research funding. I am also interested to know
how Congress can facilitate better connections between researchers and
emergency planners and responders.
I would like to extend a warm welcome to today's witnesses and
voice my support for increased federal funding for NSF and for social
sciences research.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carnahan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Russ Carnahan
Chairman Inglis and Ranking Member Hooley, thank you once again for
hosting this hearing. Dr. Cutter, Dr. Silver, Dr. O'Hair and Dr. Laska,
thank you for taking the time and effort to appear before us today and
share your views on the important issue of disaster preparedness and
response.
Over the past years, we have become all too familiar with the
ramifications of disaster, both man-made and natural. Most recently,
this committee has considered the issue as it relates to the World
Trade Center collapse and hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
I represent a congressional district in St. Louis City that runs
south along the Mississippi river. Our region is near the New Madrid
earthquake center, which struck the area from 1811 to 1812. These
sequences are the most powerful earthquakes ever to have been felt on
the North American continent. The New Madrid Fault System remains a
threat to our region, and thus, I am eager to learn more about the
social science implications of a possible earthquake and how our
community can best plan, respond and recover from an earthquake should
it occur.
Thank you for your time today. I look forward to hearing your
testimony.
Chairman Inglis. At this point, I will happily introduce
our witnesses. From my left over here, Dr. Susan Cutter, is a
Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina, and
the Director of the Hazards Research Laboratory. Dr. Shirley
Laska is a Professor of Environmental Sociology and Director of
the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at
the University of New Orleans. I am going to skip over Dr.
O'Hair just a second. And then next to him, Dr. Roxane Silver
is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social
Behavior and the Department of Medicine at the University of
California, Irvine.
And I would recognize our colleague from Oklahoma, Mr.
Lucas, to recognize, or to introduce to us Dr. O'Hair.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate you
extending me this courtesy.
And I am proud to introduce one of my fellow Oklahomans.
Although my district includes Oklahoma State University, which
is my alma mater, I think all of my fellow third District
citizens are always pleased, and my fellow OSU-ites, to work
with our friends from Norman, and I am particularly pleased to
have him testify before our subcommittee today.
Dr. H. Dan O'Hair is a Professor of Communications at the
University of Oklahoma. His teaching and research interests
include organizational communications, health systems, risk
communication, terrorism. He has published over 70 research
articles and scholarly book chapters in communication, health
management, and psychology journals and volumes, and has
authored and edited 12 books in the areas of communications,
business, and health. And in 2006, Dr. O'Hair will serve as the
President of the National Communications Association, the
world's largest professional association devoted to the
scholarly study of communication.
And I am very pleased to have one of my fellow Oklahomans
here today. And once again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the
courtesy.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. We are now going to
call on our witnesses. I would point out to you that when the
light is green, keep going. It is just like driving, you know.
When it is yellow, you have to squeeze the orange and get
through the light before it turns red. That way, we will get
all the way through, if you are finished by the red comes, by
the time the red comes.
So, thank you for being here. Dr. Cutter.
STATEMENT OF DR. SUSAN L. CUTTER, CAROLINA DISTINGUISHED
PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR, HAZARDS RESEARCH LAB, UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTH CAROLINA
Dr. Cutter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The American hazardscape stretches from border to border
and from coast to coast, and there are very few places in the
country that are truly devoid of any type of hazard, either
from natural, technological, or human-induced sources.
Vulnerability science is an emergent multi-disciplinary
field that helps us to address these questions of this hearing
today. What I would like to do this morning is to provide you
with three examples of social science contributions to our
understanding of vulnerability science, and then make a few
remarks on how we can move the Nation forward. Next slide.
The first example is the improvement in the metrics,
models, and methods for social vulnerability assessments. Our
disaster field research tells us that there are pre-existing
conditions that make certain social groups--the poor, the
elderly, non-English speaking residents--more vulnerable to and
slower to recover from disasters. And these findings are
consistent, irrespective of the disaster agent involved.
Social scientists at the University of South Carolina have
developed a quantitative method for assessing social
vulnerability that permits geographic comparisons over time at
the county level, as you see here. This social vulnerability
index tells us where the most socially vulnerable populations
reside, and more importantly, where additional response and
recovery resources may be needed before, during, and after an
event occurs. Next slide.
[Slide]
The second example is in the area of integrated hazard
assessment methodology. Under the Disaster Mitigation Act of
2000, all State and local entities must have approved
mitigation plans, and these plans must be based on empirically
derived hazard vulnerability assessments. In 1997, we developed
a GIS-based hazard assessment methodology that is now the
standard for South Carolina, and widely used elsewhere. As you
see from this slide, the method enables us to look at the
geographic variations in the hazards themselves, the map with
mostly pink, and the social vulnerability of residents, which
is the map mostly in red. When you put them together, it is
easy to see those areas that have the highest levels of
vulnerability, but more importantly, the GIS-based approach
enables us to see what is contributing to it, social or
physical factors. If all counties in the Nation had this level
of detail in their hazard vulnerability assessments, preparing
for and mitigating disasters would be reflective of the true
risk and vulnerability in a community. Next slide.
[Slide]
The third example is in the area of warnings and evacuation
behavior. Social science research tells us that people evacuate
as family units; evacuees seek shelter with other family
members, friends, or in hotels; public shelters are used only
if there is no alternative; people often won't evacuate because
of pets; and many residents over-respond to evacuation orders,
using distance as a way of mitigating the threat. For example,
during the January 2005 train derailment and chlorine release
in Graniteville, South Carolina, residents within a one mile
zone were told to evacuate, and nearly everyone complied.
However, and if you look at this slide, the second buffer, 59
percent of the residents who lived in this one to two mile zone
also evacuated, placing additional burdens on response
resources, a phenomenon that we call the evacuation shadow.
Hurricane Rita, an estimated 400,000 people in the mandatory
evacuation zone, yet more than 2.4 million took to the roadways
in advance of the storm, producing a very large evacuation
shadow. Next slide.
[Slide]
The good news is that the social sciences have produced the
basic theory and models for understanding social and behavioral
responses to disasters, and have demonstrated their application
to disaster preparedness and response. The second assessment of
disaster research, funded by the National Science Foundation
and published by the National Academy, is evidence of this
success, yet the state of the art social science is often not
translated into practice, and the Nation must relearn lessons
time and time again.
There are some exceptions. With support from the NSF, the
Association of American Geographers developed a research
strategy and action agenda for the community in understanding
the complex issues of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11, and
the establishment of the DHS Center on Social and Behavioral
Responses to Terrorism is one tangible outcome of this action
agenda. Next slide.
[Slide]
The bad news is we still don't know how much disasters cost
this Nation on an annual basis, nor where these losses are
occurring. How can we monitor the progress of disaster
reduction and mitigation programs when we don't have any
systematic baseline data? With support from NSF, we now have
the beginnings of such a dataset, called the Spatial Hazard
Event and Losses Dataset for the U.S., which includes 18
different natural hazard events, and their losses by county for
the whole U.S. from the period 1960 to the present. As you can
see here, these losses are quite variable from year to year,
but they do show an overall increasing trend, and these losses
are mainly causes by weather-related events. Next slide.
[Slide]
The geographic pattern is even more telling.
With additional investments in the social sciences,
significant improvements in disaster preparedness and response
are achievable. Next slide.
[Slide]
While these recommendations have been made before, little
has been done to implement them, and they are worth repeating.
Create a national inventory on hazard events and losses;
establish a national center for vulnerability science; reduce
the preparedness divide; bring social science findings to
practitioners; and increase our support of rapid response
research to secure critical social science and geospatial data
and information in disasters.
The hurricane Katrina crisis was precipitated by a physical
event, but it was the failure of social and political systems
that turned the natural disaster into a human catastrophe. As a
nation, we need to understand the human decisions and
organizational failures that contributed to this disaster, so
it won't happen again. This is what makes social science so
important and so relevant.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cutter follows:]
Prepared Statement of Susan L. Cutter
The Role of Vulnerability Science in Disaster Preparedness and Response
The American hazardscape stretches from border to border and from
coast to coast. There are few, if any, places in the county that are
truly devoid of any type of hazard--either from natural, technological,
or human-induced sources. Some places are more hazard-prone than
others, and some may experience more events or disasters than others,
but they all contribute to the Nation's landscape of hazards. My
discipline, geography, has more than a half-century of research
expertise and practice in examining responses to environmental hazards.
Starting with Gilbert White's floodplain studies in the 1940s and
continuing today, geographers have provided the scientific basis for
disaster and hazard reduction policies and contributed to the Nation's
understanding of the regional variability in hazardousness.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ G.F. White, 1945. Human Adjustment to Floods. A Geographical
Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States. Chicago: University
of Chicago, Department of Geography Research Paper No. 29; Interagency
Floodplain Management Review Committee, 1994. Sharing the Challenge:
Floodplain Management into the 21st Century. Washington D.C.:
Government Printing Office (also known as the Galloway Report).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The question posed for today's hearing, what makes people and
places vulnerable to natural hazards and disasters, requires first, an
understanding of the circumstances that place people and localities at
risk, and second and perhaps more importantly from the social science
perspective, an understanding of the circumstances that enhance or
reduce the ability of people and places to adequately respond to such
threats. These circumstances range from the individual characteristics
of people or buildings to global-scale processes such as climate change
or economic globalization.
Vulnerability science is an emergent multi-disciplinary field that
helps us to address those questions. It requires a place-based
understanding of the interactions between natural systems, the built
environment, and human systems. What I would like to do this morning is
to provide you with three examples of social science contributions to
our understanding of vulnerability science, largely drawn from the
geographical sciences and then make a few remarks on how we can move
the Nation forward.
The first example is the improvement in the metrics, models, and
methods for social vulnerability assessments. Our disaster field
research tells us that there are certain pre-existing conditions that
make certain social groups--the poor, the elderly, women, non-English
speaking residents--more vulnerable to and slower to recover from
disasters. And, these findings are consistent irrespective of the
disaster agent involved (e.g., earthquakes, floods, hurricanes).\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See W.G. Peacock , B.H. Morrow and H. Gladwin (eds.), 2000.
Hurricane Andrew and the Reshaping of Miami: Ethnicity, Gender, and the
Socio-Political Ecology of Disasters. Miami: Florida International
University, International Hurricane Center; E. Enarson and B.H. Morrow
(eds.), 1998. The Gendered Terrain of Disasters: Through Women's Eyes.
Westport, CT: Praeger; R. Bolin and L. Stanford, 1991. The Northridge
Earthquake: Vulnerability and Disaster. London: Routledge; The Heinz
Center, 2002. Human Links to Coastal Disasters. Washington D.C.: The H.
John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. Susan
L. Cutter, 2005. ``The Geography of Social Vulnerability: Race, Class,
and Catastrophe,'' Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social
Sciences, Social Science Research Council, http://
understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Cutter/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Social scientists at the University of South Carolina have
developed a quantitative method for assessing social vulnerability that
permits geographic comparisons over time at the county level (Figure
1). As a comparative measure, the social vulnerability index (SOVI)
tells us where the most socially vulnerable populations reside.\3\ As a
predictive measure, the social vulnerability index can help State and
local officials determine where additional response and recovery
resources may be needed before, during, and after the natural event
occurs. This empirically based model of social vulnerability
illustrates the disparities in social vulnerability and graphically
delineates those areas where extra preparedness will be needed given
the greater social vulnerability of the residents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ S.L. Cutter, B.J. Boruff, and W.L. Shirley, 2003. ``Social
Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards,'' Social Science Quarterly 84
(1):242-261.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The second example where social science has made significant
contributions to disaster preparedness is in the area of integrated
hazards assessment methodology. Under the Disaster Mitigation Act, 2000
all State and local entities must have approved mitigation plans in
order to retain eligibility for disaster relief funding under the
Stafford Act. These mitigation plans must be based on empirically
derived hazard vulnerability assessments. In 1997, working in
conjunction with the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, the
Hazards Research Lab first developed a GIS-based hazard assessment
methodology that is now the standard for the state (Figure 2), and
widely used elsewhere.\4\ The method enables us to look at the
geographic variations in the hazards themselves, but also the social
vulnerability of residents. When put together, it is easy to discern
those areas that have the highest levels of vulnerability, but more
importantly, the GIS-based approach enables us to see what is
contributing to it--social or physical factors. If all counties in the
Nation had this level of detail in their hazard vulnerability
assessments, preparing for and mitigation disasters would be reflective
of risk and vulnerability in a community.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ S.L. Cutter, J.T. Mitchell, and M.S. Scott, 2000. ``Revealing
the Vulnerability of People and Places: A Case Study of Georgetown
County, South Carolina,'' Annals of the AAG 90 (4): 713-737; Also see
http://www.cas.sc.edu/geog/hrl/products.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In another example, the Hazard Research Lab has just returned from
coastal Mississippi where we were mapping the geographic extent of
hurricane Katrina storm surge inundation in order to compare it to the
SLOSH model and to the social vulnerability of residents. We were
primarily interested in where the physical impacts were the greatest,
where the most socially vulnerable populations resided, and where these
areas overlap, for it is in these areas that residents will face
significant challenges in the longer-term recovery from the disaster.
The third example of social science contributions is in the area of
warnings and evacuation behavior. Social science research tells us a
number of things about evacuation behavior: people evacuate as family
units; most evacuees seek shelter with other family members, friends,
or in hotels; public shelters are the least preferred option and are
only used if there is no other alternative; many people won't evacuate
because they cannot bring their pets with them, and finally, many
residents use distance to mediate the threat. This latter point is
important as it influences and compounds the management of evacuations
at the local level. For example, during the January 2005 train
derailment and chlorine release in Graniteville, South Carolina,
residents within a one-mile zone were told to evacuate. Nearly all
residents complied with the order. However, our research demonstrated
that 59 percent of the residents in a 1-2 mile zone (outside the
mandated evacuation area) also evacuated, placing additional logistical
and support burdens on response resources, a phenomenon known as an
evacuation shadow (Figure 3).\5\ These evacuation shadows are common,
and if not considered in preparedness planning, they have the potential
to overwhelm the local emergency response system. During hurricane
Rita, an estimated 400,000 people lived in the mandatory evacuation
zone yet more than 2.4 million took to the roadways in advance of the
storm, producing a very large evacuation shadow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ For a copy of the Graniteville report see http://
www.cas.sc.edu/geog/hrl/projects.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The increasing technological sophistication of the spatial social
sciences, especially those that incorporate GIS and remote sensing also
have enhanced preparedness and response activities, especially in
evacuation. Decision support systems produced by social scientists are
used in Texas to assist public officials in making evacuation
decisions.\6\ Social scientists at the University of South Carolina
have developed a spatial decision support system for State emergency
managers to enable them to rapidly identify remote sensing assets and
geo-spatial data that can be used during emergencies,\7\ while social
scientists at the University of Utah have developed spatial decision
support systems to aid in wildfire evacuation decision-making by local
officials, to name but a few examples.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ The Evacuation Management Decision Support System (EMDSS) was
created by social scientists at Texas A&M's Hazard Reduction and
Recovery Center with support from NSF.
\7\ The Remote Sensing Hazards Guidance System was developed by
Michael E. Hodgson at the University of South Carolina with support
from NASA. See http://www.rshgs.sc.edu/ for more details.
\8\ Tom Cova (University of Utah) with support from NSF, developed
a GIS-based animation of the 2003 Southern California wildfires
evacuations that highlights the spread of the wildfires and the
implementation of evacuation orders (http://www.geog.utah.edu/?cova/
evac50sd.swf).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good News
The social sciences have produced the basic theory and models for
understanding the social and behavioral responses to disasters and have
demonstrated their application to disaster preparedness and response.
Social science research has assisted in the Nation's understanding of
the root causes of disasters. We are better able to understand the
disparities in vulnerability and how they lead to differential
preparedness and response as a consequence of social science work on
social vulnerability. The increasing use of geo-referenced data
management systems, especially as the scale of impacts increase, has
helped to enhance response and recovery efforts. Yet, state-of-the-art
social science is often not translated into practice and the Nation
must relearn lessons derived from social science time and time again.
In response to terrorist attack of 9-11, the Association of
American Geographers with support from NSF developed a research
strategy and action agenda in order to harness the considerable
expertise of the geographical community in understanding the complex
issues of terrorism.\9\ This social science research and action agenda
was designed to address important public policy concerns and to
identify critical research needs in three areas: regional and
international research related to the root causes of terrorism;
vulnerability science and hazards research; and geo-spatial data and
technologies infrastructure research. The Department of Homeland
Security's National Center on Social and Behavioral Aspects of
Terrorism, the START Consortium is one outcome from this call for
action from the social science community.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ S.L. Cutter, D.B. Richardson, and T.J. Wilbanks (eds.), 2003.
The Geographical Dimensions of Terrorism. New York and London:
Routledge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bad News
Despite our lengthy national experience with natural disasters, we
still do not know how much disasters cost this nation on an annual
basis, nor where those losses are occurring. How can we monitor the
progress of disaster reduction and mitigation programs when we don't
have any systematic baseline data on hazard events or the losses they
produce? How can the effectiveness of public policies designed to
reduce losses be evaluated when such fundamental data are unavailable?
With support from the National Science Foundation, we now have the
beginnings of such a national dataset, the Spatial Hazards Events and
Losses Dataset for the U.S. (SHELDUS), which includes natural hazard
events and losses for 18 different natural hazards for the entire
country from 1960 to the present. As can be seen in Figure 4, losses
are quite variable from year to year but show an overall increasing
trend. These losses are mainly caused by weather-related events. The
geographic pattern, shown here in Figure 5, is illuminating as well,
with most of the losses in the Pacific Coast and Gulf Coast states
including Florida, the Southeast, Iowa and the Northern Great Plains,
and in the Northeast.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ See S.L. Cutter and C. Emrich, 2005. ``Are Natural Hazards and
Disaster Losses in the U.S. Increasing?,'' EOS, Transactions of the
American Geophysical Union, 86(41), October 11, 2005, pp. 381, 388-89.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wish List
With additional investments in the social sciences, significant
improvements in disaster preparedness and response are achievable.
While the following recommendations have been made before, little has
been done to implement them, thus they bear worth repeating. First, we
need to create a national inventory or baseline on hazard events and
losses housed in a social-science based National Clearinghouse with a
mandate for an annual ``State of Disaster'' report on the Nation's
progress in achieving disaster resilient communities.\11\ Second, we
need to establish a multi-disciplinary national center (similar in
scope to NSF's Science and Technology Centers or Earthquake Engineering
Research Centers) to focus on vulnerability science, an effort that
will help us develop and improve the data, methods, and models for
understanding vulnerability and more importantly, developing tools and
strategies for improving our resiliency to future disasters.\12\ Third,
we need to bring our social science to practitioners by providing a
tool-box of data and procedures for local communities. Not only will
this reduce the preparedness divide, but it will also create a more
uniform baseline across the Nation especially with place-based
vulnerability assessments.\13\ Lastly, we need to increase our support
of rapid response research to secure critical social science and geo-
spatial data and information in disasters. While the mechanisms are in
place to activate such Quick Response research grants such as those at
the Natural Hazards Center or through NSF's Small Grants for
Exploratory Research, the funding levels are insufficient.\14\ In an
extraordinary example of recognizing the critical need to support such
rapid response data collection, the University of South Carolina
contributed $400,000 of its own money to support 18 research teams to
gather perishable data in Katrina's aftermath.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ D.S. Mileti, 1999. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of
Natural Hazards in the United States. Washington D.C.: The National
Academy of Sciences/Joseph Henry Press; S.L. Cutter (ed.), 2001.
American Hazardscapes: The Regionalization of Hazards and Disasters.
Washington D.C.: The National Academy of Sciences/Joseph Henry Press.
\12\ See footnote 9, Cutter in footnote 11.
\13\ See footnote 9.
\14\ For example, the Natural Hazards Center activated 25 Quick
Response Grants in response to hurricane Katrina (http://
www.colorado.edu/hazards/qr/katrina.html), but these grants are
normally less than $2,000 each. The NSF made 49 SGER awards, 14 of them
to social scientists (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/).
\15\ Half of the awards are for social science related topics. See
http://uscnews.sc.edu/rsrc223b.html for the press release.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hurricane Katrina crisis was precipitated by a physical event,
but it was the failure of social and political systems that turned the
natural disaster into a human catastrophe. As a nation, we need to
understand the human decisions and organizational failures that
contributed to this disaster so it won't happen again. We need an
independent review of the local, State, and federal responses to
hurricane Katrina so we can learn the lessons of what went right and
what went wrong in the response and use these to improve our
preparedness and responses to future disasters. The social science
disaster research community is ready and willing to step up to this
challenge and participate in such an independent review. Are you
willing to authorize one?
Biography for Susan L. Cutter
Dr. Susan Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography
at the University of South Carolina. She is also the Director of the
Hazards Research Lab, a research and training center that integrates
geographical information science with hazards analysis and management.
She received her B.A. from California State University, Hayward and her
M.A. and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of Chicago. Dr. Cutter has
been working in the risk and hazards fields for more than twenty-five
years and is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in
this field. Her primary research interests are in the area of
vulnerability science--what makes people and the places where they live
vulnerable to extreme events and how this is measured, monitored, and
assessed. She has authored or edited twelve books and more than 85
peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
She was the co-principal investigator on a National Science
Foundation award to the Association of American Geographers to bring
the Nation's geographic resources to bear on this important national
and international priority. This agenda and supporting documents were
published as The Geographical Dimensions of Terrorism, edited by S.L.
Cutter, D. Richardson, and T. Wilbanks (editors) in 2003. She is a co-
principal investigator and member of the Executive Committee of the
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism (START)(a Department of Homeland Security Center of
Excellence focused on the social and behavioral sciences).
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, Dr. Cutter led a team of
researchers who examined the use of geographical information science
techniques (e.g., geographical information systems, remote sensing) in
the World Trade Center rescue and relief efforts. Dr. Cutter has also
led post-event field studies of evacuation behavior from the 2005
Graniteville, SC train derailment and chlorine spill, and the
geographic extent of the storm surge inundation along the Mississippi
and Alabama coastline after the 2005 hurricane Katrina.
In 1999, Dr. Cutter was elected as a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a testimonial to her
research accomplishments in the field. Her stature within the
discipline of geography was recognized by her election as President of
the Association of American Geographers in 1999-2000. She serves on
many national advisory boards and committees including those of
National Research Council, the AAAS, the National Science Foundation,
the Natural Hazards Center, and the H. John Heinz III Center for
Science, Economics, and the Environment.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Dr. Cutter. Dr. Laska.
STATEMENT OF DR. SHIRLEY LASKA, PROFESSOR, ENVIRONMENTAL
SOCIOLOGY, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR HAZARDS ASSESSMENT, RESPONSE
AND TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS
Dr. Laska. Thank you very much for permitting me to present
my testimony today.
My responsibilities at the University of New Orleans
include directing an applied social science research center
focused on assisting coastal Louisiana communities in
developing resiliency to natural disasters. I have spent the
last 20 years involved in conducting research on natural
disasters and the relationship between society and the
environment.
CHART, the UNO project I represent, was developed
specifically to apply social science research to natural
threats. As a means of answering the questions posed to me by
your staff, I will describe three CHART projects, one in each
of the three Congressional districts that comprise southeast
Louisiana. These three examples show how social sciences can
partner with communities to understand risk, increase safety,
and facilitate recovery from environmental hazards, including
catastrophic events, such as Katrina and Rita. I will limit my
oral comments to these three examples, because I think this is
the unique contribution that I can make as a panel member, and
will end with brief final thoughts about the need for funding
and recognition of social science research. I apologize for not
having a PowerPoint. We live with PowerPoint, but my office is
sealed from entry because of the damage and the mold, and
therefore, I was not able to do one.
The first project is in Congressman Jindal's district. FEMA
has a program called repetitive flood loss. We have been asked
by FEMA to maintain the files of the repeatedly flooded
residential structures within the most flooded parishes within
Louisiana, and to work with local officials and residents to
assist them in using the data to reduce flood risks to their
homes and their areas. The logic for the project is that social
science research argues for having agency assistance that is
locally situated, able to be involved over a significant period
of time, and able to develop ongoing working relationships with
community officials.
In addition, the project has expanded to demonstrate that
the repeatedly flooded structures are found in clusters, due to
sub-basin watershed problems. If the solutions to the repeated
flooding of individual structures can be addressed in local
areas, rather than for each individual home, then the integrity
of the communities is maintained, and there is cost efficiency
in the process. Urban sociology recognizes that neighborhoods
are vulnerable to decline if vacant lots are created and not
maintained, and the communities themselves become vulnerable
without the tax base previously supported by those structures.
Considering approaching repetitive loss in a watershed
manner, rather than by mitigating each individual structure, is
new to FEMA. It is a neighborhood community response rather
than an individual one. This project takes a community
sociology approach supported by GIS, floodplain planners, civil
engineers, and public administration specialists. Needless to
say, the data in this project, and the public portal developed
for it, are being used as we meet to support the long-term
recovery of the New Orleans area from hurricane Katrina.
While the repetitive flood loss project provided FEMA with
a different lens to view the problem of repeatedly occurring
flooded, the second project illustrates how scientific
knowledge can be linked to the knowledge of the community. The
second project is in Congressman Melancon's district. The
National Science Foundation provided support for CHART to test
a method of enhancing the capacity of marginalized communities
to handle natural hazards, and this process is called the
Participatory Action Research. This is a process of
collaboration among academics, practitioners, and community
residents to support improving capacity and resiliency of
communities that are at risk.
The community with which the project researches are
collaborating is a Native American community, Grand Bayou, that
lives within the marsh outside of the levied area, and has done
so for at least a century. During hurricanes, they lash their
boats together in the lee of low lying ridges to protect
themselves and their valuables. Because coastal subsidence has
so reduced the elevation of the land, a group of the residents
selected a canal next to a landfill hill to shelter for
Katrina, because it was the highest protection they could find.
Today, they are still living on the boats while seeking FEMA
assistance.
The sociological findings beneficial to this project are
the recognition that pre-disaster discrimination, be it
economic, educational, or social, will exacerbate the impact of
a disaster on a community. Sociological research also indicates
that enhancing the capacity of a community to take
responsibility, in partnership with government officials, for
its own hazard and disaster planning, reduces vulnerability and
contributes to a resiliency when future disasters occur.
Just last Saturday, I joined the community when they met
with FEMA representatives to talk about how they might be able
to place their FEMA trailers at their community center rather
than to have to relocate a distance from their homes and boats.
The way in which the community was negotiating their fate and
expressing their needs in a forceful, informed manner, is a
demonstration of their capacity that hopefully has been
assisted in a small way by the Participatory Action Research
process. The challenge to the community is the time that is
required by it to overcome marginality. The challenge to the
applied social scientist is to know what research indicates,
and to find ways to implement it to the betterment of the
community. Even though the Grand Bayou community is small, the
partnership with a group of social and physical scientists
strengthened their own capacity, and also provide new insights
for application to other rural coastal communities.
The project in Grand Bayou shows the universal in the
particular. The third project shows how traditional social
science survey data can be transformed into building
partnership with parish and state government, and empowering
public officials. The third project encompasses all three of
the Congressmen's districts, those of Melancon, Jindal, and
Jefferson. It was a citizen hurricane evacuation behavior
survey with a large enough sample to be confident of the
applicability to each of the 12 southeast Louisiana parishes.
The survey was accomplished by partnering with the parish and
county emergency managers to create the survey instrument so
that the information needs of their jurisdictions would be
supported. They were included in every step of the data
collection, and were the sponsors and conveners of the workshop
where the data collectively presented and discussed.
Six weeks before Katrina struck, the data were also shared
with the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and the
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, the
latter group taking the lead on developing the hurricane
traffic contra flow program. They used the findings to develop
their evacuation campaign, and it was deemed a big success; 80
percent of the population who had automobiles and were able to
do so evacuated.
The use of existing social science disaster research for
this project is very evident. Dr. Susan Howell, Director of the
University of New Orleans Survey Research Center, first drew
upon the evacuation literature to develop the preliminary
questions about evacuation, and prepared a draft instrument for
review and modification by the emergency managers. With each
parish's participation, there were improvements to the
instrument, and unique questions that yielded evacuation
information needed by specific parishes. Partnering with basic
researchers, through their findings and phrasing of questions,
along with the practitioners on the ground, resulted in a
product and process with the most benefit. The emergency
managers took ownership of the findings and trusted that they
represented their residents' evacuation attitudes.
The rest of my written testimony reviews the importance of
respecting and funding both applied social science research,
such as I have described, and also, the basic research on which
it stands. The benefits of the work CHART does are woefully
incremental, because of the lack of respect by society for the
work and findings of the basic social science research.
My written testimony reviews some of the important examples
of such basic research about risks and organizational response.
It ends with a description of how the research of both the
social scientists and physical scientists went unheeded, as we
predicted again and again the pending occurrence of a
catastrophic hurricane that became Katrina. We must find a way
to hear when scientists do good quality research that pertains
to the success of our society, and we must hear the findings of
the social scientists as much as that of the physical.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Laska follows:]
Prepared Statement of Shirley Laska
Thank you very much for permitting me to present testimony today.
My responsibilities at the University of New Orleans encompass
directing an applied social science research center focused on
assisting coastal Louisiana communities in developing resiliency to
natural disasters.
I have spent the last 20 years involved in conducting research on
natural disasters and the relationship between society and the
environment. The Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology
(CHART), the center I currently direct, was damaged by hurricane
Katrina. Due to the degree of virulent mold covering the offices and
contents it has been sealed from access since the storm. The faculty
associates and graduate students are scattered around the U.S. and of
those students who have been able to return to the area, almost all
have been hired by FEMA because of the applied disaster research
experiences that they have acquired at CHART. I have been asked to
respond to two very relevant questions. I am going to address the
second one and in so doing also answer the first.
Here are the questions:
What makes people and places vulnerable to natural hazards and
disasters? How does the natural and built environment impact
the perception of risk and subsequent behavior?
How is social science research on disaster preparedness and
response being translated into practice? What are the barriers
to implementation of research findings and how can these
barriers be overcome?
Applied Social Science Research on Disasters
CHART, the UNO center that I represent, was developed specifically
to apply social science research to natural hazard threats. It was
created to do so when such a model was not present. CHART is the
application of sociological research in partnership with communities,
organizations and government agencies (see Appendix A for a full list
of the current CHART projects). As a means of answering the questions I
will describe three CHART projects, one in each of the three
Congressional districts that comprise southeast Louisiana. Each of
these projects, as with all of the CHART projects, have both a basic
and applied component. These three examples show how social scientists
can partner with communities to understand risk, increase safety and
facilitate recovery from the catastrophic events of this fall.
Example #1: Repetitive Flood Loss
The first is in Congressman Jindal's district. FEMA has a program
called Repetitive Flood Loss. We have been asked to maintain the files
of the repetitively flooded residential structures within the most
flooded parishes within Louisiana and to transfer the updated data to
FEMA headquarters. We have been asked to do this so that CHART can work
with local parishes and residents to assist them in using the data to
reduce flood risk to their homes and to their areas. The logic for the
project is that social science research argues for having agency
assistance that is locally situated, able to be involved over a
significant period of time and able to develop ongoing working
relationships with community officials.
In addition, the project has expanded to demonstrate that the
repeatedly flooded structures are found in clusters due to sub basin
(watershed) drainage problems. If the solutions to the repeated
flooding of individual structures can be addressed in local areas
rather than for each individual home, then the integrity of the
communities is maintained and there is cost efficiency in the process.
Urban sociology recognizes that neighborhoods are vulnerable to decline
if vacant lots are created and not maintained and the communities
themselves become vulnerable without the tax base previously supported
by those structures.
Considering approaching repetitive loss in a watershed manner
rather than by mitigating each individual structure is new to FEMA. It
is a neighborhood, community response rather than an individual one. By
the reaction we received to the project when we were invited to demo it
at FEMA headquarters, it is possible that the project may have national
applications. This project takes a community sociology approach
supported by GIS, floodplain planners, civil engineering and public
administration specialists. Needless to say, the data in this project
and the public portal developed for it are being used as we meet to
support the long-term recovery of the New Orleans area from hurricane
Katrina.
Example #2: Participatory Action Research
While the repetitive flood loss project provided FEMA with a
different lens to view the problem of repeatedly-occurring flooding,
the second project illustrates how scientific knowledge can be linked
to the knowledge of the community. The second project is in Congressman
Melancon's district. The National Science Foundation provided support
for CHART to test a method of enhancing the capacity of marginalized
communities to handle natural hazards entitled Participatory Action
Research (PAR). This is the process of collaboration among academics,
practitioners and community residents to support improving capacity and
resiliency of communities that are at risk.
The community with which the project researchers are collaborating
is a Native American community, Grand Bayou, that lives within the
marsh outside of the levied area and has done so for at least a
century. During hurricanes they lash their boats together in the lee of
low lying ridges to protect them, themselves and their valuables.
Because coastal subsidence has so reduced the elevation of the land, a
group of the residents selected a canal next to a land fill to shelter
for Katrina as the hill created by the solid waste was the highest
protection they could find. As the storm turned they pressed the boats
into the bank by keeping the engines pushing forward. Today they are
still living on the boats while seeking FEMA assistance.
The sociological findings beneficial to this project are the
recognition that pre-disaster discrimination--be it economic,
educational or social--will exacerbate the impact of a disaster on a
community. Sociological research also indicates that enhancing the
capacity of a community to take responsibility in partnership with
government officials for its own hazard and disaster planning reduces
vulnerability and contributes to a resiliency when future disasters
occur.
Just last Saturday I joined the community when they met with FEMA
representatives to talk about how they might be able to place their
FEMA trailers at their community center rather than to have to relocate
a distance from their homes and boats. The way in which the community
was negotiating their fate and expressing their needs in a forceful,
informed manner is a demonstration of their capacity that hopefully has
been assisted in a small way by the Participant Action Research
process. The challenge is the time that is required by a community to
overcome the marginality while they must, of course, continue to occupy
themselves with work--most combining several means of earning a living,
child care, family and community obligations. The challenge to the
applied social scientists is to know what the research indicates and to
find ways to implement it to the betterment of a community. Even though
the Grand Bayou community is small, the partnership with a group of
social and physical scientists strengthened their own capacity and also
provided new insights for application to other rural, coastal
communities.
Example #3: Hurricane Evacuation Behavior
The project in Grand Bayou showed the universal in the particular;
the third project shows how traditional social science survey data can
be transformed into building partnership with parish and state
government and empowering public officials. The third project
encompasses all three of the Congressmen's districts, those of
Melancon, Jindal and Jefferson. It was a citizen hurricane evacuation
behavior survey with a large enough sample to be confident of its
applicability to each of the 12 Southeast Louisiana parishes. The
survey was accomplished by partnering with the parish (county)
emergency managers to create the survey instrument so that the
information needs of their jurisdictions would be supported. They were
included them in every step of the data collection and were the
sponsors and conveners of the workshop where the data was collectively
presented and discussed.
Six weeks before Katrina struck the data was also shared with the
La. Dept. of Homeland Security and the La. Department of Transportation
and Development, the latter group taking the lead on developing the
hurricane traffic contra flow plan. As each of these governmental units
warned of the impending peak of the hurricane season and engaged in
their part of the planning for an evacuation using contra flow, they
were able to appreciate better how their residents saw the risk, what
plans the residents were or were not making and what aspects of the
residents' thinking ran contrary to what the scientists knew about
safety and evacuation experiences. DOTD used the results in their
``marketing'' of the contra flow plan and map. However, our findings
were so worrisome--two-thirds of the population felt safe in their
homes in a Category 3 storm--that they were uncertain how strong to
make the media advisory. Fortunately, Katrina approached as a Category
5 and thus overcame the resistance to evacuation. It is estimated that
80 percent of the population evacuated (See Appendix B for a report of
this survey).
The use of existing social science disaster research for this
project is very evident. Dr. Susan Howell, Director of the UNO Survey
Research Center, first drew upon the evacuation literature to ask
questions about evacuation after hurricane Georges. Her findings from
that earlier study had some of the longest ``shelf life'' of any of the
many surveys that she has completed. To complete the recent evacuation
surveys she drew upon that same literature, prepared a draft instrument
and then asked for modifications from the Emergency Managers. With each
parish's participation there were improvements to the instrument and
questions about unique evacuation information needs of each parish.
Partnering with the basic researchers (through their findings and
phrasing of questions) along with the practitioners ``on the ground''
resulted in a product and process with the most benefit. The emergency
managers ``took ownership'' of the findings and trusted that they
represented their residents' evacuation attitudes.
Research Needs
Applied research starts with basic scientific research and employs
it in specific settings and/or to address practical problems. In the
course of doing applied research, however, we expand on and make
contributions not only to problem solving, but also to basic science.
Thus, while the funding of basic scientific research is critical, it is
not enough if we are to address the needs to understand and mitigate
risks and disasters. We must take science into the field, test it, and
modify it. This requires funding sources for applied research,
especially as it relates to hazards and disasters. When I tried to
expand the NSF Participatory Action Research Project (described above)
reviewers questioned the appropriateness of NSF funding such applied
research. Federal ``mission'' agencies such as EPA, NOAA, and FEMA are
beginning to recognize the importance of such research but to date this
has been minor and intermittent. FEMA pleaded ``poverty'' when asked by
Senator Landrieu after hurricane Ivan to supplement the initial
evacuation study with a follow up to examine evacuation fatigue after
the near hit. Much more of a commitment from these agencies is
necessary.
The reason for this lack of commitment is the past inability of the
society to successfully prevent the catastrophic impacts of natural and
technological disasters. We cannot stop a hurricane, but we can plan
for evacuations, greater protection, greater resiliency and in general
safer ways to live and work. So, I believe that it is extremely
important to fund the broader, more basic research questions of how to
enable our society to embrace a more successful approach to natural
disaster response. A significant body of work has emerged but much more
needs to be done. Examples of such extremely ``useful'' research
include Charles Perrow 1980s work (Normal Accidents: Living with High-
Risk Technologies) that considered the complexity of the cause of
technological failure, Lee Clarke's work (Mission Improbable: Using
Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster) about the weaknesses in disaster
response plans and his just released research, Worst Cases in which he
challenges the use of probability instead of possibility in considering
risk. Roger Pielke's work explores the importance of integrating social
science research with the physical in his analysis of climate policy
and the weather community not embracing the decision needs of users,
i.e., the human dimensions of the challenge (Prediction: Science
Decision-Making and the Future of Nature with William Hooke).
The usefulness of this research is exemplified by Diane Vaughn's
research The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and
Deviance at NASA. When the Shuttle Columbia crashed in 2003, the
investigating commission adopted many of her recommendations in their
proposal for the reorganization of NASA activities. Ongoing research
like that of Bob Gramling and Bill Freudenburg on the ``five
disasters'' of Katrina, all but one being social disasters rather than
physical, is the type of work that is emerging from this current
catastrophe which has potential to assist in adjusting the societal
response to these events.
Much more of such quality research and implementation of the
findings must be achieved. We no longer can delude ourselves that we
have the resources as a society to accept another Katrina, a nuclear
accident, or any other event of such magnitude when the means to
mitigate these are emerging from social science research on risks and
disasters. We must fund such research and keep it front and center as
we address these critical issues.
Resistance to ``hearing'' the findings of such basic research as
well as that of the applied work which we do is remarkable. I want to
end my testimony with an example demonstrating the extreme resistance
that must be overcome.
The Tale of the Hurricane Katrina ``Whistle Blowers''
I was requested to give testimony to this committee for a few
reasons--having disaster social science expertise, trying to apply the
findings of social science research, being the Director of a research
center that was the victim of hurricane Katrina, to name a few. More
specifically, I was one of the scientists who predicted with unwavering
accuracy that such an event as Katrina would happen and what the
results would be when it did. http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/
nov04c.html
My predictions were a compilation of the research findings of many
scientists, physical as well as social. And they too were speaking
about what their findings told them. I was not a lone voice, but rather
was among a chorus of scientists from both physical and social science
disciplines who predicted that it would happen and what the
consequences would be. The specialties of the other scientists included
coastal geologists, coastal hydrologists who do hurricane impact
modeling, geographers, demographers, stratification and community
sociologists, coastal ecologists, civil engineers, political science
policy specialists and meteorologists. And the cases they made were not
only in scientific journals but also in the popular media and applied
professional publications such as Scientific American, National
Geographic, Natural History, the Natural Hazards Observer, the New York
Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and the prize-winning
series in the New Orleans Times Picayune.
We also presented our conclusions at numerous professional
gatherings. And when we did one could feel the audience inhale. A few
would come up after the talk to tell us of their shock. Others would
say we were exaggerating and dismiss us as ``doomsayers.'' On occasion
someone would follow up with an e-mail, phone call and take steps to
broadcast in their own professional or even personal world what we
predicted was going to happen.
The last example of this before Katrina was a lengthy phone
conference call a CHART colleague and I had with a NOAA official four
days before Katrina hit. He had been horrified by the content of the
abstract of my June Hart Senate Bldg. presentation available on the
American Meteorological Society web site predicting Katrina in which I
described the incredible challenges that the poor would experience
evacuating the city (http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/
SeminarFlyer.pdf).
Before the storm hit he prepared a nationwide letter to the
Catholic bishops. That was an important personal act but given the
enormous data available, why didn't the existing research matter enough
to prevent, or at least, reduce the devastation that has occurred? To
put it differently, how could it be that the society at all levels was
not organized or prepared ``to hear.''
The Federal Government has been the sponsor of most of the research
that has been conducted by social scientists on environmental
disasters. Because of its role it is the prime level of government to
be leading an effort to expand the research and to facilitate its use;
I encourage it to take stronger responsibility for using the findings
to the betterment of society.
It is imperative that social science research be seen as an equal
contributor to the physical sciences in asking the most pertinent
research questions about environmental disasters, in formulating
powerful research questions and in receiving support to implement top
quality research. But as that is accomplished we must find better ways
for the organizations, the government agencies, the policy-makers to
value the findings and to address the obligations of their positions
more responsibly (a finding of Bill Freudenburg's research on risk and
``recreancy,'' Social Forces, 1993) and that includes with recognition
of the importance of using social science research findings.
Final thought. I was not participating in some abstract
intellectual exercise during the last few years as I was drawing from
my own and others' existing research to warn professional group after
professional group of an impending Katrina. The result of those
warnings not being heeded was the end of my community. And as our
warnings were accurate, this doom assessment of the impact is not
hyperbole. Recovery of coastal Louisiana from hurricanes Katrina and
Rita is in my opinion uncertain. We do not yet know if we have the
family, organizational and governmental resources, ability and energy
to accomplish it. And the cost to the society is astronomical. This is
the outcome of scientists not being heard. And it doesn't get any more
personal for a scientist than Katrina has been for me.
Attachment A
Center for Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology (CHART)
University of New Orleans
Mission Statement
UNO CHART is an applied social science research center devoted to
enhancing the resiliency of Louisiana communities in light of the
natural/environmental hazards and technological and homeland security
risks to which they are vulnerable.
Current Projects
Regional U.S. Response to Global warming: The Uses of Climate
Change Science by Gulf Coast Stakeholders (EPA)
Social Impact Assessment (SIA) of Coastal Restoration Projects:
Caenarvon, Third Delta, Bayou Lafourche, Port Fourchon, and Lake
Catherine (La. DNR and Gov. Office of Coastal Affairs)
Region 6 Repetitive Flood Loss Data Base, GIS and Portal: Reducing
Repetitive Flood Losses Through Individual and Local Area Measures
(FEMA)
Hurricane Evacuation Behavior of Residents of Southeast Louisiana:
Individual Parish Surveys Guided by Parish Officials' Response Needs
(FEMA)
Neighborhood Local Emergency Response Capacity: Assessing
Improvements from District of Columbia Neighborhood Cluster Plans &
Drills (DC)
Enhancing Marginalized Community Resiliency towards Natural
Hazards: The Use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Louisiana
Coastal Communities (NSF)
Potential Effects of Climate Change and Variability on
Transportation Infrastructure and Systems in the Central U.S. Gulf
Coast (DOT)
Social/Community Aspects of Coastal Restoration (NOAA)
Disaster Resistant University Project (FEMA)
Hurricane Evacuation of Residents without Transportation: Faith-
based/Community/Red Cross/University Collaboration to Develop a Cost-
Sharing Program (BCM and Ghenes Foundations)
Coastal Community Resiliency in Context of Dramatic Coastal Land
Loss from Global Climate Change and River Delta Deterioration (NOAA)
Attachment B
Introduction
Given the propensity for hurricanes to threaten southeast Louisiana
and the importance of citizen response to these threats, Southeast
Louisiana Hurricane Task Force and the University of New Orleans Survey
Research Center (SRC), in collaboration with the Center for Hazards
Assessment, Response and Technology (CHART) and the UNO Department of
Geography, have conducted a study of citizen evacuation behavior in
twelve parishes. The research was funded by FEMA through its Hazard
Mitigation Grant Program.
Working with Office of Emergency Preparedness officials in the
parishes of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force, the UNO SRC
designed and implemented a survey for each parish to determine citizen
evacuation decision-making, obstacles to evacuation, and sources of
information utilized when threatened by a hurricane.
The surveys were customized to each parish according to the
recommendations of the OEP officer in that parish. Questions were
included or excluded depending on the particular situation in each
parish, and in some parishes certain geographic areas were targeted. A
description of the geographic composition of each survey is in the
Appendix.
At least 400 residents were interviewed in every parish, totaling
to over 4,800 respondents. This summary report does not combine the
twelve surveys because there are some clear differences in willingness
to evacuate and hurricane risk perception from parish to parish,
differences which would be masked if the surveys were pooled.
What follows is a summary of the key findings of the Citizen
Hurricane Evacuation Behavior Surveys and the implications of these
findings for public education and future evacuations.
Pre-Ivan and Post-Ivan Surveys
The study began in the spring of 2004, of course not knowing that a
major evacuation would occur in September 2004 with Hurricane Ivan. As
a result, eight parishes were surveyed prior to Ivan, one parish was
split between pre- and post-Ivan surveys, and the remaining three
parishes were surveyed following the Ivan evacuation. The pre- and
post-Ivan results are noted when appropriate throughout this report.
Parishes Surveyed Before Ivan: Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St.
Bernard, LaFourche, Assumption, Terrebonne, St. Tammany (south of I-
12), St. James (half).
Parishes Surveyed After Ivan: St. John, St. Charles, Tangipahoa
(south of I-12), St. James (half).
Risk Perception
The most remarkable finding in this study is the low perception of
risk felt by most residents in southeast Louisiana. In nine of the
twelve parishes, 60 percent or more of the respondents said they felt
safe in their homes if a Category 3 hurricane came near.\1\ Far fewer
residents believe they would be safe in a Category 4 storm, indicating
that the difference between Category 3 and Category 4 is the border at
which most people believe they are at risk (Table 1). However, based on
predictions about flooding from federal agencies, disaster officials in
all of these parishes consider nearly everyone in the areas surveyed to
be at risk in their home in a Category 3 hurricane.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exceptions are Plaquemines--36 percent, Assumption--46 percent,
and St. Charles--58 percent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two factors summarize why people feel safe in their homes in a
Category 3 hurricane: beliefs about the strength or location of their
house and their past experiences. The following specific perceptions
and experiences are at the root of this feeling of safety:
Having lived in south Louisiana more than thirty
years
Never having lived in a home damaged by a hurricane
A belief that one's home is strong, sturdy, brick,
elevated, or some other factor that protects it
A belief that one's home is on high ground/not in a
flood zone.
People naturally rely on their past experiences to assess how safe
they are. Many residents of southeast Louisiana have lived here all of
their lives and never experienced hurricane damage to their home. In
fact, an average of 40 percent of residents in these parishes have both
lived in southern Louisiana more than thirty years and have never had
hurricane damage to their home (Table 1). It is difficult for some of
these longtime residents to realize that the environment is much
different today, and that past experiences are probably not relevant.
In eight of the twelve parishes,\2\ high and middle income
residents feel safer than lower income residents, which sounds
reasonable on the surface because low income people are more likely to
live in trailers, less sturdy houses, or in low lying areas. However,
having a well-built house or living in an elevated subdivision does not
mean you are safe in a Category 3 hurricane. Public education about the
lack of protection in a Category 3 afforded by a ``strong'' house or a
housing development that is higher than the surrounding area is needed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ In three parishes income had no relationship to risk
perception, and in Assumption, the non-poor (those with more than
$25,000 annual income) feel less safe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no evidence that the Ivan experience affected citizens'
perception of risk in a Category 3 hurricane. This makes sense when we
remember that Ivan was a Category 4, the type of storm where many more
people feel in danger, so there is no reason the Ivan experience would
affect risk perception in a Category 3.
Willingness to Evacuate When Recommended
Sixty percent or more of residents in all twelve
parishes say they would leave their home for a safer place if
evacuation were recommended by public officials (Table 2).
Because these answers are exaggerated by social desirability
bias, a more reliable estimate is those who responded that they
would ``definitely'' evacuate, not those who merely said they
would ``probably'' evacuate. Those who say ``definitely''
ranged from a low of 27 percent in Jefferson to a high of 52
percent in St. Charles, averaging 34 percent across the twelve
parishes.
In all of the parishes the perception of risk in a
Category 3 storm is the best predictor of intention to
evacuate. This may seem somewhat obvious, but it illustrates
why educating citizens as to their risk is important. As long
as so many residents do not perceive much risk, they will not
be inclined to leave their homes in a Category 3 storm, even
with an official recommendation.
Actual Evacuation in Last Recommended Evacuation
As we might expect, in nearly all of the parishes the number of
people who actually leave their home after an official recommendation
is much lower than the number who say they would leave.\3\ In fact, the
percentage that left their home in the last recommended evacuation
varied considerably across these twelve parishes (Table 2) depending
partly on actual risk (the location of the parish relative to the
coast, parish elevation, the severity and direction of the storm), and
the perception of risk.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The exception is St. Charles where 71 percent actually left
their homes in Ivan.
Among the four parishes where Lili was the last
recommended evacuation, evacuation levels ranged from a low of
13 percent in southern St. Tammany to a high of 53 percent in
Plaquemines. A similar pattern emerged in parishes where
Georges was the last recommended evacuation; St. James had the
lowest percent evacuating (21 percent), and Jefferson was the
highest (46 percent). Again in the post-Ivan parishes the
effect of geography was apparent with southern Tangipahoa
having the lowest percent evacuating (17 percent) and St.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles the highest (71 percent).
Evacuation north of Lake Ponchartrain, in the areas
south of I-12 in St. Tammany and Tangipahoa, is a relatively
new phenomenon. As a result, these residents have felt
protected by geography from hurricanes; 65 percent in St.
Tammany south of I-12 and 74 percent in Tangipahoa south of I-
12 say they are safe in their homes in a Category 3 storm. This
perception is the primary barrier to evacuation.
In ten of the twelve parishes, the perception of risk
in a Category 3 storm is the single best predictor of actually
leaving home in the last recommended evacuation.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Exceptions are Jefferson, where the best predictor of
evacuation in Georges is being female, and St. James where the best
predictor of evacuation in Ivan is perceived risk in a Category 4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen Focus on Storm Category
In every parish citizens focus on the severity or
category of the storm and how much threat they think it means
in deciding whether or not to leave. In open-ended questions
about why people left in the last recommended evacuation, storm
severity was always the first or second response (Table 3).
Storm severity is also cited often as a reason not to
leave, i.e., ``it was not severe enough.'' This focus on storm
category is why citizen cooperation with a recommended
evacuation depends on their awareness of what category is
dangerous for them.
Types of People Are Most/Least Likely to Evacuate (Table 4)
In eight of the twelve parishes females are more
likely than males to cooperate with an official recommendation
to evacuate during a hurricane.\5\ This pattern has been
repeatedly found in studies of evacuation in other areas of the
country. Females are more likely to take responsibility for
children and the elderly, and generally more likely to be
cautious. In no parish are males significantly more likely to
evacuate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Parishes in which males and females left their homes in nearly
equal proportions are Orleans, Plaquemines, southern St. Tammany, and
Tangipahoa.
In six of the twelve parishes, people who have lived
in a home damaged by a hurricane are more likely to heed the
official recommendation to evacuate.\6\ As mentioned above,
they are more likely to feel they are at risk. In these six
parishes, an average of less than half (42 percent) of the
residents have ever experienced hurricane damage. In some ways
southern Louisiana is now a victim of its past good luck; most
residents have not experienced damage, and lack of prior
hurricane experience promotes a feeling of safety and thus
resistance to evacuation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Parishes are Assumption, Lafourche, St. Bernard, St. James,
Terrebonne, and St. John.
In six of the twelve parishes, people who have lived
in southern Louisiana more than thirty years are less likely to
evacuate.\7\ Long-term residents have lived through many
hurricane threats, and since most of those hurricanes have not
directly hit southern Louisiana, these residents are less
likely to feel that they should leave their homes. An average
of 74 percent of the residents in these six parishes have lived
in southern Louisiana more than thirty years. In no parish were
long-term residents significantly more likely to evacuate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Parishes are Assumption, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Charles,
Terrebonne, and Tangipahoa.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Role of Income
The role of income is not simple. If we are referring
to leaving one's home, income has no consistent relationship to
evacuation. In Lafourche, Plaquemines and southern Tangipahoa
lower income residents were more likely to evacuate than higher
income residents. But in Orleans, the higher income residents
were more likely to evacuate, and in Assumption and St. James,
the non-poor (over $25K income) were more likely to evacuate.
Furthermore, in six parishes income bore no relationship to
evacuation.
However, in six of the nine parishes surveyed prior
to Ivan, residents with lower incomes were more likely than
those with higher incomes to either evacuate within their
parish or go to another nearby evacuating parish (Table 5).\8\
Many of these evacuees probably went to friends' or relatives
homes, or to a place of employment, where they felt safer than
in their own homes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ The exceptions to this pattern are Plaquemines where people
went to a safe regardless of income, Terrebonne, where evacuees did not
go to a safe place regardless of income, and St. Tammany where an
evacuee could remain within their parish and still be safe.
In the stronger storm, Ivan, low income evacuees
tended to go to safe areas.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ The exception is St. James in Ivan, where the low income
residents were much less likely to go to a safe place.
Thus, although income is not related in any
consistent way to leaving one's home during a recommended
evacuation, income is related to the distance traveled,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
especially if the storm is below a Category 4.
The number of low income residents who remain in
harm's way illustrates the need for both education about the
need to travel far enough and providing evacuation assistance
to those without means.
The ``Ivan Effect''?
Ivan was the largest evacuation experienced by
southeastern Louisiana, but from our research, there does not
appear to be either a positive or negative effect on
willingness to evacuate in the future.
Willingness to evacuate in the hypothetical
evacuation scenario is nearly identical in the pre- and
post-Ivan parishes.
Residents in the parishes surveyed after Ivan
perceive no more or less risk in a Category 3 hurricane
than residents in the parishes surveyed prior to Ivan.
An average of 86 percent of Ivan evacuees in the
four post-Ivan parishes say they would do the same
thing under similar circumstances. This is quite
similar to the responses after Georges and Lili.
The percentage of people saying they have an
evacuation plan is the same in the post-Ivan parishes
and the pre-Ivan parishes.
Those who spent the most time on the road were no
less willing to evacuate in the future.
The Role of Family and Friends
The process of deciding to evacuate during a
hurricane is not just a matter of waiting for the official
recommendation. Friends and relatives play an important role in
an individual's decision about what to do in two ways:
People receive advice from friends and relatives.
People evacuate due to concern for a friend or
relative.
In three of the four parishes surveyed after Ivan,
one or both of the factors above were mentioned spontaneously
second only to the severity of the storm as a response to the
question, ``What convinced you to go someplace else'' (Table
3).\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ We cite the post-Ivan parishes here because answers to
questions about reasons for evacuation in Ivan are more reliable than
answers about behavior in previous storms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evacuation Planning
In nine of the twelve parishes 41-49 percent say they
have a definite evacuation plan (Table 1). These numbers are
probably inflated by social desirability, but having a plan is
related to actual evacuation in Ivan. Of course, planning is
also a consequence of a person's intention to evacuate, so
these two behaviors mutually reinforce each other.
Having an evacuation plan, like evacuation itself, is
related to risk perception. People who believe they are at risk
in a Category 3 hurricane are more likely to have a definite
plan. So we return full circle to the importance of knowing
one's actual risk.
Sources of Information and Advice
In every parish, the TV meteorologists are the most
important source of information, which is not surprising given
the saturating nature of weather coverage during a hurricane.
However, the meteorologists are utilized more as sources of
information about the category and projected path of the storm,
rather than advice about what to do. Residents rely on their
own perceptions of risk, past experiences, public officials,
family, and friends in making an evacuation decision.
Biography for Shirley Laska
Dr. Shirley Laska is Director of the Center for Hazards Assessment,
Response and Technology (CHART) and Professor of Sociology at the
University of New Orleans. Prior to serving as the University's Vice
Chancellor for Research from 1993-2001 she founded the Environmental
Social Science Research Institute, precursor to CHART. Dr. Laska is an
environmental and natural hazards sociologist with a focus on
encouraging the application of social science to societal challenges
engendered by these phenomena. For this effort in 2000 she received the
Outstanding Contribution to Environment and Technology Award given by
the American Sociological Association. For over 20 years she has been
engaged in policy and applied research funded by federal agencies such
as EPA, MMS, FEMA, NOAA, Sea Grant and HUD as well as State and local
agencies. Her work has drawn attention to the need for more sub-
regional analysis of hurricane evacuation behavior; more consideration
of government support of self-protective homeowner flood mitigation
responses; more attention to considering local area drainage solutions
to repetitive flood loss rather than demolition of individual
repeatedly flooded residences; inclusion of the human/social impacts of
coastal restoration rather than only the ecological; and also improving
hazard mitigation outcomes by including community members and
stakeholders as full participants in efforts to reduce the human risk
to hazards.
Dr. Laska received a BS degree in Communications at Boston
University, 1966; a Ph.D. in Sociology at Tulane University, 1973; and
was post-doctoral fellow at the International Center for Medical
Research, Tulane University, School of Medicine, 1972-74. She is the
author, co-author or editor of several books and book chapters, and has
published numerous articles in the peer-reviewed literature.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Dr. Laska. Dr. O'Hair.
STATEMENT OF DR. H. DAN O'HAIR, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF
COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Dr. O'Hair. Chairman Inglis, Ranking Member Hooley, my home
State Congressman Lucas, and Members of the Subcommittee, good
morning. I want to thank you for inviting me to share my
thoughts on the role of the social science research in disaster
preparedness and response. It is a privilege to testify before
you this morning.
You asked that I respond to four questions in my brief
five-minute presentation, and I will address each one in turn.
First, how do individuals respond to warnings and other
risk communication? Risk communication and crisis communication
have been studied for a couple of decades on a formal basis,
but after 9/11 and the anthrax crises in 2001, and now, more
recently, with hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, and Rita, a
renewed emphasis has been placed on understanding how public
officials communicate risks and warnings to the public. The
most recent iteration is President Bush communicating risk
messages about the potential for an avian bird flu pandemic. In
many ways, risk communication can cultivate a culture of
awareness that Jay Wilson alluded to earlier this year at a
hearing of the House Science Committee on the subject of
tsunami preparedness. Slide.
Substantial research has been devoted to risk perception
factors, that include an individual's perception of dread,
their sense of control, whether the threat is manmade or
natural, and whether it affects children. Sociopolitical
factors, such as power, status, ethnicity, culture, education,
and perhaps most importantly, trust, are known to influence
people's perception and acceptance of risk. Slide.
[Slide]
What role does the media play in risk communication and the
formation of public behaviors and views? People depend upon
multiple sources of information for risk information, including
TV, radio, newspapers, friends, and the Internet. Recent
research indicates that some people first learn of disasters
from others. For example, instant messaging was a prevalent
means of warning during the tsunami disaster. Slide.
[Slide]
Often, the media operate from a sensationalism principle,
where their interest is in casting the context of risk through
political and human interest lenses, frequently omitting risk
factors. This was particularly evident during the coverage of
Katrina, where opinionated journalism became accepted among
some of the more harsh media critics. It was difficult for
journalists to separate their human emotions from their
reporting. Slide.
[Slide]
However, in the aftermath of Katrina, the media provided
much needed information, emotional support, and companionship
to victims who felt isolated and alone. So, from these
contrasting views, we have come to learn that journalistic and
broadcast activities create what we have termed the paradox of
media coverage. On the one hand, media serve a number of
valuable, if not essential, functions for victims, consumers,
government officials, and other organizations. Alternatively,
the media often frame their messages in ways that omit critical
information, sensationalize the situation, and politicize the
context of the disaster event. Slide.
[Slide]
What lessons have we learned from effective and ineffective
risk communication about natural disasters and hazards? A GAO
report citing extant risk communication research suggests that
the most important principles for communicating risk and threat
information involves the following: messages should be
consistent, accurate, clear, provided repeatedly through
multiple methods; two, information should be timely; and three,
information should be specific about the threat, including the
nature of the threat, when and where it is likely to occur, and
directions on preventive measures or protective responses.
Another important issue is what we call the risk-source
match. Do we have the right person communicating for the right
crisis with the right message? We found through research that
when the event is national, federal spokespersons are
preferred. When the event is more localized, people want
someone they know, someone from their community.
Trust is an all important goal of risk communication
strategies. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization
issued its long awaited guidelines for outbreak communication.
Trust building is the first communication principle highlighted
in their document. Research had also demonstrated that
different government organizations elicit different
expectations about trustworthy activities, and accordingly
require different trust enhancing securities. Slide.
[Slide]
What are the top remaining research questions in this area?
First, building a community based communication infrastructure.
Risk and crisis communication programs must be designed,
tailored, and executed at the community level. Through these
processes, community specific communication infrastructures can
be built to facilitate risk and crisis communication plans.
Second, media use is often thought of as a moving target, with
new services and tools rolled out on a continuous basis:
alerting services, blogs, instant messaging, reverse 911, et
cetera.
Given the expectation of emergent media and their use by
individuals, which of these media are most recognized as
trustworthy sources of information and advice during disaster
conditions, and what conditions of media are utilized in
various conditions? Additional research questions should focus
on literacy and intercultural issues, as well as leveraging
technology. Slide.
[Slide]
Let me summarize by stating how gratified I am that one of
the organizations that this subcommittee oversees, the National
Science Foundation, on multiple occasions has identified risk
communication as an essential ingredient in a complex array of
processes necessary for disaster preparedness, response, and
management. Just about every GAO report on public response to
emergencies places communication on the top of the list. I echo
this sense of priority.
My colleagues and I from the social sciences welcome the
challenge and opportunity to play an important role in building
a communication infrastructure that addresses the essential
components of communicating effectively with our citizenry
before, during, and after disasters.
This concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to
answer any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. O'Hair follows:]
Prepared Statement of H. Dan O'Hair
Chairman Inglis, Ranking Member Hooley, my home state Oklahoma
Congressman Lucas, and Members of the Subcommittee, good morning. I
want to thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts on the role of
social science research in disaster preparedness and response. It is a
privilege to testify before you this morning, not only as a research
faculty member of the University of Oklahoma and incoming President of
the National Communication Association, but also as a social scientist
interested in the intersection of communication research and disaster
preparedness and response.
You asked that I respond to four questions in my brief five minute
presentation. I will address each one in turn. However, before doing so
I want to comment on the status of research on risk and crisis
communication. Our research group at the University of Oklahoma has
discovered well over 120 different systemic bodies of work on risk and
crisis communication. These are not single research projects but
theories, concepts, and lines of thought pertaining specifically to
risk and crisis communication. Like other scientific communities,
varying opinions are common with occasional disagreement over
fundamental issues; however, I find that level of contentiousness
healthy, especially in light of how far communication science has
progressed in the last ten years. In a briefing delivered to Congress
last year, I termed this state of affairs as an ``embarrassment of
riches.'' Let me give you illustration of what I am referring to. The
Figure One reflects the state of the field about a decade ago. The
risk/crisis communication process was conceived of as relatively direct
and linear. The Figure Two demonstrates the complexity of the field of
risk and crisis communication today. As you can see, we have
substantive theoretical research from which to work. In the time I have
remaining allow me to unpack a few of these issues.
First, how do individuals respond to warnings and other risk
communications? How important is the perception of risk--rather than a
quantitative estimate of it--in determining individual or societal
response to a natural hazard or disaster? And how do responses vary,
based on individual cultural, economic and experiential differences?
Risk communication and crisis communication have been studied for a
couple of decades but after the 9/11 and anthrax crises in 2001, and
now more recently with the tsunami, Katrina, Wilma, and Rita, a renewed
emphasis has been placed on understanding how public officials
communicate risk and warnings to the public. The most recent iteration
is President Bush communicating risk messages about the potential for
an Avian Bird Flu Pandemic. In many ways, risk communication can
cultivate a ``culture of awareness'' that Jay Wilson alluded to earlier
this year at a hearing of your House Science Committee on the subject
of tsunami preparedness.
Risk Perception
Substantial research has been devoted to risk perception factors
(Ropeik & Slovic, 2003) that include an individual's perception of
dread (the significance of the threat), their sense of control (the
extent to which they feel they have some level of management over the
threat), whether the threat is man-made or natural. Other issues
pertinent to risk perceptions include: does it affect children, is the
risk novel or new, and what is the risk probability (can it happen to
me)? Additional factors weighing into the risk perception equation
includes the magnitude of the perceived risk--people have a tendency to
overestimate small risks and underestimate large risks (LaFoutain,
2004); gender--white males seem to perceive risks differently than
other groups--on average, they perceive risks as much smaller and much
more acceptable than do other people; and sociopolitical factors such
as power, status, ethnicity, culture, education, and trust are known to
influence people's perception and acceptance of risk (Flynn, Slovic, &
Mertz, 1994).
A different line of research has demonstrated a ``negativity bias''
where people weigh negative information more strongly than positive
information (Flynn et al., 2002), while other studies reveal an
opposite pattern where people feel a sense of self-efficacy toward
risks leading to an ``optimistic bias.'' Given the varying perception
levels among certain groups, it is concerning that the National
Research Council reports that much of the forecast delivery messages
are designed for ``the educated, the affluent, the cultural majority,
and the people in power,'' with the least effective messages oriented
for minorities, the elderly, and the poor (NRC, 1999, p. 86).
One of the more interesting and potentially frustrating perceptions
that some individuals formulate is ``intuitive epidemiology''
(Kalichman & Cain, 2005). These lay-experts have been exposed to enough
of risk message regarding the threat and have formulated their
estimation of how serious and likely the threat is for them. If an
individual from a non-metropolitan area is introduced to risk messages
about the potential for an avian flu pandemic, s/he may deduce that
since their exposure rate is minimal they are not really obligated to
take the precautions offered by the risk communication. Risk
communicators should take into account these intuitive epidemiologists
as they design their messages for a potentially recalcitrant audience.
Perceptual Distance
What we call perceptual distance is the extent to which risk
message recipients find a risk salient or important whenever they hear
about it. Do their perceptions lead them to believe that the risk is
going to have any impact on their lives? We conducted a study a few
years ago of local television newscasts where we asked individuals to
rank the importance or the saliency of various news items during a 6:00
p.m. newscast (Behnke, O'Hair, & Hardman, 1990). We found that high on
the viewers list of most important items, those most salient to them,
was an 18-wheeler turning over on I-10. Conversely, much lower on their
list was an item focusing on the tragic deaths of U.S. servicemen that
same day. They did not experience enough perceptual nearness to that
particular news item, but they certainly perceived that an overturned
18-wheeler in their community could have implications for them. In
other words, risk and crisis communicators oftentimes overestimate what
the public is going to perceive as important simply because the
communicators themselves think that an issue is salient.
Studies have been conducted at the University of Oklahoma on
temporal displacement. Our interest was in determining the effect of
time on specific events--the two events that we were focusing upon were
the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 crises. Study participants
reported that the longer away they were from these particular events
the less significant they found them to be in their lives. Temporal
displacement reduced the saliency of these events in their lives. We
are only beginning to understand the conceptual and practical
implications of such findings.
How is risk communicated in an uncertain environment? What role does
the media play in risk communication and the formation of public views
and behavior?
Media Use
People depend on multiple sources of information for risk
information including TV, radio, newspapers, friends, and the Internet
(Rodriquez, 2004; Stempel & Hargrove, 2002). Previous research
indicates that some people first learn of disasters from others
(Greenberg, Hofschire, & Lachlan, 2002). For example, instant messaging
was a prevalent means of warning during the tsunami disaster. Other
research has revealed a ``hierarchy of resort.'' Some people first turn
to broadcast media, then to print, Internet, and interpersonal sources.
These latter sources serve to confirm, reassure and get more in depth
information. Alternatively, there are other groups of the isolated,
impoverished, minority and rural segments who rely on interpersonal and
community sources of information first (Glik, 2005). In other research,
women were more likely than men to seek information from the media
pertaining to family management needs; they appear to assume more
responsibility for dealing with the adaptation to a crisis (Seeger,
Vennette, Ulmer, & Sellnow, 2002). As media convergence continues to
evolve, more individuals are likely to access media that offers
multiple options for information acquisition (Greenberg, Hofschire, &
Lachlan, 2002).
Uncertainty and Media Access
In the wake of multiple disasters in the last five years, most
people assume they live in an uncertain if not risky environment.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that people cope by blocking
information from their awareness and strive for a ``new normalcy.''
This phenomenon has motivated our research team to envision a
Complacency-Curiosity-Immediacy-Criticality (C-C-I-C) Framework that
integrates individual risk forecasting, information management
processes, and media access (O'Hair, 2005). When risk probability is
low, risk messages are unlikely to resonate with individuals who will
have little motivation to seek or process information from media
sources. When risk probability is heightened, individuals become
curious, process risk messages more directly, and may seek additional
information from the media. As the threat of risk becomes more salient,
individuals become more immediate in their desire for information and
will intensify their media exposure. In the last stage, when threat
seems imminent, the process of information seeking becomes acute and
media access becomes vigorous if not frantic.
Sensationalizing Risk
It is obvious that the media construe risk information according to
their own perspective. Often, their viewpoint operates from the
``sensationalism principle,'' where their interest is not in perceiving
risk information at face value, but rather casting the context through
political and human interest lenses frequently omitting risk factors
(LaFountain, 2004). This was particularly evident during coverage of
Katrina where ``opinionated journalism'' become accepted even among
many of the more harsh media critics. It was difficult for journalists
to separate their human emotions from their reporting.
Message Framing
Message framing is a preeminent characteristic of risk
communication. For example, the public does not want to be patronized.
``Don't worry. We're from the government, we're here to help'' (Rowan,
2004). Most of us here certainly know how to frame messages. We don't
frame the same message to our spouses as we do with our children or
with constituencies or colleagues. The media have become
extraordinarily facile at message framing as have political campaign
managers. Previous research indicates there are three ways that the
media typically frame messages. The first type is a thematic frame,
where general issues are relayed. Another framing strategy is episodic
where the message emphasizes specific episodes, emphasizing specific
people, specific perpetrators, and victims--a human element frame so to
speak. The third type of frame is termed strategic, and this is where
the story is slanted in a particular way, often negatively. Our
research has demonstrated that taking the same basic message by framing
it differently will evoke different cognitive and emotional responses
in the receiver. The most recent instantiation of framing came during
coverage of Hurricane Katrina where the media portrayed an America
divided along racial lines. Following the coverage, an early September
Pew survey, for example, demonstrated that two-thirds of African
Americans, but fewer than one-in-five whites, said that the government
warning and response would have been faster had most victims been
white. Regardless of where your own opinions reside on this particular
issue, it is important to understand the challenge of message framing
as we manage risks.
Constructive Media
In the aftermath of Katrina reporters became interviewees rather
than their normal role of interviewer. Media also provide emotional
support and companionship to victims who feel isolated and alone.
Another positive characteristic of the media in relations to their
reporting on disasters involves their ability to impart helpful
information to victims:
``Effective warnings broadcast through the media are widely
credited with reducing casualties from hurricanes, tornadoes,
and floods. By reporting extensively on disasters and the
damage they create, the media can help speed assistance to
disaster-stricken areas, and post disaster reporting can
provide reassurance to people who are concerned about the well-
being of their loved ones'' (Mileti, 1999, p. 225).
We have come to learn that journalistic and broadcast activities
create what we have termed the ``Paradox of Media Coverage'' (O'Hair,
2005). On one hand, media serve a number of valuable if not essential
functions for consumers, government officials and other organizations,
as we have observed above. Alternatively, media often frame their
messages in ways that omit critical information, overemphasize certain
circumstantial features, sensationalize the situation, galvanize
distrust among those whose job it is to mitigate the threat, and
politicize the context of the disaster event (Covello & Sandman, 2001).
Media Preparedness
One last observation is in order that concerns the media. Media
organizations and their members do not seem to be any better prepared
for disasters and emergencies than other members of the risk community.
The Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware conducted a
study of media organizations located in disaster-prone cities to
determine their level of preparedness. The study discovered that only
33 percent of the radio stations, 54 percent of the television stations
and only three of five newspapers reported disasters plans of any kind.
Those media organizations with disasters plans had not given sufficient
thought to critical issues and in many cases, the plans consisted of
brief procedures and a list of phone numbers, although many of these
lists did not include the most relevant local emergency agencies
(Quarantelli, 2002). In a separate study focusing on journalists and
their preparation for disaster conditions, researchers found that these
media representatives were among the least prepared among those
involved in local response and exhibited the greatest amount of fear
and stress under simulated emergency conditions (DiGiovanni, Reynolds,
Harwell, Stonecipher, & Burkle, 2003).
What lessons have we learned from effective--and ineffective--risk
communications about natural hazards or disasters? How are these
lessons being used to improve future risk communications?
Effective Messages
A synthesis of the public health research literature on risk
messages revealed a hierarchy of successful message properties: (Glik,
2005)
Survival first--tell people what to do, where to go,
what to expect
Provide meaning--tell people why they need these
things
Assurance--tell people that something is being done
by someone or some organization.
A GAO report citing extant risk communication research suggests
that the most important principles for communicating risk and threat
information involves the following: (1) messages should be consistent,
accurate, clear, and provided repeatedly through multiple methods, (2)
information should be timely, and (3) information should be specific
about the threat, including the nature of the threat, when and where it
is likely to occur, and directions on preventive measures or protective
responses (2004, p. 15).
Jargon, euphemisms, and acronyms do not always resonate with
people. Do most people understand the difference between tornado
warning and watch? What about terrorist's warnings green and yellow?
Shelter-in-place means ``go to a shelter'' for some people. Research
has shown that disaster warnings need to be clear, consistent,
communicated over multiple media, by a variety of relevant and trusted
sources; the messages should tell people specifically what to do and
assist them with seeking additional information (Glik, 2005).
Risk/Crisis-Source Match
Another important issue is what we call the risk/crisis-source
match (O'Hair, 2004). Do we have the right person communicating for the
right crisis and the right risk? We found through research that the
public has very definitive ideas about who ought to be delivering these
risk and crisis messages. For example, when the event is national,
federal spokespersons are preferred. When the event is more localized
they want someone that they know, someone from their community. We also
know whenever the risk or crisis is medical they want to hear from
medical personnel, and if the medical crisis is perceived as national
they want to hear from a spokesperson representing the CDC. At this
point, we do know that the public does not accept messages at face
value. They continuously make judgments about all facets of the
message, its source, and the context in which it is delivered. This
leads to the preeminent issue in risk communication--trust.
Trust
Trust is an all important goal of risk communication strategies.
Earlier this year the World Health Organization (2005) issued its long
awaited ``guidelines for outbreak communication.'' Trust building is
the first communication principle highlighted in their document.
Research (Petts, 1998) has demonstrated that different governmental
organizations elicit different expectations about `trustworthy'
activities, and accordingly require different `trust enhancing'
strategies. Different investigations have identified specific variables
that influence trust: perceived openness; competence; objectivity;
fairness; consistency; independence and care/altruism (e.g., Johnson,
1999; Petts, 1998; Renn & Levine, 1991). Trust is diminished when
experts disagree, lack of coordination among risk management
organizations, lack of sensitivity to the communication needs of the
audience, lack of information access or disclosure, and lack of public
participation in risk management plans (Covello, Peters, Wojtecki, &
Hyde, 2001). There is a need to build a preparation mindset among the
public through calculated, evolving, and cooperative activities using
such venues as school programs, public education, public participation
in planning processes, educating and training citizen's groups, and
small personalized learning environments (Covello, et al., 2001; O'Hair
& Averso, in press; O'Hair, Heath, & Becker, 2005).
What are the top remaining research questions in this area?
Building a Community-Based Communication Infrastructure
Risk and crisis communication programs must be designed, tailored,
and executed at the community level (O'Hair, 2004; Rodriquez, Diaz, &
Aguirre, 2004). The aim is to build upon innovative activities and
programs of risk management by determining and verifying community-
specific requirements and expectations. Through these processes
community-specific communication infrastructures can be built to
facilitate risk and crisis communication plans. Communities can vary
considerably in terms of their desires and needs for risk
communication. Take for example the research finding that urban
communities possess less social capital than rural areas which are more
socially connected. Rural households have more children, more
traditional family systems, and stronger kinship relationships.
According to Putnam, urban citizens belong to 10-15 percent fewer clubs
and attend 10-15 percent fewer club meetings than other groups
(Beaudoin & Thorson, 2004). Therefore a goal of community research
should be determining if communication strategies vary among these
community types. Geospatial analysis should be employed to provide
visual representations of how communication infrastructure features can
be represented within diverse communities. The most prudent approach
would be to benchmark existing risk communication strategies and
programs involving natural disasters or homeland security and test
their utility under varying conditions and audience (community)
characteristics. Recent advances in communication sciences should be
incorporated into these models for testing. In addition, this project
should include a program of research and development of communication
strategies for educating schools, business and community leaders, first
responders, policy-makers, and the media on risk perception and
assessment. Studies should be designed that take existing and proposed
systems and protocols and test their viability under experimental
conditions.
Media
Research questions focused squarely on the media and their
processes before, during, and after disasters must continue especially
with regards to narrowcasting, specialized news content, and increasing
reliance on interactive information sources (alerting services, blogs,
IM, reverse 911, etc.). Media use is often thought of as a moving
target with new services and tools rolled out on a continuous basis.
Which media are most recognized as trustworthy sources of information
and advice during disaster conditions? What combinations of media are
utilized in various conditions? How prepared are various media
organizations and their members for dealing with a variety of
disasters?
Literacy and Intercultural Issues
An increasingly diverse citizenry will not respond to the same
risk/crisis message in consistent ways. The United States is becoming
an increasingly diverse culture or network of cultures. Most telephonic
instructions from self-help desks now offer service for both Spanish
and English speakers. Language diversity is an obvious issue for
communication scientists, but literacy and cultural issues must also be
recognized beyond the simple linguistic properties of messages. How can
risk messages be designed for low literacy receivers? What
intercultural variables are most prominent in communicating risk?
Inter-Organizational Communication
Much research has determined that serious shortcomings are evident
at the community level in terms of constituent organizations failing to
communicate effectively with one another. Future research should focus
on the coordination of community response units. How do we manage
adhocracies, jurisdictional conflict, and territoriality? The key is
determining how to make sense of this complex system given the multiple
players involved, all with their own politics, mindsets, perspectives,
goals, fears, entrenched behavior, stakeholders, and obligations. There
is a need for better metrics for understanding the patterns of
communication among agencies, communities, and individuals. Research
should study the structure of organizations responsible for managing
risks/crises, optimal patterns of information management, and focus on
the most effective methods for coordinating actions (both planned and
self-correcting). Both structural and operational strategies should be
developed and tested that lead to strategic communication models with
the goal of improving inter-organizational and inter-agency cooperation
and collaboration. Inherent in these processes is assessing community
and organizational risk and crisis communication programs and
strategies and developing standardized assessment tools (e.g., report
cards, scorecards, communication audits) that determine areas of
organizational communication vulnerability. These programs could start
with (a) the National Data Base of Incident Reports (National Incident
Management System, 2004), and (b) the reported experiences of those who
have first hand knowledge of preventing and responding to terrorists
attacks (OKC; NYC). Possible outcomes include interactive, web-based
tools developed for use at different levels--individuals/families,
communities, organizations, and governmental agencies.
Developing Appropriate Metrics
A set of integrated metrics must be developed and used as a
standard to assess risk and develop plans for disaster management and
response. Key objectives in this project include:
A set of integrated metrics for community disaster
preparation, deterrence and response.
Tying metrics to strategic and tactical goals.
Metrics serve as benchmarks.
Create community goals and objectives (that allow
community based action planning based upon standardized metrics
while incorporating the needs of communities.
One means of pursuing this strategy would be to leverage The
Community Terrorism Preparation, Deterrence and Response Model (Ledlow,
2004) that structures a systematic approach to anti-terrorist planning
and decision support. Its essential components include: Risk
Assessment; Screening and Identification; Prevention; Training and
Application; Activation and Response; and Leadership, Authority, and
Communication. The information, systems, tools, and improvement plans
of this project allows municipalities to assess their own preparedness
plans, scenarios, and drills while maintaining a standard set of
metrics, and thus expectations based on preparedness priorities.
Inherent to the system is a scorecard that allows a community to
evaluate each domain and dimension of the model based on various threat
scenarios and engage training opportunities to improve performance.
Leveraging Technology
One issue looming large on the horizon is advances in science and
technology and the promise they offer for disentangling the complexity
of warning systems through smart agents (Bostrom, 2003). Smart agents
are presumed to have the capacity for interacting with warning systems
and other information sources including the media, while incorporating
global positioning information, then making decisions for an individual
in a certain location. Based on stored personal preferences data and
the threat severity of the impending disaster, the smart agent would
provide ``intelligent'' options for the individual including precise
paths to safety. These smart agents will be small enough to wear or
eventually they may be implanted making them seamless. A whole host of
issues will require sorting before smart agents become common place,
not the least of which is the ethics of consent and a further widening
of the digital divide. A larger implication is that public agencies and
officials may be removed from the warning system as we know it today.
Social science research is a necessary partner in this research
enterprise.
Conclusion
I am gratified that one of the organizations that this subcommittee
oversees, the National Science Foundation, has identified risk
communication as an essential ingredient in a complex array of
processes necessary for disaster preparation, response, and management.
Early this year, the Director of NSF, Dr. Bement, testified before the
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for the need
to include risk communication in the research programs that it funds. A
recent NSF report argues for greater interdisciplinary cooperation
among basic natural sciences, human decision processes, economists,
engineers, and communication scholars (NSF, 2002). The Government
Accounting Office reported to Congress last year that risk
communication theory and protocol must assume a greater role in threat
mitigation plans (GAO-04-682, 2004). In a PCAST report referred to in
testimony earlier this year before this subcommittee on combating
terrorism, the authors highlight the important role of communication in
mitigating, preventing, and responding to terrorist acts. Just about
every GAO report on public response organizations and agencies places
communication at the top of the list. I echo this sense of priority.
Chess et al. (1995) asked a number of meaningful questions: Is
successful risk communication persuasion, transfer of information,
public participation, or empowerment of citizens to make decisions?
Should it produce an informed citizenry, a compliant citizenry, an
alert citizenry, or an empowered citizenry? Should the goal be better
decisions, fairer decisions, more consistent decisions, or, in the
throes of environmental gridlock, any decisions at all? Or are there
``different motivating forces'' and therefore different risk
communication goals, for every ``group, person, agency administrator,
and middle manager''? These questions, in turn, have raised additional
ones about the ethics and evaluation of risk communication. (p. 115)''
(Heath & O'Hair, in press). These questions also suggest that we are
far from drawing conclusions about risk communication during
emergencies and disasters. However, and mostly importantly, in the last
ten years we have made substantial inroads into how people perceive and
respond to risk messages. Supporting the risk communication scientific
community would help to narrow the gap between technological advances
in warning systems and policy initiatives and our citizenry's ability
to take advantage of those good faith efforts.
My colleagues and I from the social sciences welcome the challenge
and opportunity to play an important role in building a communication
infrastructure that addresses the essential components of communicating
effectively with our citizenry before, during, and after disasters.
This completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to answer
any questions you may have.
References
Anderson, P.S., & Gow, G.A. (2003). An assessment of the B.C. tsunami
warning system and related risk reduction practices. Accessed
at www.ocipep.gc.ca/research/resactivities/CI/2003-
D001-e.asp.
Beaudoin, C., & Thorson, E. (2004). Social Capital in Rural and Urban
Communities: Testing Differences in Media Effects and Models.
Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 81, 378-399.
Behnke, R., O'Hair, D., & Hardman, A. (1990). Audience analysis systems
in public relations and marketing campaigns. In D. O'Hair, & G.
Kreps (Eds.), Applied Communication Theory and Research (pp.
203-221). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates
Publishers.
Bement, A.L. (2005). Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Accessed at http://
www.nsf.gov/about/congress/109/
alb-tsunami020205.jsp. November 3, 2005.
Bostrom, A. (2003). Future of Risk Communication. Futures, 35, 553-573.
Chess, C., Salomone, K.L., Hance, B.J., & Saville, A. (1995). Results
of a National Symposium On Risk Communication: Next Steps for
Government Agencies. Risk Analysis, 15, 115-125.
Covello, V., Peters, R., Wojtecki, J., & Hyde, R. (2001). Risk
Communication, the West Nile Virus Epidemic, and bioterrorism:
Responding to the Communication Challenges Posed by the
Intentional or Unintentional Release of a Pathogen in an Urban
Setting. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York
Academy of Medicine, 78, 382-391.
Covello, V., & Sandman, P. (2001). Risk Communication: Evolution and
Revolution. In A. Wolbarst (Ed.), Solutions to an Environment
in Peril (pp. 164-178). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
DiGiovanni Jr., C., Reynolds, B., Harwell, R., Stonecipher, E.B., &
Burkle Jr., F.M. (2003). Community Reaction to Bioterrorism:
Prospective Study of Simulated Outbreak. Emerging Infectious
Diseases, 9(6), 708-712.
Flynn, J., Slovic, P., & MacGregor, D. (2002). Low dose risk,
decisions, & risk communication workshop. Eugene, OR: Decision
Science Research Institute.
Flynn, J., Slovic, P., & Mertz, C.K. (1994). Gender, Race, and
Perception of Environmental Health Risks. Risk Analysis, 14(6),
1101-1108.
Government Accounting Office. (2004). Homeland security: Communication
protocols and risk communication principles can assist in
refining the advisory system. Accessed at http://www.gao.gov/
new.items/d04682.pdf, November 4, 2005.
Glik, D.C. (2005). Bioterrorism preparedness: Workforce,
organizational, resource, and risk communication issues.
Accessed at http://medscape.com/viewarticle/498940 on October
30, 2005.
Greenberg, B.S., Hofschire, L., & Lachlan, K. (2002). Diffusion, media
use and interpersonal communication behaviors. In B.S.
Greenberg (Ed.), Communication and Terrorism: Public and Media
Responses to 9/11. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.
Greenberg, B.S., & Hofschire, L. (2002). Summary and discussion. In
B.S. Greenberg (Ed.), Communication and Terrorism: Public and
Media Responses to 9/11. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press,
Inc.
Heath, R., & O'Hair, D. (in press). The significance of risk and crisis
communication. In D. O'Hair & R. Heath (Eds.), Handbook of Risk
and Crisis Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Johnson, B.B. (1999) Exploring Dimensionality in the Origins of Hazard
Related Trust, Journal of Risk Research, 2, 325-354.
Kalichman, S.C., & Cain, D. (2005). Perceptions of Local HIV/AIDS
Prevalence and Risks for HIV/AIDS and Other Sexually
Transmitted Infections: Preliminary Study of Intuitive
Epidemiology. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 29, 100-106.
LaFountain, C. (2004). Health Risk Reporting. Society, (November), 49-
56.
Ledlow, G. (2004). The community terrorism preparation, deterrence and
response model. Unpublished manuscript. Mt. Pleasant, MI:
Central Michigan University.
Mileti, D.S. (1999). Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural
Hazards in the United States. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry
Press.
National Research Council. (1999). Making Climate Forecasts Matter.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
National Science Foundation. (2002). Integrated research in risk
analysis and decision-making in a democratic society. Accessed
at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03209/
nsf03209-3.pdf, November 4, 2005.
O'Hair, D. (2005). The Complacency-Curiosity-Immediacy-Criticality
Framework. Unpublished technical report. Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma.
O'Hair, D. (2004). Measuring Risk/Crisis Communication: Taking
Strategic Assessment and Program Evaluation to the Next Level.
Risk and Crisis Communication: Building Trust and Explaining
Complexities When Emergencies Arise (pp. 5-10). Washington, DC:
Consortium of Social Science Associations.
O'Hair, D., Heath, R., & Becker, J. (2005). Toward a paradigm of
managing communication and terrorism. In D. O'Hair, R. Heath, &
J. Ledlow (Eds.), Community Preparedness, Deterrence, and
Response to Terrorism: Communication and Terrorism (pp. 307-
327). Westport, CT: Praeger.
O'Hair, M.J., & Avwerso, R. (in press). Leading school in culture of
terrorism. In D. O'Hair & R. Heath (Eds.), The Communication
and Rhetoric of Terrorism. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Petts, J. (1998) Trust and Waste Management Information: Expectation
Versus Observation. Journal of Risk Research, 1, 307-320.
Quarantelli, E.L. (2002). The role of the mass communication system in
natural and technological disasters and possible extrapolation
to terrorism situations. Accessed at http://dels.nas.edu/dr/
docs/Quarantelli.pdf on June 14, 2004.
Renn, O., & Levine, D. (1991) Credibility and trust in risk
communication. In R. Kasperson and P. Stallen (Eds.),
Communicating Risks to the Public (pp. 157-218). Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Press.
Rodriquez, H. (2004). The role of science, technology, and media in the
communication of risk and warnings. Risk and Crisis
Communication: Building Trust and Explaining Complexities When
Emergencies Arise (pp. 11-16). Washington, DC: Consortium of
Social Science Associations.
Rodriquez, H., Diaz, W., & Aguirre, B. (2004). Communicating Risk and
Warnings: An Integrated and Interdisciplinary Approach. Newark,
DE: Disaster Research Center.
Ropeik, D., & Slovic, P. (2003). Risk Communication: A Neglected Tool
in Protecting Public Health. Risk in Perspective, 11, 1-4.
Rowan, K. (2004). Risk and Crisis communication: Earning trust and
productive partnering with the media and public during
emergencies. Risk and Crisis Communication: Building Trust and
Explaining Complexities When Emergencies Arise (pp. 17-23).
Washington, DC: Consortium of Social Science Associations.
Seeger, M.W., Vennette, S., Ulmer, R.R., & Sellnow, T.L. (2002). Media
use, information seeking, and reported needs in post crisis
contexts. In B.S. Greenberg (Ed.), Communication and Terrorism:
Public and Media Responses to 9/11. Cresskill, New Jersey:
Hampton Press, Inc.
Slovic, P. (1993). Perceived Risk, Trust, and Democracy. Risk Analysis,
13, 675-685.
Stempel, III, G.H., & Hargrove, T. (2002). Media sources of information
and attitudes about terrorism. In B.S. Greenberg (Ed.),
Communication and Terrorism: Public and Media Responses to 9/
11. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.
World Health Organization. (2005). Outbreak communication guidelines.
Accessed at http://www.childrensvaccine.org/files/
WHO-Outbreak-Communication-Guid
elines-whocds200528en.pdf, November 5, 2005.
Biography for H. Dan O'Hair
H. Dan O'Hair is Professor in the Department of Communication at
the University of Oklahoma. His teaching and research interests include
organizational communication, health systems, risk communication, and
terrorism. He has published over seventy research articles and
scholarly book chapters in communication, health, management, and
psychology journals and volumes, and has authored and edited twelve
books in the areas of communication, business, and health. His two most
recent books, published by Praeger Publishing (2005) and Hampton Press
(in press) focus on communication and terrorism. He also serves as the
senior editor for the Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication to be
published by Erlbaum in 2007. He has supported his work with funding
from government agencies, non-profit organizations, and corporations
totaling more than $3 million. He has served on the editorial boards of
eighteen research journals and is the immediate past Editor of the
Journal of Applied Communication Research, published by the National
Communication Association. In 2006, Dr. O'Hair will serve as President
of the National Communication Association, the world's largest
professional association devoted to the scholarly study of
communication.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Dr. O'Hair. Dr. Silver.
STATEMENT OF DR. ROXANE COHEN SILVER, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THE DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
Dr. Silver. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee. My name is Roxane Cohen Silver, and it is my
pleasure to have the opportunity to appear before you today to
testify on the critical role of social science research in
disaster preparedness and response.
I am a Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior and
Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, and for the
past 25 years, I have studied how individuals adjust to
stressful life experiences, such as loss of a spouse or child,
divorce, childhood sexual abuse, and physical disability. But I
have also studied the impact of natural and manmade community
disasters over time. Almost all of my research over these years
has been funded by the National Science Foundation, including
my research on acute responses to spinal cord injury, on the
impact of the Southern California firestorms, on the impact of
the Columbine High School shootings, and most recently, on the
impact of the September 11th terrorist attacks across the
United States.
A few weeks prior to September 11, 2002, several people
told me that they heard that the psychological problems as a
result of the terrorist attacks were expected to peak around
the one year anniversary of the event. Similarly, shortly after
the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes, radio, TV, and cable
broadcasts were filling the airwaves with predictions about how
individuals and communities would fare psychologically over
time.
People hold strong assumptions about how individuals will
respond to traumatic events. Such assumptions are derived in
part from clinical lore about coping with loss and about our
cultural understanding of what we think the experience is going
to be like. Yet many of our expectations about the coping
process are wrong. How people are supposed to respond after a
trauma often stands in sharp contrast to the research data.
Much of my professional career has been spent collecting
empirical data that has enabled me to identify and challenge
what I have labeled the myths of coping with trauma. My goal
has been to understand the variety of ways people cope, to go
beyond the mere assumptions, and beyond the clinical lore, and
after conducting studies on literally thousands of participants
across a wide variety of victimizations, one conclusion that I
can draw about how people respond to traumatic life events is
that there is no one universal response. Some people will
express less distress than outsiders might expect. Others will
respond with prolonged distress, far longer that might be
judged normal under the circumstances. Few individuals respond
with an orderly sequence of stages of emotional response.
Although stage models are quite popular, they aren't accurate.
Psychological responses are mistakenly assumed to be
limited to those who are directly exposed to the trauma.
Although we saw substantial psychological effects across the
country after 9/11 among individuals who were only indirectly
exposed to the attacks via the television. The degree of
emotional response is mistakenly assumed to be proportional to
the degree of exposure. It is mistakenly assumed to be
proportional to the amount of loss, or to the proximity to the
trauma, although we have found no evidence in our data that, as
objective loss decreases, so will distress.
Finally, recovery from a trauma rarely occurs after a few
weeks or months, yet many lose patience with individuals who
are unable to get back on their feet quickly. At this point,
the data provides little data for the notion that there are
right or wrong ways to respond to a disaster, although there
are clearly different ways. Although it is very challenging to
conduct methodologically sophisticated, valid research on
coping with traumatic life events, obtaining such data is
critical. Obtaining normative data concerning adjustment
process following disasters can aid mental health providers to
recognize potential risks, and can inform the design of
psychological interventions.
Inaccurate information circulated among the public can be
devastating for the victim of a trauma. It can lead to the
self-perception that one isn't coping appropriately, that one
is going crazy, and it can lead to ineffective support
provision by one's social network. Methodologically rigorous
social science research can help inform preparation for future
disasters, including, as we just heard, how to communicate risk
and evacuation orders effectively. Empirical data can also help
identify factors that promote resilience and adjustment to
prolonged stress, uncertainty, and loss. And finally, social
science research can help policymakers understand how to shape
planning and evacuation efforts, so that they optimize both
short and long-term mental health outcomes.
The tragedies of 9/11 and the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes
have had an enormous impact on life in the U.S. As a nation, we
have an opportunity to draw lessons from these losses, so that
they make us stronger, more flexible, and more effective as
providers of support. Hopefully, one benefit of conducting
research on such disasters will be more evidence-based
predictions, and more informed, sensitive, and cost-effective
recommendations for the future.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Silver follows:]
Prepared Statement of Roxane Cohen Silver
Psychological Responses to Natural and Man-made Disasters
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Good morning. My name is Roxane Cohen Silver and it is my pleasure
to have the opportunity to appear before you today to testify on the
critical role of social science research in disaster preparedness and
response. I am a Professor of psychology and social behavior and
medicine at the University of California, Irvine. For the past 25
years, I have studied how individuals adjust to stressful life
experiences, such as loss of a spouse or child, divorce, childhood
sexual abuse, and physical disability. I have also studied the impact
of community disasters--both natural and man-made--on individuals' and
communities' psychological responses over time. Almost all of my
research over those years--on acute responses to spinal cord injury, on
the impact of the Southern California firestorms, on the impact of the
Columbine High School shootings, and most recently on the September
11th terrorist attacks--has been funded by the U.S. National Science
Foundation.
A few weeks prior to September 11, 2002, several people told me
that they ``heard'' that psychological problems as a result of the
terrorist attacks of September 11th were expected to peak around the
one-year anniversary after the event. These kinds of pronouncements
appeared on the front page of a prominent newspaper, on national media
telecasts, and from mental health ``experts.'' Similarly, shortly after
the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes, radio, television, and cable
broadcasts were filling the airwaves with predictions about how
individuals and communities would fare over time.
It is perhaps surprising that despite testimonials to the contrary,
there is relatively little empirical data on which to base predictions
about patterns of response over time following community or personal
traumas. However, after having spent over two decades conducting
research to explore how individuals cope with stressful life events, it
is not difficult for me to understand why these data are lacking.
Conducting methodologically rigorous studies of responses to traumatic
experiences is extraordinarily challenging in several important ways.
Research in the natural laboratory is very expensive, labor intensive,
and time-consuming. Obtaining external funding--particularly quick
response funding following a national or community disaster--is often
difficult, if not impossible. Obtaining samples of traumatized
populations can be challenging, and research on entire groups of
traumatized individuals is sometimes restricted. For example,
governmental and community-based agencies may serve as gatekeepers to
block access to potential respondents, even when those individuals are
eager and willing to discuss their experiences with researchers.
Institutional Review Boards are often appropriately (but sometimes
inappropriately) uncomfortable with trauma-related research. As a
result, studies tend to be conducted with small, non-representative
samples of individuals who are willing to answer sensitive questions
posed by a stranger. Many studies are conducted within clinical
settings with individuals who seek professional help for their mental
health symptoms. The conclusions drawn from these studies do not
readily generalize to the broader population. Sometimes, causal
inferences are inadvertently drawn from correlational results. Despite
the array of methodological problems that plague much of this research,
``Coping Do's and Don'ts'' are frequently espoused in the media,
without acknowledgement of the limitations of the research base from
which they are drawn.
What we do know is that people hold strong assumptions about how
individuals will respond to traumatic events. Such assumptions are
derived in part from clinical ``lore'' about coping with loss and our
cultural understanding of the experience. Yet many of our expectations
about the coping process are wrong; how people are ``supposed'' to
respond often stands in sharp contrast to the research data. Much of my
professional career has been spent collecting empirical data that has
enabled me to identify and challenge what I have labeled the ``myths''
of coping with trauma. My goal has been to understand the variety of
ways people cope--to go beyond the assumptions and beyond the clinical
``lore.'' After conducting studies on literally thousands of
participants across a wide variety of victimizations, one conclusion I
can draw about how people respond to traumatic life events is that
there is no one, universal response. Some people will express less
distress than outsiders might expect; others will respond with
pronounced distress for far longer than might have been judged
``normal'' under the circumstances.
Few individuals respond with an orderly sequence of ``stages'' of
emotional response. Many clinicians have suspected that if an
individual does not have a negative response in the early aftermath of
trauma, he or she would be at high risk for ``delayed onset'' of
psychological problems, yet empirical support for such a position has
rarely been obtained. Positive emotions are often ignored as a part of
the response to highly stressful events, yet our own research suggests
that positive emotions are quite prominent in the context of coping.
Psychological responses are mistakenly assumed to be limited to those
directly exposed to the trauma, and the degree of emotional response is
mistakenly assumed to be proportional to the degree of exposure, amount
of loss, or proximity to the trauma (e.g., as ``objective'' loss
decreases, so will distress). ``Recovery'' from trauma rarely occurs
after a few weeks or months, yet many lose patience with individuals
who are unable to get back on their feet quickly. At this point, the
data provide little support for the notion that there are ``right'' or
``wrong'' ways to respond to a stressful life event--although there are
clearly ``different'' ways. Through my research and writing, I have
maintained that we need to recognize and respect people's need to
respond to trauma in their own ways and with their own timetables.
For the past four years, I have served as the Principal
Investigator of an NSF-funded study on the September 11th terrorist
attacks on the U.S. In fact, our research team conducted the only
large-scale national longitudinal investigation of emotional,
cognitive, and social responses to the attacks. We interviewed several
thousand people repeatedly--from about two weeks after the attacks
until three years later. Our results demonstrate quite clearly that the
September 11th attacks had widespread impact across the country;
results we have obtained in our longitudinal investigation strongly
suggest that the effects of these terror attacks were not limited to
communities directly affected. In fact, we have seen fascinating cross-
community differences in response, although we are still exploring the
reasons why residents of Littleton, Colorado might have responded so
differently to the attacks when compared to residents of Miami.
Although post-traumatic stress symptoms clearly declined over the years
after the attacks, the degree of individual response was not explained
simply by the degree of exposure to or loss from the trauma. Indeed, we
have found great variability in acute and post-traumatic response among
individuals who observed the attacks directly or lived within the
directly affected communities. Moreover, a substantial number of
individuals with indirect exposure (e.g., watched the attacks on live
television or learned about them afterwards) reported symptoms both
acutely and over the year afterwards at levels that were comparable to
individuals who experienced the attacks proximally and directly.
It is also clear that one must examine other factors beyond
exposure and loss that may help explain post-traumatic distress in
response to national disasters such as the September 11th attacks. In
particular, we have found that those who had been diagnosed with mental
health difficulties (anxiety disorders, depression) prior to 9/11 were
more likely to respond to the attacks with post-traumatic stress
symptoms and higher levels of distress over time, controlling for their
levels of exposure to and loss from the attacks. The strategies people
employed to cope with the attacks and their aftermath, their prior
traumatic life experiences, and the traumas they experienced in the
intervening year post 9/11 are other important factors to help account
for the variability in response. Finally, we found that the acute
stress response to 9/11, as well as the post-traumatic stress symptom
trajectory over the year post 9/11, was a strong predictor of acute
stress response to a subsequent national stressor: the Iraq War. Thus,
our findings indicate that responses to one stressful event may be
strongly related to responses to a prior traumatic event, and suggest
that those who responded with acute distress following the 9/11 attacks
may be particularly vulnerable psychologically to subsequent terror
attacks.
We have also found effects beyond the post-traumatic stress
symptoms that are the typical focus of investigations. Many people have
reported finding unexpected positive consequences in the wake of the
attacks, such as closer relationships with family members and a greater
appreciation of the freedoms our country offers its residents. Positive
emotions and life satisfaction have also been impacted. We believe that
a narrow focus on clinical outcomes, ignoring sub-clinical levels of
reactions and decrements in positive emotions, can paint a distorted
picture of people's responses to negative events. A comprehensive
understanding of the impact of traumatic events requires considering
both negative and positive outcomes.
As I have described, conducting methodologically sophisticated,
externally valid research on coping following traumatic events is
challenging at best. However, obtaining such data is critical.
Obtaining normative information concerning the adjustment process
following trauma can aid mental health providers by pointing to
potential risk factors, and can inform the design of effective
interventions. Inaccurate information circulated in the public domain
can be devastating for the victim of a trauma--it cannot only lead to a
self-perception that one is not coping appropriately, but it can also
lead to ineffective support provision by members of one's social
network. Methodologically rigorous social science research can help
inform preparation for future disasters, including how to communicate
risk and evacuation orders effectively. Empirical data can also help
identify factors that promote resilience and adjustment to prolonged
stress, uncertainty, and loss. Finally, social science research can
help policy-makers understand how to shape planning and evacuation
efforts so that they optimize both short- and long-term mental health
outcomes of affected communities. The tragedies of 9/11 and the recent
Gulf Coast disasters have had an enormous impact on life in the United
States. Hopefully, one benefit of conducting research on such disasters
will be more evidence-based predictions and more informed, sensitive,
and cost-effective recommendations for the future.
This concludes my testimony. Thank you.
For Additional Information:
Silver, R.L., & Wortman, C.B. (1980). Coping with undesirable life
events. In J. Garber & M.E.P. Seligman (Eds.), Human
Helplessness: Theory and Applications (pp. 279-340). New York:
Academic Press.
Silver, R.C. (2002, August). Thinking Critically About Coping With
Life's Traumas. G. Stanley Hall Lecture delivered at the
American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Chicago,
IL.
Silver, R.C., Holman, E.A., McIntosh, D.N., Poulin, M., & Gil-Rivas, V.
(2002). Nationwide longitudinal study of psychological
responses to September 11. JAMA: Journal of the American
Medical Association, 288, 1235-1244.
Silver, R.C., Holman, E.A., McIntosh, D.N., Poulin, M., Gil-Rivas, V.,
& Pizarro, J. (in press). Coping with a national trauma: A
nationwide longitudinal study of responses to the terrorist
attacks of September 11th. In Y. Neria, R. Gross, R. Marshall,
& E. Susser (Eds.), September 11, 2001: Treatment, Research and
Public Mental Health in the Wake of a Terrorist Attack. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Silver, R.C., Poulin, M., Holman, E.A., McIntosh, D.N., Gil-Rivas, V.,
& Pizarro, J. (2005). Exploring the myths of coping with a
national trauma: A longitudinal study of responses to the
September 11th terrorist attacks. Journal of Aggression,
Maltreatment & Trauma, 9, 129-141. Also appeared in Y. Danieli,
D. Brom, & J. Sills (Eds.), The Trauma of Terrorism: An
International Handbook of Sharing Knowledge and Shared Care
(pp. 129-141). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.
Wortman, C.B., & Silver, R.C. (1989). The myths of coping with loss.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57, 349-357.
Wortman, C.B., & Silver, R.C. (2001). The myths of coping with loss
revisited. In M.S. Stroebe, R.O. Hansson, W. Stroebe, & H.
Schut (Eds.), Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences,
Coping, and Care (pp. 405-429). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Biography for Roxane Cohen Silver
Roxane Cohen Silver, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of
Psychology and Social Behavior and the Department of Medicine at the
University of California, Irvine. She completed her undergraduate and
graduate training in Social Psychology at Northwestern University,
Evanston, Illinois, and was on the faculty at the University of
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, before relocating to UC Irvine in 1989. A
national expert in the field of stress and coping, Dr. Silver is a
Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American
Psychological Society. In December 2003, Professor Silver was appointed
by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to the
nine-member Academe and Policy Research Senior Advisory Committee of
the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Professor Silver also serves as
Director of Graduate Affairs for the Department of Psychology and
Social Behavior, the coordinator of its doctoral program in Health
Psychology, and the co-Director of her department's NIMH Institutional
Training Grant in Social and Environmental Contexts of Adaptation.
Previously, Dr. Silver served as the Associate Dean for Research and
the Faculty Chair in the School of Social Ecology, as well as the
Associate Director of UC Irvine's Newkirk Center for Science and
Society.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Silver has studied acute and long-term
psychological and physical reactions to stressful life events such as
physical disability, death of a spouse or child, childhood sexual
victimization, divorce, family violence, war, natural disaster, and
human-caused disasters, including the Columbine High School shootings
and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Dr. Silver was recently
principal investigator of the only national longitudinal study of
responses to the September 11th attacks. The 7th wave of data
collection, marking the 3rd anniversary, was completed in fall, 2004;
the first report of this study appeared as the lead article in JAMA:
The Journal of the American Medical Association in September 2002. In
her research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation,
the National Institute of Mental Health, and the U.S. Public Health
Service (Bureau of Maternal and Child Health), Dr. Silver seeks to
identify factors that facilitate successful adjustment to stressful
life events. Her work also explores the long-term effects of traumatic
experiences, and considers how beliefs and expectations of one's social
network impact on the coping process.
Professor Silver is also a dedicated teacher and active mentor of
predoctoral and postdoctoral students. In recognition of her efforts
toward graduate and undergraduate education at UC Irvine, she has
received a number of teaching awards, including UC Irvine's 2001
Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Teaching, the 1999
Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research
(the 16th recipient in UCI's history), UC Irvine's Award for Special
Distinction in Promotion of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship, UC
Irvine's ``In Celebration of Teaching'' Awards for Excellence in
Teaching and for Undergraduate Mentoring, the Outstanding Professor
Award from the graduating Senior class on two occasions, Professor of
the Year from the Social Ecology Student Association, and several
Excellence in Teaching Awards from UC Irvine's Order of Omega
Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council.
Discussion
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Dr. Silver. Thank you all for
your testimony here this morning. Dr. O'Hair, I was very
interested in your comments about the paradox of media
coverage. It is, in particular, your reference to how fairly
quickly there was a focus on political ramifications of
Katrina. I wonder whether part of it is driven by a 24-hour
news cycle, where they have got to have something to say.
Dr. O'Hair. The CNN syndrome.
Chairman Inglis. Right. That is it. They are going all the
time, so you have got to add something new, so let us talk
about the political ramifications now. The consequences, I
would think, and this would be interesting to hear what the
rest of the panel would think about this, the consequences, it
seemed to me, would be to drive cynicism, especially if your
house has been blown away, or your life has been blown away,
and people are talking about such small things as whether so-
and-so is going to get reelected or not. It must be quite
devastating to somebody whose, literally, life has been blown
away to start talking about things like that.
But I also wonder if it is something deeper, maybe you all
can comment on this, whether it challenges our illusion of
control, that we really think we are in control, and we think
our government is in control, and then comes something bigger
than our government, and there is a real blow to our self
esteem or something, when we figure out that, you know, we can
do hurricane construction standards and things like that, we
can do evacuations, but in the end, if we have a storm surge
like Katrina, it is overwhelming, and we can have earthquake
preparations in California, and construction standards, but in
the end, when the Earth starts shaking, then there is no
government big enough to help you with the Earth shaking. And
so, there is an illusion of control, I suppose, that we realize
we don't have control at that point.
So, just see if anybody wants to comment on either the
paradox of media coverage that Dr. O'Hair was talking about, or
perhaps, this illusion of control that gets blown away with a
huge event like Katrina.
Dr. O'Hair. Often, part of the issue has to do with the
trust factor that I was talking about earlier. I mean, there is
going to be a certain level of background trust that
individuals have about a particular government entity that is
expected to have control after a disaster like that.
The threshold level of that control is going to probably
dictate to a great extent the perceptions of individuals about
the control that the government entities have, and so, that is
why we constantly reinforce the idea of building trust prior to
disasters like this, so that we raise that threshold level, and
perhaps engender more of a sense of control when it actually
happens.
Chairman Inglis. Someone else want to comment on that,
those elements?
Dr. Laska. I had written a different presentation, then
decided to stop what I was doing, and write what I have just
presented, but what it was going to be about was the degree to
which we believe we have control of nature, that it is a
flexing of human power that really is not true, so that natural
disasters are not natural. They are social, because they expose
the vulnerabilities of the society, and those vulnerabilities
are human-caused. As Dr. Cutter said, you know, when you place
large concentrations of population in places that are at risk,
surprise, you are going to get an impact that is tremendous.
So, we have to be, as a society, thinking about how we live
with the environment, not how we challenge it or control it,
and I think that is where we get into our binds, that you have
just described, Congressman.
Chairman Inglis. Dr. Cutter, you mentioned support from the
NSF, and I am very happy that yesterday, on the floor, we, in
the conference report for Science, Commerce, Justice, State
approved an increase in NSF funding. We got $5.6 billion for
next year, and that is, of course, the jurisdiction of this
committee and subcommittees. We are very thankful about that.
Tell me how the NSF funding has been helpful to you?
Dr. Cutter. NSF has been very supportive of the research
that I have done, and in my lab. The majority of my research
from NSF, however, does not come from SBE. It actually comes
through the Engineering Directorate, and it has, in fact, been
the Engineering Directorate within NSF that has supported a
large volume of social science research in this nation, and
they were the ones who provided the impetus for the second
assessment of social science research.
Now, that is not to say that SBE doesn't fund social
science research and disasters, but the majority of those in
the community are actually funded through Civil and Mechanical
Systems, as well as other programs throughout NSF, and
increasingly, the multidisciplinary programs at NSF,
particularly those that involve coupled natural and human
systems, for example, are trying to bring in the social science
element.
So, we are doing much better, I think, in the foundation,
moving beyond just SBE, but also Foundation-wide.
Chairman Inglis. My time is up. Ms. Hooley is recognized
for five minutes.
Ms. Hooley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
For any of the panelists that want to answer this. How do
we improve the translation of research results into action by
organizations with responsibilities for disaster planning? I
mean, you talked about the press. You talked about, you know,
and every community or every state, there is a disaster
planning organization. How much do they use of the research
that is available out there? Any one of you.
Dr. O'Hair. My colleague, Dr. Mike MacDonald, who has set
up the Disaster Knowledge Management System, it is basically a
collaboratory, and he is assimilating as much information as he
can from experts that range from media relations experts to GIS
experts and so forth. All of this information goes into a
collaboratory that is available for public use.
It is being targeted for specific communities that are
probably most likely going to experience the first wave of what
potentially could be a flu pandemic. And through a knowledge
management system, what he is able to do is to take otherwise
research that may be buried in journals and technical reports,
and putting it into a place that is highly searchable and
highly relevant for communities that would need to access that
type of information.
Ms. Hooley. Anyone else want to take a--Dr. Silver.
Dr. Silver. Yeah, I would like to just speak on a little
bit of a different issue, which is that in the psychological
community, and in particular, in the intervention, the
psychological intervention community, we have a competition
between the researchers and the data that the researchers
collect, and what I would like to call the for-profit trauma
industry, and there was a great deal of controversy after 9/11.
The for-profit trauma went in to companies and schools, and
said we need to do some psychological intervention right now. A
large number of researchers stood up and said there is really
no evidence for that, and so what you see is the challenge
because the researchers are often not for-profit entities, you
have the challenge of competing with individuals who are trying
to make money off of the trauma.
So, from the psychological intervention question, I would
say that there hasn't been an immediate use of the research,
but the researchers then get active and push back the non-
research-based interventions. And I think over the last five or
six years, the researchers have been very effective in
conveying what the research is all about. But it requires
individuals to write letters to the editor, call media sources,
and try to correct misrepresentations of how things are, and
part of the research that I do on myths about coping and myths
about psychological responses is geared toward trying to
correct these misperceptions that may be perpetuated by the
media.
Ms. Hooley. Okay.
Dr. Laska. Yes, I wanted to comment with regard to what you
would call the mission agencies, EPA, NOAA, HUD, the Department
of Transportation. They are starting to appreciate the
importance of the social science research on the work that they
are doing, and I would say that it costs resources, it costs
money to do this kind of research, just as it does the basic
research that Dr. Cutter was talking about. And so, I encourage
you to encourage them to have in their budgets programs funding
this kind of work, so that we can develop better the know-how,
and also, just actually do the work.
An example would be your regional EPA climate change
projects that have been funded, to examine how the stakeholders
in the different parts of the country are considering the
impacts that climate change may have on the issues that they
are dealing with.
Ms. Hooley. Dr. Cutter.
Dr. Cutter. Yes, ma'am. Also, there has been some transfer
of knowledge from the research to the practitioner community,
particularly in the emergency management community, and this
has been facilitated by an annual workshop that occurs every
July at the University of Colorado in Boulder, that brings
together the research community, State and local governments,
and federal agency personnel to talk about hazards and
disasters, and there has been quite a bit of give and take
among that small community in transferring the results of the
research into practice, but it takes a lot of effort on the
part of individual researchers who are really committed to
influencing public policy and influencing practice, and so, it
is not universally done, but those people in the community that
have an interest in doing that work very closely.
And in my case, for example, we work very closely with the
South Carolina Emergency Management Division, and assist them
in any way that we can, both with our research and practice.
Ms. Hooley. But that doesn't always happen?
Dr. Cutter. That is correct.
Ms. Hooley. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman Inglis. Mr. Gutknecht is recognized for five
minutes.
Mr. Gutknecht. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you and the staff for bringing together this really
excellent panel. This has been just fascinating for me to
listen to this, because in some respects, it just sort of fills
in some of the blanks that I have sort of been thinking about
myself.
I was down in New Orleans a few weeks ago, and one of the
questions, and I can't remember, Dr. Cutter, it may have been
you that mentioned this, one of the things that just seemed
imponderable, why so many people decided to stay in their
homes. And you mentioned their pets, which sounds a bit funny,
but when you talk to some of the folks down there, that really
is one of the reasons they didn't want to leave.
Have you explored other reasons why people chose to wait it
out? Was it a bit of machismo, or anybody want to comment on
that?
Dr. Cutter. In New Orleans specifically, or in evacuations
more generally?
Mr. Gutknecht. In evacuations more generally, or New
Orleans specifically.
Dr. Cutter. I can speak to evacuations more generally, and
then I will defer to my colleague, Dr. Laska, who can tell you
about New Orleans.
After every major hurricane evacuation, there are post-
event evacuation studies that are conducted, largely through
the Army Corps of Engineers, among others, and consistently, we
find a number of reasons why people are reluctant to evacuate.
One is clearly pets. Pets are not able to go to public
shelters, and pets are part of the family. They are not this
thing, and so, if you can't take your pet to a public shelter,
and you can't find a hotel room, and you don't have family and
friends in the area, you will stay.
Another reason is the perception of the risk, and along the
hurricane coasts, in particular, which is where most of my work
is done, people in the community are pretty savvy about
hurricanes, and they know the difference between a tropical
storm, a Category One hurricane, and a Category Two hurricane,
and if they don't feel that they are threatened, they are going
to stay, irrespective of the guidance that is coming out from
State and local officials.
So, a couple of additional ideas are the pets and the
perception of the threat. Dr. Laska, you want to----
Mr. Gutknecht. Well, if I could just say, it sounds to me
like people make much more rational decisions than sometimes,
again, the media gives them credit for.
Dr. Cutter. It seems so in hindsight. Now, at the time that
the evacuation decisions are made, we have imperfect knowledge,
because we don't know where the storm track is going, and we
don't know where landfall is going to occur, and we don't know
the strength of that storm. And so, the National Weather
Service gives us very, very good guidance, and state and local
emergency managers have a certain window when they can evacuate
the area, and normally that anywhere from 12 to 36 or more
hours in advance of those tropical force winds. And depending
on the size of the storm, you would be in a position of having
to order an evacuation 72 hours or three days before the storm,
and it is perfectly sunny outside, and you are telling people
to get out of harm's way. And so, it is a combination of the
uncertainty in the forecasting of the storm, as well as how
crowded an area is, and how long it takes it to actually get
people out of harm's way, that add to it.
In hindsight, it looks like they may have made good
decisions, but from an emergency management perspective, they
operate with a precautionary principle, and that is it is
better to be safe than it is to be sorry.
Mr. Gutknecht. Anyone else want to add to that?
Dr. Laska. Yes, I would like to. The survey that I referred
to in my presentation demonstrated that two-thirds of the
respondents feel safe in their homes in a Category Three
hurricane. Well, that is no longer the case in New Orleans,
given the loss of the coast, and at first we, of course, said
oh, shame on them, and then we realized that for 20 years, they
have been told that, that they were safe in a Category Three in
their homes, but that we now needed to have a new education
program to point out to them that that was no longer the case,
and they had to change their thinking. So, as you pointed out,
they were wise in their conclusions.
The group that I would like to mention that are of extreme
concern are those who do not have automobiles, and many of the
people who did not evacuate were that group. There are 57,000
households in Orleans Parish who do not have cars. If you
average, the two to two and a half persons per household, you
have about 125,000 people. So, it goes back to the presentation
that Dr. Cutter has made and myself on vulnerability, because
they did not have a way to evacuate individually or family-
wise, and the efforts were working toward accomplishing that,
but had not been fully accomplished to the point of the
hurricane.
Mr. Gutknecht. Could I just add to that, because I talked
to one woman down there in New Orleans, one of her elderly
neighbors had been killed in the storm, and she was almost
angry with him, because she tried on at least two separate
occasions to get him to come with them, but he said no, no, he
said I am going to be fine, and so, you know, I don't know if
it was pride or stubbornness or whatever, but as I say, I mean
her reaction was she was almost angry with him, that things
turned out the way they did.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for this hearing,
and I only hope that if anything, we can get some national
media exposure for these four witnesses, because I think
frankly, they are the kind of people that Americans need to
hear from in these kinds of circumstances.
So, thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Gutknecht. We now call on
our very own social scientist, Dr. Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to first
thank the witnesses for their testimony, and thank the Chairman
for bringing social scientists up here. I used to teach
political science, as a Professor of Political Science, so I,
you know, I could go on all day asking questions, and I think
we only have five minutes, so maybe I should probably get into
them.
All right. Well, I will start with Dr. O'Hair. Political
communications was actually one of the areas that I studied. We
may have met, actually, at the Carl Albert Center when I came
to speak there.
This is a question that I have wondered a lot about. Now, I
have an expert here to sort of fill this in. The problem of
crying wolf by the news media. Have you studied this? Have you
looked at that? Because it seems that everything now, in order
to, of course, gain ratings, get people to watch, there is a
crisis every day. Have you looked at this? Is that a problem?
Do people say, not look at real potential hazards as being that
hazardous, because they say, well, we hear this every day? We
have heard this before. There is a tenseness, and that, you
know, surprise in the voice every day.
Dr. O'Hair. There is that going on in the cognitions of
receivers of news. Part of it is the repetitiveness of
disasters, threats, and so forth. The second part of this has
to do with the extent to which people take for granted the
advances in technology, assuming that they are going to be
warned in time, and that they will have ample response time.
One of my colleagues at the National Disaster Research
Center at the University of Delaware has done some research
where they have gone to, they have gone into the field, and ask
individuals what do you do when you hear that there is a
tornado about a quarter of a mile from your home? They go
outside and look for it.
Mr. Lipinski. I hate to admit it, but that is certainly
what I do.
Dr. O'Hair. And why do you do that? Because you know that
you can probably dodge it, you want to confirm what the
technology has told you, and all of this is in the background
of their cognition that they formulate over a period of time.
So, one of the things that I think we have to do as
communicators is, and when I talk about building a community
communication infrastructure, we have to understand what a
particular community is likely to respond to. That local media
is going to be different from the community next to them, and
so, we need to develop a very specific, what I call an audience
profile. What is it that they are likely to respond to? How
often have they been warned? What do they say about the crying
wolf syndrome? And so forth, and then from there, you develop
very specific message maps that you then apply, and prior to
disasters, during disasters, and then post-disaster.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. A more general question, Dr.
Laska. I will start with you. That the CHART, the Center, how
did that originally begin, because a lot of this is about
funding, and I know as a social scientist how much pressure is
on funding, and that research tends to go where the funding is.
First of all, how did CHART begin, and are there other, similar
centers at other places?
Dr. Laska. I have been Vice Chancellor for Research for the
University for eight years, and decided that I wanted to have a
center that really tried to do what we are talking about here,
tried to apply, and I had had successes in funding. So I looked
to, as I pointed out, the mission agencies for that base of
funding, not for NSF, although I do think NSF should be
encouraged to have more programs of applied funding, in
addition to the basic. So, it is a matter of learning how to do
that draftsmanship, and we are--what we are short on, and I
think Mr. Inglis mentioned this--is that the state of the
discipline is lacking in ways to really grow the new
generation, and also, to grow research administrators. Because
as you know, you have to have people who have, who are trained
to manage centers and to find funding, and so on. And so, we
really have to work better at doing that part of the work, as
well as doing the research, once funded.
Mr. Lipinski. Well, I always want to praise the NSF, and
all the great work they do. And also, because I applied for one
NSF grant, and I received it, so I always have good things to
say about NSF. But who else is out there? Are there many other
sources that are funding this type of research, that can be
applied research, which just can really be significant to our
society?
Dr. Laska. The mission agencies, EPA, FEMA, NOAA. NOAA is
growing quite strongly in that. There is the Coastal Center in
Charleston----
Mr. Lipinski. Are they non-governmental?
Dr. Laska. Some foundations will do so, yes, but that is
our second choice, because we have been so accustomed to
applying for government grants. Also State agencies. I have
several spots of funding from the state. I assume you do, too.
Dr. Cutter. NASA as well is another----
Dr. Laska. That is right.
Dr. Cutter.--another mission agency that is increasingly
getting into hazards and disasters.
Mr. Lipinski. Anyone else have, Dr. O'Hair or Dr. Silver?
Okay, thank you.
Chairman Inglis. Mr. Sodrel is recognized for questions for
five minutes.
Mr. Sodrel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the
witnesses here today. I have, I guess, a rather mundane
question, but I would like to understand the graph that I am
looking at. Dr. Cutter, are these numbers prepared in constant
dollars? In other words, have we accounted for inflation in the
line graph, or----
Dr. Cutter. You are looking at Figure 4, on the increase in
costs of natural disasters?
Mr. Sodrel. Yes, ma'am.
Dr. Cutter. These are adjusted to 2004 dollars, and it
reflects the period from 1960 to 2003, so it doesn't include
2004, which was a very costly year for the Florida hurricanes.
Mr. Sodrel. So, it is stated in constant dollars, then.
Dr. Cutter. Uh-huh.
Mr. Sodrel. It appears that the crop damage is a lot more
constant than property damage. Could that have something to do
with just population growth in the areas that are most
susceptible to hurricanes, I mean, for example, Florida has
grown a lot since 1960. The physical possibilities may exist
the same as they did in 1960, but the number of structures and
infrastructure and people has grown considerably.
Dr. Cutter. That is exactly what is going on, that you
have, in many ways, the same level of risk or heightened level
of risk, but you have an increasing vulnerability of the
population, because you have more and more people moving into
these high hazard zones, and living close to storm inundation
areas, living in housing that is really not sufficient in high
wind conditions, such as manufactured housing, and so, your
losses are going up, as more and more people are moving into
these coastal areas.
Mr. Sodrel. Now, we had a tornado the other, well, early
morning hours, came through Indiana the other day, and
unfortunately, we don't get 72 hours notice when tornados are
coming. It is not a flood or a hurricane, where you can
accurately predict and track. When everybody went to bed, there
was no real reason to believe that the conditions favorable to
tornado creation were present. And two in the morning is about
the worst time. You can't go out and see if it is a quarter
mile away, and the first warning went off 10 minutes ahead. I
don't know if it is an appropriate question to ask here, but I
have often thought, because that is the biggest challenge in
our part of the country, is tornados, and it is not as
difficult for people if it is daytime, weekday. The real
serious problem is when it is early hours of the morning, as
this happened, about 2:00 a.m., in Vanderburgh County. I know
we have alarm clocks today that you can plug the clock in, that
will automatically figure out which time zone it is in, and
receives a signal from an offsite location. If the technology
were available where you could access a person's alarm clock,
basically turn the alarm on, and give them an audible signal,
if they could buy an alarm clock had that built into it, you
know, where you could access it from an offsite location. And
if anybody in the sciences is looking at that as an option.
Because it, then, is always the problem in our area. It is the
2:00 a.m., 1:30 a.m., 3:00 a.m., it is dark, nobody sees it
coming. You know, people are basically not awake, and they
don't have any real warning.
Dr. Cutter. The technology actually does exist, with NOAA
weather radios. If everyone in your community had a NOAA
weather radio, that would go on. The alert would go out, and it
would wake people up, and they would get out of their homes
into safer shelters. The question is making sure that everyone
has a NOAA weather radio.
Mr. Sodrel. And making sure everybody knows that, because
if I didn't know that, I am confident there are a lot of
constituents in southern Indiana that don't know that, either.
You know, so disseminating the information would be very
helpful.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the
balance of my time.
Chairman Inglis. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Melancon is
recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Melancon. I didn't really have any questions. I was
here more to listen, because I am closer to it. Dr. Laska is
from New Orleans, and I wanted to welcome her here, and I guess
if I do have a question, is where do you live in the New
Orleans area?
Dr. Laska. I live behind an earthen levy, not a flood wall,
and therefore, my house was saved.
Mr. Melancon. You in----
Dr. Laska. No, on the lakefront.
Mr. Melancon. On the lakefront.
Dr. Laska. Uh-huh.
Mr. Melancon. Oh.
Dr. Laska. I expected my house would be the first to go,
but the lakefront levees were not overtopped. The canals.
Mr. Melancon. Came through the sides, correct.
Dr. Laska. Uh-huh.
Mr. Melancon. Now, I appreciate you taking the time to come
up here, as I do all the rest of you, but from the State of
Louisiana--and I know the trauma that everybody in Louisiana
has gone through, so the insight that you bring is really
welcomed here.
Thank you. That is all I have, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Laska. Thank you.
Chairman Inglis. The gentleman yields back. Ms. Johnson is
recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I
apologize for being here late. I had to testify over on the
Senate side this morning. And I ask unanimous consent to put my
entire testimony into the record. I want----
Chairman Inglis. Without objection.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Dr. Laska, you worked at the
University of New Orleans, and I think it was severely damaged.
Is it?
Dr. Laska. That is correct.
Ms. Johnson. Did your background come into play, and assist
many of the people that were also affected by the hurricane?
Dr. Laska. Yes, we have a FEMA-funded project called the
Disaster Resistant University, and that is one, if you were
asking questions of where sources of funding are. And we were
in the process of developing a mitigation plan for the
university. So now, of course, we have shifted gears, and we
are assisting them with making an assessment of their disaster
impact, so that they can apply for mitigation funding, as part
of the HMGP.
We also offered the faculty and staff of the university and
students to ask us questions with regard to their damaged
homes, so that they would know more about FEMA and how they
should respond. So, those are two activities that the Center
did do for the university.
Ms. Johnson. Will you now see--I guess a lot of people you
have not seen. I see a lot of them in Dallas, Texas, and it is
clear that psychological support is needed. Has that been made
available to people who are now in New Orleans?
Dr. Laska. Dr. Silver, would you like to comment on that?
Dr. Silver. I don't know what is going on in New Orleans
right now. I know that the Red Cross was involved immediately
after, but I don't know what psychological services are going
on right now in New Orleans.
Dr. Laska. Not only the Red Cross, but also FEMA has mental
health specialists who are provided to communities post-
disaster, to assist. I trust that that is the case. I do not
have any personal experiences with that.
Ms. Johnson. Yes, we received quite a few in Dallas, and
medical schools paired up with the FEMA people. FEMA got there
a few days late, but they incorporated that into the other
approaches that they had to make. But some of the support is
needed for a very long time to come, and has that been taken
into consideration with your research, that it might be
emphasized, the long-term nature of some of that support, even
on an outpatient basis?
Dr. Laska. We are very concerned with that, with regard to
the rebuilding of this community, because each family must
grapple--they are displaced, as you point out. They are far and
wide. Their home is totally just destroyed. They are having to
try to make decisions as to whether to rebuild it back. People
are living--my associate director has nine family members in
her home. They have been together, nine people through seven
weeks, and how one can cope with that, and still be thinking
about their employment, and be thinking about the larger
picture of the city's recovery, to me is just going to be a
remarkable feat. And it will require strong mental condition,
and as you point out, it is going to be very challenging for
people to be able to think clearly about all these challenges
that they face.
Dr. Silver. Can I just speak to that one issue? The
challenge is that there has not been a lot of research on long-
term effects. What happens is that if there is research, it--
the funding ends relatively soon after the trauma. So, for
example, I followed individuals for three years after 9/11, but
we know that three years is not quite long enough for most
individuals. These kinds of traumas will impact them for the
rest of their lives. So, to some degree, we are operating
without the research base.
Nonetheless, we do know that these kinds of events impact
individuals really for the rest of their lives in all sorts of
ways. The challenge really is to figure out what is the most
effective and appropriate intervention, and whether or not it
should occur six weeks later, 18 weeks later, six months later.
One other point I want to make. You say seven weeks, and I
think, as a psychologist, I understand seven weeks is a very
short period of time. But frankly, our country does not really
acknowledge how long things take to adjust to. And so, you
know, to some degree, Katrina is old news, in terms of the
impact in the media. We have moved on to the flu pandemic. We
move on, and individuals point out that they need services.
They want to talk a lot longer than other people want to
listen, and that these events have impact a lot longer than
others acknowledge.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. You are right. We have not accepted
the mental health as any other aspect of health, and we are
still struggling with trying to get that recognized here. And I
would hope that your research would undergird some of the need
to see mental health and psychological effects of disasters and
what have you, need as much attention, perhaps even more
attention, than physical health.
Thank you.
Chairman Inglis. The gentlelady's time has expired. Mr.
Lucas is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. O'Hair, let us step back for a moment to the paradox
issue you have brought up in the media. In your observations
down through the years, has this paradox situation, both the
good and the bad side, has this become--has the paradox become
more pronounced, less pronounced? How would you, as a social
scientist, of course, you look at long-term periods of time.
How would you describe the paradox?
Dr. O'Hair. In 2005, you mean?
Mr. Lucas. Compared to 9/11, compared to the Murrah
Building in 1995, compared to Jack Kennedy's assassination in
1963. I mean, how has the media in recent decades, how has this
paradox become more pronounced, less pronounced, does it vary
from tragedy to tragedy?
Dr. O'Hair. I think there is a great deal of variability.
What was--what struck some media critics so profoundly about
the other side of this, the side where they are actually
providing support and comfort and companionship, is that it was
very pronounced. People were surprised that the media would get
that involved in the personal lives of individuals. They became
caught up in the emotionality of the situation.
So, whether or not we can track whether or not this, that
side of it has actually increased. It is probably difficult to
know and to understand, and this may be the place that we
benchmark it, and begin to understand whether or not they are
serving both those roles. Also, one other thing about the
media. It is in my written statement. I didn't have time to
talk about it here, that surprisingly, the media are some of
the most unprepared members of the disaster response array of
members. There was a simulation done a few years ago just after
9/11, of putting them into a simulated environment, along with
other first responders and so forth, these individuals of the
team were the most fearful, the most stressed, and the most
unprepared going into the simulation. So, that is why we argue
that the media needs lots of education, and they need lots of
training, and they need to be folded into the team that is
going to be responding and mitigating to these crises, and I
think if we do that, you will find the paradox to actually
increase.
I don't think there is anything we are going to be able to
do about the cynicism. What I would hope to see is that we will
begin to see that they are humans after all, and that they are
performing that very important function of comforting and
companionship.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Dr. O'Hair. Dr. Silver, you commented
on the unique psychological nature of each and everyone, and
how we all respond to these kind of events, and before 9/11,
before the hurricanes, a decade ago now, when the Murrah
Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, Dr. O'Hair, in territory,
my district office was, at that time, a block and a half away.
Redistricting has taken me out of Oklahoma County, so I am not
in the community any more, that wondrous thing that is
redistricting, but I still work with, and I have contacts with
my fellow federal employees, people who were in the area, and
even a decade after, clearly there is still a huge impact on
the people who were affected by the loss of loved ones, co-
workers who were there that day. I suppose some would say in
Oklahoma City, because of the nursery and the loss of infants,
because of a variety of other issues, perhaps it just might
have been more stressful, but a decade out, we still face
challenges.
Based on your comments and my observations, these
challenges may last for the rest of the lives of some of my
fellow Oklahomans?
Dr. Silver. I believe that negative life events impact
individuals, in many cases, for the rest of their lives. That
does not mean that they don't continue on with their lives. It
doesn't mean that they don't go forward effectively
functioning, in many cases, can experience joy, positive
emotions. It just means that our notions of what recovery from
these events is has been very narrow. It is not that people
just forget the loss of their loved ones. It is not that people
close the event and forget about it, and so, I think to the
extent to which we can reevaluate what it means to
psychologically adjust to these kinds of traumas, it does
require some education, some realignment of what it means to
experience these events, and continue on with one's life.
We will see after Katrina, there will be tens of thousands
of individuals who will be affected for the rest of their
lives. Will they shut down? Will they be ineffective
contributors to their world? No, I don't think so. Individuals
are far more resilient than we give them credit for, and in
fact, what we saw after 9/11 was that there was not enormous
psychopathology. It is just that the normal response to an
abnormal stressor needs to be reevaluated, and we need to
realize that going on with life means experiencing these kinds
of traumas and dealing with them, adjusting to them.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Inglis. I would be happy to recognize Ms. Hooley
for an additional question.
Ms. Hooley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Silver, we just
had a plan put out for the threat of pandemic flu. Do you think
there was enough attention paid to the social and behavioral
sciences in that plan, and do you think there should be, if
there hasn't been enough attention paid to that? Because I
think there will be, I mean, I think this will be a situation
that we are going to need all the help we can get.
Dr. Silver. I do know that there are a handful of
individuals, social scientists, who have been involved, and
their opinions have been solicited on these programs. In fact,
I know that there is a meeting going on, I believe it is today,
in San Francisco, where social scientists are working on the
issues of the avian flu. But I certainly think that the
challenge is identifying who the real experts are, and
involving them in a way that makes, that facilitates their
contributions. I think that social science has been
underappreciated and under-recognized and underfunded on these
kinds of experiences.
Terrorism is a psychological event, and yet, most of the
funding since 9/11 has not been on the psychological aspects of
terrorism. It has been on figuring out better ways to screen
people at an airport, or to screen containers as they come in,
and yet, the psychological effects of terrorism have been
acknowledged but underfunded, in terms of the research.
Ms. Hooley. Anyone else want to comment on this?
Dr. Silver. Let me state one other issue, aside from being
underfunded. The mechanism for getting research funding out to
researchers quickly has been a big problem. I think one of the
reasons why the National Science Foundation has been such--why
we have seen individuals here who have had their funding from
the National Science Foundation, is because they have a
mechanism for quick response funding, but very few other
federal agencies have such a mechanism. For example, the
National Institute of Mental Health does not have the ability
to provide funding to researchers quickly after a trauma, or
after a disaster. And that would be something that I think
should be enhanced.
Ms. Hooley. Do you know of any money specifically for
research for this issue?
Dr. Silver. For which issue, for----
Ms. Hooley. For a pandemic.
Dr. Silver. On the flu?
Ms. Hooley. Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Silver. Should there be?
Ms. Hooley. Thank you very much for taking your time. I
appreciate it.
Chairman Inglis. One last question for you. Any advice on
how to avoid an over-response? In the 2001 anthrax attacks here
in Washington, as I understand it, they were, in one emergency,
1,100 people, 1,100 false reports from people turned out to be
checked out, 1,100 of them, they were all false reports. I am
not sure you call those false reports, negative, in other
words, they tested negative, they were not exposed to anthrax.
Maybe that is an over-response. I suppose it is an over-
response. It is sort of like from Graniteville, you know,
people leaving beyond where the chlorine was going. Any
thoughts about how the people involved in emergency response
can contain the response, so that it doesn't become an over-
response?
Dr. Silver. I would like to speak to that. I see these
events as communications failures, rather than seeing the
individuals who have responded in this way as somehow crazy or
not getting it, I would rather indicate that there was
something about the way in which the risk was communicated that
was inaccurate, and that those kinds of communications, if
delivered properly, from individuals who are trusted, would
have led to lack of what you would call overreaction.
There is a notion that some people call it ``the worried
well,'' and I don't like that term, because it implies that
there is something psychologically inappropriate about the way
they are responding. In many ways, they may be responding quite
accurately, by virtue of the fact that the information that
they have been given has been confusing or has been
inaccurately delivered.
Dr. O'Hair. That is one of the reasons why we continue to
push for a more idiosyncratic approach to communities, because
you have to understand this was right after 9/11, and there was
a heightened sensitivity to this context. As a result of that,
the message should have matched the sensitivity that was in
that environment at the time, but instead, it was probably just
a normal kind of risk message that was sent out. Had 9/11 not
preceded this particular situation, you might have seen a very
different kind of response.
Dr. Silver. And that was actually in Washington. Let me say
that in Irvine, California, which is quite far from any
problem, the police department indicated that they were getting
between five and ten calls a day from individuals who wanted
their mail checked out, because they feared anthrax. So again,
I see this as a communication failure, as opposed to something
wrong with the individuals who were experiencing that anxiety.
Dr. Laska. I would connect your question to Mr. Lucas: We
have environmental journalists. They have their own
organization. I am sure it is part of the subgroup that Dr.
O'Hair is affiliated with, but we don't have disaster
journalists, because disasters are scattered, so you don't have
on staff someone who is your disaster specialist. Now, in
Louisiana, we do, because we have so many, but in general, it
means that a general reporter has to come up to speed, and it
is a challenge. It is a challenge for a newspaper to have
someone be able to do so. We have some journalists who come to
Boulder when we are there talking about these things, but I
really think that it is the challenge that when this happened,
we got calls and calls and calls, to the point where we had to
say, no, stop. But most of them were very lengthy
conversations, because the reporter knew almost nothing about
the topic, and therefore, had to use our time, you know, before
they had a grasp of it. So, that is, to support Dr. Silver and
Dr. O'Hair, the same kind of issue as the lack of knowledge on
the part of the media, and therefore, they participate in a way
that is not constructive.
Dr. Cutter. There is also an issue with personal
experience, and a person's individual experience with threat
agents makes a difference in their response. Very few people
have experience with a chlorine spill. Very few people have
experience with potential, or a nuclear power plant accident,
with a bombing at the Murrah Building, with anthrax. And so, in
the absence of that experience, they rely on the risk
information that they are getting, so it becomes a
communication problem. People living in coastal areas, by and
large, have some experience with natural events, floods and
hurricanes, and so, they rely more on their ability to
synthesize the array of information they are getting, and in
many ways, they become their own little individual decision
makers, and don't necessarily rely on a lot of the risk
information that is coming out from public officials. So,
personal experience is also a big factor.
Chairman Inglis. Thank you to the panel. I appreciate your
comments, Dr. Cutter, Dr. Laska, Dr. O'Hair, and Dr. Silver. I
appreciate you being here, and I appreciate the Members of the
Subcommittee participating. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix:
----------
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Susan L. Cutter, Carolina Distinguished Professor and
Director, Hazards Research Lab, University of South Carolina
Questions submitted by Representative Darlene Hooley
Q1. From the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 through the creation
and evolution of FEMA, the top-down, command and control approach has
been the model used in crafting emergency plans. What has social
science research revealed about the effectiveness of top-down, command
and control paradigm in meeting the challenges posed by disasters? Is
there a better approach, and how might it work?
A1. The command and control works well in military applications and
less well in civil emergencies as pointed out by many social
scientists.\1\ The top-down approach ignores two fundamental premises
of civilian emergencies: 1) People are individual decision-makers and
will take actions that they perceive are in the best interests of their
family; and 2) All disasters are local and it is the local first
responders who are most familiar with the community and closest to the
response. First responders have the knowledge of local resources,
community structures, transportation, and what needs to be done. Local
plans need to be nested within larger state plans that are then nested
within the Federal Response Plan. Command and control is useful as an
organizing and reporting principle and certainly important in terms of
communications. However, when the disaster occurs, organizational
structures that are flexible and adaptive and accommodate the actions
of residents, rather than completely rigid or hierarchical
organizations like command and control work best during the response
phase.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Dynes, R.R., E.L. Quarantelli, and G.A. Kreps. 1981. A
Perspective on Disaster Planning. Newark, DE: University of Delaware,
Disaster Research Center (3rd ed., originally published in 1972);
Dynes, R.R., 1994. ``Community emergency planning: False assumptions
and inappropriate analogies,'' International Journal of Mass
Emergencies and Disasters 12: 141-158.
Q2. Some have argued that FEMA, as part of the Department of Homeland
Security, is hamstrung by a command and control mentality that is ill-
suited to the realities of disasters. Do you agree with this
assessment? Does social science research support the view that there is
a fundamental problem in the way the federal government is organized
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
for dealing with disasters?
A2. Yes. During the 1990s, FEMA made significant organization advances
in integrating preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation (the
phases of the disaster cycle) in all its activities. After September
11th and with its organizational move into DHS, the focus had
dramatically shifted to command and control (the military and law-
enforcement model) and the development and distribution of surveillance
and protective technologies to thwart the impacts of terrorist events.
This was due to two factors: 1) most of the leadership at DHS comes out
of the law enforcement community as well as the National Laboratories
and lack formal training and experience in emergency management; and 2)
a fundamental lack of understanding about how people, communities, and
organizations prepare for and respond to disasters. Preparedness
resources for local communities were equipment-driven and specific to
one threat agent, not planning oriented for ``all hazards.''
Vulnerability reduction was oriented toward hardening the
infrastructure, not helping communities to develop mitigation
strategies to reduce their vulnerabilities and improve their resiliency
before the event occurred. In fact, mitigation has almost disappeared
within the agency.
Response to disasters requires partnerships and cooperation across
all levels of government with everyone pulling in the same direction.
Flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing conditions during the
response are essential. The current administrative structure is not
conducive to that approach. FEMA needs to be an independent cabinet
level-agency charged with coordinating the Federal Response to
disasters. It needs to have oversight on all phases of the emergency
management system (preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation). The
social science research supports this conclusion.
Q3. A significant share of federal support for disaster related
behavioral and social science research comes from the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Does this distort the research
priorities in these fields in an inappropriate way?
A3. Yes, I believe it has. While much of the research funded under
NEHRP has not been earthquake-specific, but more broadly based in an
``all hazards'' perspective, it has driven the research priorities in
the community for more than forty years. There are many unanswered
scientific questions in the disasters field that would benefit from a
broader base of funding and support. The forthcoming National Research
Council report, ``Disasters Research in the Social Sciences,'' provides
recommendations, which if implemented, will go a long way towards
enhancing social and behavioral science research in ``all hazards.''
Questions submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Q1. The 2003 Office of Science and Technology report, ``Reducing
Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and Technology,'' identified six
important areas for attention, including ``expand[ing] risk
communication capabilities, especially public warning systems and
techniques.'' The report recommends investment in social and behavioral
science dimensions of public response to information and education
campaigns. Are you aware of any increases in federal funding to address
this recommendation? Is adequate research underway in this area?
A1. I am not aware of any increases in federal funding to address this
recommendation, or any other recommendation from that report. There is
considerable social science expertise on risk communication and public
response to warnings, but it is diffuse and chronically under funded.
For example, there is a substantial body of research on how the public
responds to various types of hazards warning advisories, but we know
very little about how risk perceptions and response vary among minority
and ethnic populations in the country, especially those living in urban
areas. More research is also needed on how the media frame risk
information and communicate threats and warning to the public and the
public's perception of the credibility of the source and the
information they receive.
In June 2005, the Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction published
their ``Grand Challenges for Disaster Research.'' \2\ This provides the
blueprint for federal investments in disaster vulnerability through
improvements in community resilience. The six grand challenges are:
provide hazard and disaster information where and when it is needed;
understand the natural processes that produce hazards, develop hazard
mitigation strategies and technologies; recognize and reduce
vulnerability of interdependent critical infrastructure; assess
disaster resilience using standard methods; and promote risk-wise
behavior. I'm not aware of increases in funding, and in fact, many of
the mission agencies have received cuts in their budgets, precluding
any new initiatives for the near future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction, 2005. Grand Challenges for
Disaster Reduction. National Science and Technology Council, Committee
on Environment and Natural Resources. June 2005, 21 pp.
Q2. The Administration last week released a plan to respond to the
threat of pandemic flu. Do you believe the Administration's plan
reflects sufficient attention to the social/behavioral factors that
would be associated with public reaction to a pandemic situation and
that should be incorporated into preparedness and response plans? Are
you aware of whether behavioral and social scientists had a substantial
role in developing this pandemic strategy? What areas of behavioral and
social science research associated with other types of disasters would
have particular relevance to this strategy. An specifically, in what
areas do you feel the plan is deficient with regard to social science
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
research or any other research activities?
A2. I have not read the plan so I can't comment on it. I also don't
know whether behavioral and social scientists had any substantial role
in developing the pandemic strategy, or whether any social or
behavioral science research was used.
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Shirley Laska, Professor, Environmental Sociology;
Director, Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and
Technology, University of New Orleans
Questions submitted by Representative Darlene Hooley
Q1. From the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 through the creation
and evolution of FEMA, the top-down, command and control approach has
been the model used in crafting emergency plans. What has social
science research revealed about the effectiveness of the top-down,
command and control paradigm in meeting the challenges posed by
disasters? Is there a better approach, and how might it work?
A1. Social science research has revealed that the Command and Control
approach has several ``problems'' that prevent it from being as
beneficial as all of the investment in it suggests. First, such an
approach of tight control is not one with which most agencies are
accustomed; it is not what is used on a daily basis. Thus, the
procedures are unfamiliar and require training and drilling in
hypothetical cases in order for the organizations to implement it well.
What has been found in the FEMA implementation experience with regard
to mitigation is that anything (processes, procedures) that are only
done occasionally are not done well. Funding and time commitment to
drill organizational procedures wane after any new management principle
is introduced and thus the benefits that were identified when the idea
was fresh and new diminish.
The other finding that is relevant goes back to the military in
WWII as well as has been found in disaster research up to and including
9/11: Much of the initial response to a catastrophe is done
``informally'' by those who are at the scene immediately when the event
occurs, i.e., victims helping victims. The response is ad lib, informal
and benefits from multiple person capacity to ``think on one's feet''
rather than to merely take orders bureaucratically. We have been told
that such ability on the part of the American forces on D-Day brought
the more rigid German ``command and control'' system down. The same
positive outcome is being studied in depth right now with NSF funding
that occurred in 9/11 with the ``boat brigade'' going back and forth
across the Hudson River rescuing people and taking supplies. It was a
remarkable response that did not benefit from command and control
structure.
I personally appreciate the utility of a clear decision-making
process supported by quality expertise in the various roles required.
It is just another ``stretch'' to a format that is so tightly in a
military format when the uncertain, unanticipated factors cannot be
specifically drilled for in that structure. The opposite model is a
generalist who can multi-task, or considering the definition of
``resiliency,'' have the ability to adapt in small increments in
different ways as the situation warrants. This approach, even with well
trained experts, may be the better way to respond.
Q2. Some have argued that FEMA, as part of the Department of Homeland
Security, is hamstrung by a command and control mentality that is ill-
suited to the realities of disasters. Do you agree with this
assessment? Does social science research support the view that there is
a fundamental problem in the way the Federal Government is organized
for dealing with disasters?
A2. I have already answered the first part of the question in #1. My
answer to the second follows. I have worked with FEMA for 20 years on
numerous projects. I would not say that command and control is the most
significant problem. The core of the problem is that Homeland Security
issues have overtaken other risks. I believe that they have done so for
ideological and economic benefit reasons, just as I have described in
the following question about earthquakes. The risks are seen as very
real and threatening because they are ``fresh'' in the minds of the
society; and, there are opportunities to develop technologies, training
skills and research to support the society's ability to respond, i.e.,
to profit from the event. While there is no doubt that there is a
homeland security risk, other risks continue to exist and they cannot
be ignored as if in doing so they will go away. FEMA has been
emasculated because of the lack of appreciation of the Homeland
Security specialists about natural hazards and thus their inability to
appreciate the potential impact that a catastrophic natural disaster
can have on the American society. There needs to be a balance in
responding to the risks of the society. There also needs to be a
recognition that the society must commit to reduce risks through
mitigation (one of FEMA's key roles before it was eliminated from their
charge) rather than merely to respond if the catastrophe occurs. Our
society can no longer stridently allow our citizens and our
organizations to challenge nature rather than adapt our behavior to
nature. We do not have the economic surplus to continue to do so. For
these reasons we need a robust FEMA. Since Katrina we have not seen
movement by the administration to improve this situation. It is
imperative that we do so.
Q3. A significant share of federal support for disaster related
behavioral and social science research comes from the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Does this distort the research
priorities in these fields in an inappropriate way?
A3. Yes, and that happened in the same way that the Homeland Security
``over'' emphasis happened. After the Northridge earthquake, the
political process and the tendency for our society to hop from the risk
of previous concern to the most recent one, pushed funds that way. It
also happens because the event opens up business, research and
bureaucratic opportunities and the political process facilitates this
push. The NEHRP requires interdisciplinary research. I wholeheartedly
endorse interdisciplinary research and believe that the only way to
push researchers to learn how to do it is to require it, but only when
it makes sense. There are differences among disaster drivers that
require different research questions that should be asked in one
research discipline at a time, not always in an interdisciplinary way.
Q4. In your testimony, you point to articles you and others published
prior to Hurricane Katrina that accurately predicted many of the
outcomes from that disaster. Why do you believe this prior knowledge
was not acted upon? What are the barriers to, as you put it in your
statement, having such research findings ``valued'' by organizations
and policy-makers?
A4. Whew, I wish I had the research completed to answer you fully.
Thank you for asking. Environmental/risk sociologists Lee Clarke at
Rutgers (new book on worst cases) and Steve Kroll-Smith at the
University of North Carolina-Greensboro (several books on environmental
risk response) are joining me on the research project which asks that
question. My quick answers from the preliminary research findings
include: competing interests in society (other activities more
important to leaders to spend $$$ on); belief that the event won't
happen on ``my watch''; ability of culture to dismiss risks that have
lower probabilities; ability in general for human psyches to dismiss
risk; Louisiana being low on the national ``totem pole'' of states and
thus its risks not attended to; technical jargon of warnings ``going
over the heads'' of those who needed to hear; belief that scientists
were giving the warnings in order to receive more research funding. I
hope in about a year to have completed research that will contribute to
answering this question.
Given the threat of climate change/global warming, it is imperative
that we learn the answer to this question and find ways to overcome the
resistance because the Gulf Stream may turn south (converting the
northeast U.S. and Europe into another Ice Age) before we get a grip on
this challenge. What amazes me as a social scientist is that our
society is so good, advanced, at doing some things but others are a
challenge way beyond what we would expect given our ``modern''
organizational capacity. Katrina certainly was (is). Remarkable failure
and the decisions that led to it were simple, everyday ones, nothing
monumental, like Chuck Perrow's work on ``Normal Accidents'' describes.
Dismissal of Vicksburg Corps office's challenge about the soft soils
into which the flood walls were driven and no communication between the
local agency and the Corps when residents reported the flood walls
leaking i.e., no attentiveness to risk impacts.
Questions submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Q1. The 2003 Office of Science and Technology Policy report,
``Reducing Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and Technology,''
identified six important areas for attention, including ``expanding
risk communication capabilities, especially public warning systems and
techniques.'' The report recommends investment in social and behavioral
science dimensions of public response to information and education
campaigns. Are you aware of any increases in federal funding to address
this recommendation? Is adequate research underway in this area?
A1. I'm sorry I don't have an answer to this question. I believe it was
answered in the testimony by the specialist on risk communication.
Q2. The Administration last week released a plan to respond to the
threat of pandemic flu. Do you believe the Administration's plan
reflects sufficient attention to the social/behavioral factors that
would be associated with public reaction to a pandemic situation and
that should be incorporated into preparedness and response plans? Are
you aware of whether behavioral and social scientists had a substantial
role in developing this pandemic strategy? What areas of behavioral and
social science research associated with other types of disasters would
have particular relevance to this strategy? And specifically, in what
areas do you feel the plan is deficient with regard to social science
research or any other research activities?
A2. I can only address the one aspect of generalizability of findings
from other research: to the prospect of the pandemic flu. While each
risk/hazard has its unique qualities, none is so unique as to not be
informed by research on others. The uncertainty of occurrence, the
quickness with which we will have to respond if the event does occur,
the reluctance of the society (world) to take necessary steps because
it might not happen (like reluctance to evacuate because it could be a
false alarm) are all similar to other hazards.
Thank you for inviting me to comment further on this topic.
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by H. Dan O'Hair, Chairman, Department of Communications,
University of Oklahoma
Questions submitted by Representative Darlene Hooley
Q1. From the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 through the creation
and evolution of FEMA, the top-down, command and control approach has
been the model used in crafting emergency plans. What has social
science research revealed about the effectiveness of the top-down,
command and control paradigm in meeting the challenges posed by
disasters? Is there a better approach, and how might it work?
A1. A substantial number of social science researchers challenge the
notion of a top-down command and control approach to disasters. A
notable exception to this assertion is the 9/11 Commission Report
suggesting that this type of approach operated somewhat effectively at
the Pentagon on that fateful day primarily due to the Incident Command
System that overcame difficulties in coordinating the response efforts
of local, State and federal agencies. Beyond that example, most reports
by government and independent organizations have taken issue with a
command and control paradigm that pervades many response agencies, FEMA
being the most visible. The federal approach to disaster prevention,
preparation, response and mitigation faces a number of challenges that
are becoming more salient each year. First, disaster response scrutiny
by the public reached a fever pitch following Katrina. The public has
expressed its concern with the ineffectiveness of command and control
approaches that lack competent inter-organizational communication.
Second, media coverage and editorializing before, during, and after
disasters will only become more prominent. Response organizations must
engage in strategic relationship management with the media prior to
disasters to develop the type of working relationships so necessary
during these catastrophic events. The command and control approach
offers less of chance for making that type of partnership work. Third,
information and communication management will become more complex as
advances in technology outstrip human capacity to assimilate
information. Information overload is difficult to manage from a command
and control perspective. Fourth, the convolution of preparedness and
response organizations and especially networks of organizations that
join the disaster response will only grow in numbers resulting in a
complex array of meta-networks. A top-down approach has a tendency to
isolate organizations and networks, especially NGOs who do not perceive
and recognize all jurisdictional policies. So, yes, there is a
fundamental problem in the way the Federal Government is organized for
dealing with disasters. The GAO has issued numerous reports
recommending approaches that are more localized and efficient. Based on
social scientific research we have our own ideas about how disasters
can be more effectively managed that will be outlined in the following
sections.
As to the alternatives, the social and behavioral sciences are
documenting the utility of several social and behavioral phenomenon
that provide us with significant emerging models to supplement, if not
replace entirely command and control. We have a bias toward a
Community-Communication Infrastructure Model that was briefly outlined
in my testimony and prepared statement and mentioned again in the
response to Congressman Johnson's first question. Other alternatives we
prefer have now been demonstrated as improving outcomes in several
natural disasters as ``emergent phenomenon.'' By emergent phenomenon,
we mean that they emerged seemly spontaneously by people as best they
could with new technologies to successful address the situation at
hand. In many cases, ``smartswarms'' (or in other words, non-
controlled, non-hierarchical social networks) have outperformed command
and control models and then were successfully replicated, where command
and control systems continued to fail.
The key attributes of these self-emergent alternatives that make
them superior to a solely centrally-designed, top down, command and
control model, are the following:
1) Flexibility through a massively parallel system of action,
data collection and democratization of the production of
knowledge (in some ways mimicking the non-controlled system
characteristics of a free market economy or the Internet),
2) Better open knowledge sharing, especially regarding
mission critical failures and the most vulnerable parts of the
community and emergency management system;
3) Rapid response enabled by robust advanced communication
resilient during disaster conditions;
4) Encourage situational awareness for all members of the
society;
5) Encourage informed collective response by all members of
the society, including but not limited to professional
responders;
6) Overcome innate or institutionalized helplessness;
7) Engage early to partner with the most vulnerable portions
of the society to ensure their health and safety by engaging
local advocates well-prepared to act on behalf of those who can
not help themselves under emergency conditions;
8) Create a common operating picture shared among all members
of the society;
9) Constantly strive for more effective communication and
operational effectiveness across sectoral and intergovernmental
boundaries, even when bureaucracies seemly dictate
institutional inaction and conflict;
10) Focus on rapidly addressing mission critical gaps between
need and service delivery;
To illustrate these characteristics in the context of newly
emerging systems, I will focus on one initiative's efforts to innovate
beyond traditional command and control systems. The National Disaster
Risk Communication Initiative (NDRCI), an ad hoc coalition of top risk
communicators, technologists and social and behavioral scientists from
key federal agencies, State agencies, private sector, universities, and
large national non-profits, has debriefed on the mission critical
failures in all large emergent events since 9/11. The NDRCI has built
an alternative model to be incorporated in the characteristics above.
It is built around a free, open source Disaster Knowledge Management
System platform with an inter-operable systems architecture that is far
more flexible, scalable, extensible, and rapidly replicable than any
currently being used by Federal Governments, with the possible
exception of experimental systems in the Department of Defense and the
intelligence community. The NDRCI's Disaster Knowledge Management
System is more a self-evolving social network that incorporates an
upgraded, more flexible, better informed command and control model as a
portion of a non-controlled Resilience Network system. Rather than
replacing FEMA's command and control system in its entirety, it is
wrapped into a more comprehensive model, better adapted to the kinds of
emergent, large-scale social crises we anticipate potentially
challenging our society in the early to mid-part of the 21th Century.
The all hazards Disaster Knowledge Management System platform was
originally designed as a rapidly replicable model to specifically
address the shortcomings identified in Florida hurricanes of 2004. It
then was packaged into a proposal for FEMA to be piloted as a rapidly
replicable National model field tested as ``MAHRN''--Mid-Atlantic
Hurricane Resilience Network. There was no uptake by FEMA during 2005,
even though MARHN would have been perfectly adapted to prepare for and
respond to conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita. Although
FEMA did not fund it, some of its ideas were incorporated into NOAA and
FEMA social and behavioral research plans for year 2006. It addition,
its model was then funded by the Jonas Salk Foundation and an insurance
company called CSA and developed as a feasibility pilot in the Indian
Ocean tsunami disaster areas following the Boxing Day earthquake.
The Disaster Knowledge Management System (DKMS) is now in a phase
II experimental pilot phase, partially sponsored by Global Health
Initiatives, the United Nations University, and small non-profit
organizations. Its spin-off Resilience Networks (http://
ResilienceNetworks.info/) are now being architected for rapid
replication in many metropolitan and rural areas (e.g., Gulf Coast
communities, New Orleans, San Francisco Bay Area, National Capital
Region, Southwestern Pennsylvania, Boston, San Diego, Hawaii, Miami,
Chicago) in a series of experiments to test the model in different
conditions around the country. Below is a simple schematic that
describes the current hurricane centric model proposed for the post-
Katrina Gulf Coast disaster areas, with a special emphasis on the most
impacted and vulnerable portions of the Gulf Coast communities and New
Orleans.
Q2. Some have argued that FEMA, as part of the Department of Homeland
Security, is hamstrung by a command and control mentality that is ill-
suited to the realities of disasters. Do you agree with this
assessment? Does social science research support the view that there is
a fundamental problem in the way the federal government is organized
for dealing with disasters?
A2. Unfortunately, we have had a series of natural experiments
recently, with emergent conditions likely to reoccur, which
demonstrated that FEMA failed to meet our current societal expectations
of federal emergency response. Although perhaps living up to the
parameters for which it was originally institutionalized in the 1950s,
FEMA is no longer meeting the preparedness, response, and recovery
expectations of the American people a half century later. This should
not be a surprise in a nation that has in the meantime put a man on the
Moon and birthed the computer revolution. The United States is a
culture of innovation that strives toward excellence and engages
evolutionary improvements to fix problems where societal institutions
are sub-optimizing. It is now being demanded that our nation's concept
of emergency management live up to the challenges that we are likely to
face in the 21st century, which are already proving to be quite
different in nature, scope and scale than what FEMA is currently
designed to address.
It is not so much that FEMA's command and control system has to be
replaced in entirety by something else. FEMA's command and control
system, in fact, accomplishes tremendous feats of rapidly moving
federal financial resources, human resources and material in
emergencies in ways that remain pertinent going forward. It is more the
case, that we now know, that in itself FEMA's current command and
control model is insufficient. From the schematic above we can see that
in addition to its command and control system, FEMA (or some other
entity that incorporates FEMA, such as DHS) needs to continue FEMA's
command and control activities within a more complete system of
societal resilience. This means that in addition to a constant
iterative improvement of the command and control function, the larger
resilience system enables all levels of society to prepare, respond,
relieve, recover, and mitigate in a massively parallel and flexible
manner that cannot be done by a federally directed top down command and
control system. The Resilience Network model incorporating FEMA command
and control enlivens the capacities of the American people and their
communities. The DKMS/Resilience Networks model optimizes the ability
of natural social networks with deep roots at the local level to engage
with FEMA and State emergency management agencies in meeting the
Nation's emergent needs in a far more responsive system with the
capacities to operate with the characteristics noted under my answer to
Question 1.
Q3. A significant share of federal support for disaster related
behavioral and social science research comes from the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Does this distort the research
priorities in these fields in an inappropriate way?
A3. This is a more difficult question to answer. If the question were
asked, ``is a significant share of what is appropriated for NEHRP
research actually devoted to SBE projects, the response would be less
equivocal and certainly pessimistic. Analyses of funding portfolios or
reports from each of the agencies composing NEHRP (FEMA, USGS, NIST,
NSF) make it difficult to determine if SBE is a relative priority.
However, if I am reading your question correctly, it implicates another
concern, namely does the allocation of funds intended for SBE research
through NEHRP redirect research priorities for disaster preparedness
and mitigation in general? The simple answer is yes. Researchers follow
the money. A more complex response would focus on the generalizability
of SBE research which has the potential for application in multiple
threat and disaster contexts. In other words, is the research being
supported by NEHRP funds applicable across multiple disaster contexts,
including terrorism? This is perhaps an issue that only Congress, the
GAO, or perhaps specialized knowledge management experts can address.
The more generic issue of whether behavioral and social science is
adequately funded to enable our society to address its current and
emerging vulnerabilities, the answer is clearly, ``No, it is not.'' We
need look no further than the preparedness, response and recovery to
Katrina to know this is the case. However, it is also being clearly
demonstrated again in the President's and Congressional pandemic flu
budget. For three to five years, while our nation will have
insufficient stockpiles of vaccine and anti-virals, risk communication,
social distance management, and resilience initiatives will be
essential for our nation to establish behavioral and social immunity to
pandemic flu transmission. Yet, there is essentially no budget to apply
emerging behavioral and social science to this and other pending
threats to the health of Americans and to our national security.
Q4. The 2003 Office of Science and Technology Policy report,
``Reducing Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and Technology,''
identified six important areas for attention, including ``expand[ing]
risk communication capabilities, especially public warning systems and
techniques.'' The report recommends investment in social and behavioral
science dimensions of public response to information and education
campaigns. Are you aware of any increases in federal funding to address
this recommendation? Is adequate research underway in this area?
A4. You are correct about the 2003 Office of Science and Technology
Policy report, ``Reducing Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and
Technology,'' making risk communication a priority for risk and threat
preparedness. Numerous other organizations such as the National Science
Foundation have identified risk communication as an essential
ingredient in a complex array of processes necessary for disaster
preparation, response, and management. As I mentioned in my testimony
in November, the Director of NSF, Dr. Bement, testified before the
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for the need
to include risk communication in the research programs that it funds. A
recent NSF report argues for greater interdisciplinary cooperation
among basic natural sciences, human decision processes, economists,
engineers, and communication scholars (NSF, 2002). The Government
Accounting Office reported to Congress last year that risk
communication theory and protocol must assume a greater role in threat
mitigation plans (GAO-04-682, 2004). In a PCAST report referred to in
testimony earlier this year before your subcommittee on combating
terrorism, the authors highlight the important role of communication in
mitigating, preventing, and responding to terrorist acts. Just about
every GAO report on public response organizations and agencies places
communication at the top of the list. NSF has attempted to address this
need with new programs focusing on decisions making, risk, and
uncertainty. For instance, the Human and Social Dynamics priority area
is currently soliciting small grant proposals ($750,000 over three
years) in these specific areas. However, the proportion devoted to
social and behavioral sciences for basic and applied research,
particularly in risk communication, is woefully inadequate not only
from a general funding perspective, but especially in a relative sense
compared to other scientific funding priorities. A lack of priority for
social and behavioral research from other agencies in the area of risk,
crises, and emergencies will continue to expose fundamental weakness in
preparedness and response strategies so vividly illustrated by
disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
Questions submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Q1. In your testimony you point out the importance of trust and public
participation in risk and crisis communication programs because the
characteristics of communities vary widely. Do you have recommendations
on how to achieve this type of community involvement in planning? Is it
possible with the currently dominant top-down approach to planning?
A1. Our research group strongly favors a Community-Communication
Infrastructure Model (C-CIM) approach for enhancing trust among
community members. In my written statement for your committee, I
proposed such a model for community preparedness and briefly outline
the parameters for improving risk communication at the community level.
Our research group is prepared to provide additional detail for the C-
CIM should you request it. Risk communication, trust, and community
involvement are not new phenomena; recently a National Research Council
committee (Stoto, Abel, & Dievler, 1997) recommended that deliberative
and participative community processes should be engaged to inform
public policy choices. The committee argued that these processes lead
to a more informed public and more support for decisions. Project
Impact, established in 1997 by FEMA, was meant to actively engage
communities in the process of disaster resistance. Research from
Project Impact discovered that communities were better able to secure
resources from support organizations and were better positioned to
understand their community's relative risk and plan for managing these
risks. In essence, these communities became more resilient as a result
(Rodriguez, 2004). Several subsequent studies have verified the
positive effect of community involvement during risk policy decision
making in a variety of contexts (McDaniels, Gregory, & Fields, 1999;
Gregory, Arvai, & McDaniels, 2001; Arvai, Gregory, & McDaniels, 2001).
Even community members who do not directly participate in the planning
and deliberating process have more positive views of the policy
decision based on their perception that the process was fair and
inclusive of community members' viewpoints (Arvai, 2003). In sum,
public meetings that genuinely involve citizens in dialogue and stress
the importance of interactive exchange have greater chances of success.
These types of meetings not only increase perceptions of participation,
but build relationships important in the trust credibility areas
(McComas, 2003).
A strong body of research demonstrates that organizations can play
a pivotal role in communication campaigns (Stephens, Rimal, & Flora,
2004). Results from the Stanford Five City Project revealed that
organizations outside of the media have the potential of reaching about
half of a community's households (Flora, Jatilus, Jackson, & Fortmann,
1993). Community organizations also serve an audience segmentation
function primarily because of the communication infrastructure in place
(bulletin boards, listservs, newsletters, etc.). One advantage of
community organizations is that membership is voluntary and messages
originating from them are usually viewed with greater levels of trust.
A key strategy for communication campaign managers is to enlist the
support of key organizational leaders who would then serve as opinion
leaders and promote the messages of the campaign (Stephens, et al.,
2004). There is little doubt that enlisting the support of community
organizations can increase the reach of communication campaigns.
Increasing community involvement and participation in terrorism
spawns positive civic and social effects often referred to as
resilience. Resilience is a community building idea promulgated by
Grotberg (2002) that refers to the thoughts, feelings, and even the
spirit of individuals toward their community and its members. It is
perceived as an ideal state where communities and its members posses an
optimistic, pliable, and hardy perspective toward both normal and
crisis conditions. Resilient communities are those that enjoy strong
relationships within and outside the family, understand the need for
vibrant community services (such as education, health, social,
welfare), and are energetic in developing a community climate that is
compassionate, empathic, respectful, and communicative. Research has
discovered that resilient communities possess four common
characteristics (Grotberg, 2002): Collective self-esteem, cultural
identity, social humor, and collective honesty. It is through resilient
acts that communities and their members construct strategies that
discourage terrorism. Building resilient, socially networked
communities where stores of communication capital reside offer greater
comfort and security than disconnected communities. One of the
centerpieces of the C-CIM is enhancing community resilience. Because of
the top-down, command and control structure of planning processes in
the status quo, additional resources must be specifically earmarked and
funded directly for state and community use.
Q2. The Administration last week released a plan to respond to the
threat of pandemic flu. Do you believe the Administration's plan
reflects sufficient attention to the social/behavioral factors that
would be associated with public reaction to a pandemic situation and
that should be incorporated into preparedness and response plans? Are
you aware of whether behavioral and social scientists had a substantial
role in developing this pandemic strategy? What areas of behavioral and
social science research associated with other types of disasters would
have particular relevance to this strategy? And specifically, in what
areas do you feel the plan is deficient with regard to social science
research or any other research activities?
A2. It is our impression, and that of others we have consulted, that
few if any behavioral/social scientists were actively involved in the
development of the Administration's pandemic strategy. The original
plan outlined by the Bush Administration recommended $583 million for
pandemic preparedness, $100 million of which is to be employed in
assisting states to complete and exercise their pandemic plans prior to
an outbreak. However, in a Congressional Briefing sponsored by the
House Science Committee on December 14th, it was revealed that very few
funds were intended for behavioral and social dimensions, and that
Congress will now cut the pandemic flu budget in half with almost all
of it focused on vaccines. $120 million was removed to fund various
other initiatives included $60 million for Viagra.
While the Administration's plan is vague with regard to specific
recommendations for risk communication strategies, it does encourage
states and localities to consider several tactics that are likely to
facilitate a pandemic response. For example, the plan suggests
strategies for travel restrictions, quarantines, and isolation in the
event of a pandemic, all of which will be necessary to restrict the
spread of infection. However, where the Administration's plan requires
additional breadth and depth is in addressing the behavioral and social
dimensions of social distancing. Previous research on ``sheltering-in-
place'' reveal that robust risk and threat communication plans must be
developed and deployed in order to realize substantial compliance with
behavioral proxemic patterns desired by social isolation.
References
Arvai, J.L. (2003). Using Risk Communication to Disclose the Outcome of
a Participatory Decision-making Process: Effects on the
Perceived Acceptability of Risk-policy Decisions. Risk
Analysis: An International Journal, 23(2), 281-289.
Arvai, J., & Gregory, R., & McDaniels, T. (2001). Testing a Structured
Decision Approach: Value Focused Thinking for Deliberative Risk
Communication. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 6,
1065-1076.
Flora, J., Jatilus, D., Jackson, C., & Fortmann, S. (1993). The
Stanford Five-City Heart Disease Prevention Project. In T.E.
Backer & E. Rogers (Eds.), Organizational Aspects of Health
Campaign: What Works? (pp. 101-128). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
GAO report. (2004). Key Cross-agency Emergency Communications Effort
Requires Stronger Collaboration. Washington: Government
Printing Office. GAO 04-494.
Gregrory, R., Arvai, J., & McDaniels, T. (2001). Value Focused Thinking
for Environmental Risk Consultations. Environmental Risk:
Perceptions, Evaluation, and Management, 9, 249-273.
Grotberg, E.H. (2002). From Terror to Triumph: The Path to Resilience.
In C.E. Stout (Ed.), The Psychology of Terrorism: Vol. 1. A
Public Understanding (pp. 185-208). Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger Publishers.
Heath, R.L., Bradshaw, J., & Lee, J. (2002). Community Relationship
Building: Local Leadership in the Risk Communication
Infrastructure. Journal of Public Relations Research, 14(4),
317-353.
Kim, Y.-C., Ball-Rokeach, S.J., Cohen, E.L., & Jung, J.-Y. (2002).
Communication Infrastructure and Civic Actions in Crisis. In
B.S. Greenberg (Ed.), Communication and Terrorism: Public and
Media Responses to 9/11. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press,
Inc.
McComas, K.A. (2003). Citizen Satisfaction With Public Meetings Used
for Risk Communication. Journal of Applied Communication
Research, 31(2), 164-184.
McDaniels, T., Gregory, R., & Fields, D. (1999). Democratizing Risk
Management: Successful Public Involvement in Local Water
Management Decision. Risk Analysis, 19, 491-504.
National Incident Management System. (2004). Washington, DC: Department
of Homeland Security.
O'Hair, D. (2004). Measuring Risk/Crisis Communication: Taking
Strategic Assessment and Program Evaluation to the Next Level.
Risk and Crisis Communication: Building Trust and Explaining
Complexities When Emergencies Arise. Washington, DC: Consortium
of Social Science Associations.
O'Hair, D., Heath, R., & Becker, J. (in press). Toward a Paradigm of
Managing Terrorism and Communication. In D. O'Hair, R. Health,
& G. Ledlow (Eds.), Community Preparedness and Response to
Terrorism: Communication and the Media. Westport, CT: Praeger.
O'Hair, D. & Heath, R.. (in press). Conceptualizing Terrorism and
Communication. In D. O'Hair, R. Health, & G. Ledlow (Eds.),
Community Preparedness and Response to Terrorism: Communication
and the Media. Westport, CT: Praeger.
O'Hair, D., Matusitz, J., & Eckstein, J. (in press). The Role of
Communication in Terrorism. In D. O'Hair, R. Heath, K. Ayotte,
& G. Ledlow (Eds.), Terrorism: Communication and Rhetorical
Perspectives. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Rodriguez, H. (2004). The Role of Science, Technology and Media in the
Communication of Risk Warnings. Risk and Crisis Communication:
Building Trust and Explaining Complexities When Emergencies
Arise. Washington, DC: Consortium of Social Science
Associations.
Stephens, K., Rimal, R., & Flora, J. (2004). Expanding the Reach of
Health Campaigns: Community Organizations as Meta-channels for
the Dissemination of Health Information. Journal of Health
Communication, 9, 97-111.
Stoto, M., Abel, C., & Dievler, A. (1997). Healthy Communities: New
Partnerships for the Future of Public Health. Washington, DC:
National Academies Press.
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor, Department of Psychology
and Social Behavior and the Department of Medicine, University
of California, Irvine
Questions submitted by Representative Darlene Hooley
Q1. From the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 through the creation
and evolution of FEMA, the top-down, command and control approach has
been the model used in crafting emergency plans. What has social
science research revealed about the effectiveness of the top-down,
command and control paradigm in meeting the challenges posed by
disasters? Is there a better approach, and how might it work?
A1. Research in the social and behavioral sciences suggests that
community-based organizations are likely to be more effective, and more
efficient, in developing response plans in advance of, and implementing
them following, community disasters. In fact, pre-existing social
relationships and community organizations often already have experience
working together, and thus will have more capacity to effectively
mobilize (in terms of both resources, experience, and inter-group
trust) in response to disaster. Nonetheless, while no formal survey has
measured the make-up of these groups, anecdotal evidence suggests that
very few formal efforts toward disaster preparedness have included
contributions from the social sciences. If they have, their
recommendations are too often ignored, as evidenced by the consequences
of the activation of the response plans in the wake of a disaster.
Q2. Some have argued that FEMA, as part of the Department of Homeland
Security, is hamstrung by a command and control mentality that is ill-
suited to the realities of disasters. Do you agree with this
assessment? Does social science research support the view that there is
a fundamental problem in the way the Federal Government is organized
for dealing with disasters?
A2. It is difficult to maintain that the problem with current disaster
preparation and response is merely attributable to a failure in the
organization of federal entities to address this topic. In addition to
the Federal Government, municipalities, states and non-governmental
organizations like universities and businesses often have crisis
management teams or emergency response plans. The typical such team
includes the mayor, police and fire chief, hospital representative, Red
Cross chapter director, local college or National Guard and perhaps a
handful of active community members representing other sectors.
Effective response plans must involve the cooperation across all
federal, State, and local entities. The social sciences can contribute
recommendations as to how to maximize trust and cooperation across
these groups, and how to minimize conflicts and territorial posturing
between them. As noted above, with few exceptions, very few formal
efforts toward disaster preparedness and response have incorporated the
myriad of contributions from the social sciences that can facilitate
effective response to disasters.
Q3. A significant share of federal support for disaster related
behavioral and social science research comes from the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Does this distort the research
priorities in these fields in an inappropriate way?
A3. While extremely important work has been, and continues to be
conducted by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, all
disasters are not the same in terms of their individual and community
impact. In fact, there is a great deal of research in the social and
behavioral sciences that has identified both similarities and
differences between human-caused and natural disasters, and among
disasters for which one has some warning (e.g., hurricanes) as compared
to those that occur suddenly (e.g., tornadoes). In addition, man-made
disasters, such as the September 11 terrorist attacks, or the Columbine
High School Shootings (both on which I have conducted research) differ
from natural disasters in meaningful ways in terms of the victim's
ability to identify perpetrators and seek justice from them. What seems
crucial, in my opinion, is to enhance research funding beyond the study
of earthquakes. As I mentioned in my testimony, there is currently no
mechanism for researchers to obtain social science funding for such
work in the immediate aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster, as
well as too little funding for the study of the impact of these
community disasters over time.
Questions submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Q1. You describe in your testimony the prevalence of misconceptions
about what research has found about psychological responses to
disasters. This is another aspect of failure to apply existing
knowledge derived from behavioral and social science research. What are
the responsibilities of scientists who conduct disaster related
research for transferring knowledge derived from that research to the
general public and to organizations that develop public policy?
A1. A cadre of social scientists invests their research efforts and
resources in the empirical study of the progression, psychological
effects, responses and social consequences of disaster. Admittedly, we
tend to publish the results of our investigations in professional peer-
reviewed journal articles and books. It is also true that, in general,
our opinions are not solicited by policy-makers (although the Research
Subcommittee Hearing addressing this topic is a welcome exception).
Nonetheless, many of us also invest a great deal of time preparing
articles for non-professional publications, give public lectures, and
serve as pro bono consultants to community and government
organizations. Many of us also frequently avail ourselves to the media
to correct misconceptions and to educate the public about our findings.
In addition, professional organizations such as the American
Psychological Association (APA) advises congressional decision-makers
on a wide range of legislative and regulatory issues by communicating
the results of social science research and introducing social
scientists to policy-makers. For example, beginning shortly after the
September 11 terrorist attacks, I was invited by the APA Science Policy
Office to present my work and its implications on Capitol Hill. In
numerous trips to Washington, I was asked to convey concisely the
results of my research to congressional staff, and to describe how
these results could be directly applied to public policies. In
addition, in early 2002 I was introduced by members of the APA's
Science Policy Office to staff in the White House's Office of Homeland
Security (which subsequently became the Department of Homeland
Security). On the basis of that introduction, I was appointed by former
Secretary Ridge to the Academe and Policy Research Senior Advisory
Committee of DHS to provide advice, guidance and recommendations to the
Homeland Security Advisory Council, which reports directly to the
Secretary. Nonetheless, after two years of active involvement on that
committee, including preparing numerous presentations on crisis
communications and the psychological impact of terrorism, after
attending dozens of briefings, and preparing several reports and
recommendations, I would suggest that there appears to be no one in
place who can hear these empirically-based recommendations and
effectively act on them. Despite this fact, my colleagues and I
continue to be committed to doing whatever we can to bring our
important policy-relevant social science research findings into the
public domain. I was pleased when a member of the Subcommittee
recommended that the messages delivered by the social scientists that
attended the Hearing be made available to the media and others on
Capitol Hill. I, personally, would welcome additional opportunities to
present my research and its implications more broadly.
Q2. The 2003 Office of Science and Technology Policy report,
``Reducing Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and Technology,''
identified six important areas for attention, including ``expand[ing]
risk communication capabilities, especially public warning systems and
techniques.'' The report recommends investment in social and behavioral
science dimensions of public response to information and education
campaigns. Are you aware of any increases in federal funding to address
this recommendation? Is adequate research underway in this area?
A2. The 2003 Office of Science and Technology Policy report, ``Reducing
Disaster Vulnerability Through Science and Technology,'' did indeed
recommend investment in social and behavioral science dimensions of
risk communications. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any increases in
federal funding in response to this report's recommendation. This is
extremely unfortunate, because while there are researchers who are
poised to conduct such research at universities across the country,
their efforts are severely hampered by the difficulties in obtaining
funding to support it.
In addition, the report missed an opportunity to specify specific
behavioral and social scientific opportunities, including those that
would go well beyond risk communication and public response to warning
programs. Risk communication, effective messaging, source credibility
and public response to warnings are, of course, critical areas for
social and behavioral research. Beyond this focus, however, the
importance of studying individual and community resilience, as well as
collective and individual response to disaster and loss, cannot be
overemphasized. Our empirical research offers ample evidence that
strategies for reducing vulnerability to disaster can and should
incorporate scientific understanding of how individuals, and the
communities within which they reside, respond to stress and loss. I
would suggest that although some research, including my own, is
underway in these areas, a robust scientific approach to reducing our
nation's vulnerability to disaster demands greater financial investment
in its investigation. Methodologically rigorous scientific research is
necessary to understand how human beings respond individually and
socially to natural and man-made disasters. As my testimony suggests,
we cannot afford to accept reigning misconceptions and anecdotal or
media-generated expectations about human behavior as we anticipate and
plan for future disasters. The collection of data, analysis,
description and prediction of human behavior is integral to an adequate
national scientific and engineering approach to disaster preparedness
and response.
Q3. The Administration last week released a plan to respond to the
threat of pandemic flu. Do you believe the Administration's plan
reflects sufficient attention to the social/behavioral factors that
would be associated with public reaction to a pandemic situation and
that should be incorporated into preparedness and response plans? Are
you aware of whether behavioral and social scientists had a substantial
role in developing this pandemic strategy? What areas of behavioral and
social science research associated with other types of disasters would
have particular relevance to this strategy? And specifically, in what
areas do you feel the plan is deficient with regard to social science
research or any other research activities?
A3. In my opinion, the plan unfortunately does not reflect sufficient
attention to the social/behavioral factors that would be associated
with public reaction to a possible pandemic and that I believe should
be incorporated into preparedness and response plans. I am not aware of
the active involvement of behavioral and social scientists in the
development of this pandemic strategy, nor in the solicitation of their
opinions. Social and behavioral scientists have conducted a great deal
of research that could be directly applicable to development of this
strategy. Research on risk and crisis communication is directly
relevant. Research on community response to disasters can provide great
insights into preparedness and response plans. Research on how
individuals and communities cope with stressful life events, of which
mine is but one example, is also crucially relevant. Unfortunately,
this work is not adequately represented in the current plans.
You ask in what areas I specifically see deficiencies in the plan
with regard to social science research or other research activities.
First, the plan offers very little funding to achieve its goals.
Moreover, while the plan includes is a statement of commitment to
providing public information, there is unfortunately no mention of
empirical research to ensure its realization or evaluate its
achievement. The plan offers a brief reference to avoiding panic and a
reference to the public's beliefs about the food supply, but neither is
informed by the social science research on these topics (e.g., panic is
a rare response to emergencies, and the assumption that it will occur
is a myth without any empirical support). In general, the plan is
severely deficient in its attention to decades of relevant social
science research. Unfortunately, without the development of adequate
preparation and response plans, and without clear communication of
authoritative information, the current situation has the potential to
undermine public morale and facilitate media hype and the spread of
misinformation, even without a pandemic striking.
Thank you again for providing me the opportunity to share my
additional opinions with the members of the Research Subcommittee. I
welcome further requests to provide information that can assist in the
achievement of your important goals.