Archive

Projects:

Study: Meta-Analysis of Climate Vulnerability Maps

Study: Measuring Community Resilience

AZ VOAD: COVID-19 Support

FL VOAD: Hurricane Irma

Opioid Crisis App

Determinants of Disaster Mass Care Production and Impacts by Arizona Voluntary Nonprofit Organizations

Statistical Testing of City Resilience Index

Multi-scale Spatiotemporal Evaluation of Mitigation Effectiveness in Reducing Natural Hazard Damage and Loss

Dr. Gall is participating as a subject matter expert in a meta-analysis of climate change vulnerability mapping studies led by Alex de Sherbinin (Columbia University) and Brian Tomaszewski (Rochester Institute of Technology).

Climate change will have multiple impacts across a range of systems and sectors and will increase the vulnerability of populations in many regions. Maps synthesizing climate, biophysical, and socioeconomic data have become part of the standard toolkit for communicating climate risks. So-called “hotspot” maps are often used to direct attention to areas where impacts are expected to be greatest and potentially require adaptation interventions. Under the advent of the Green Climate Fund and other bilateral climate adaptation funding mechanisms, potentially billions of dollars of adaptation funds are being directed with guidance from modeling results, visualized, and communicated through maps and spatial decision support tools. However, the methods and tools used to create vulnerability maps have not been systematically evaluated, nor have the map outputs in terms of communications efficacy.

This project will conduct a meta-analysis (assessment) of existing vulnerability mapping efforts focused on two aspects. Firstly, we will assess the methods used for the integration of spatial data representing climate exposure, biophysical systems, and social vulnerability in an effort to identify good practices. Secondly, we will assess the output maps according to standard criteria of cartographic design, clarity of communication, the inclusion of information on uncertainty, and other criteria. The team will analyze at least 50 mapping efforts at different scales, created both by team members and by external parties. A secondary goal will be to establish a protocol for assessing map comprehension and policy impacts of maps through interviews with end-users. The results will help to improve climate vulnerability maps and online map tools in ways that will facilitate science-policy communication.

Participants:

Alex Apotsos, Williams College

Tegan Blaine, USAID

Anamaria Bukvic, Virginia Tech

Melanie Gall, University of South Carolina

Stéphane Hallegatte, World Bank

Saleem Khan Amsad Ibrahim Khan, Columbia University

Stefan Kienberger, University of Salzburg

Peter Lukey, Department of Environmental Affairs, Republic of South Africa

Alan MacEachren, Pennsylvania State University

Denis Macharia, Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development

Brent McCusker, West Virginia University

Benjamin Preston, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

William Shubert, Internews

Ričardas Vytautas Šliužas, University of Twente

Olga Wilhelmi, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Carolyn Fish, Penn State

Guillaume Rohat, the University of Geneva and University of Twente (ITC)

Park Muhonda, University of West Virginia

Sainan Zhang, UN Population Fund

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Dr. Gall is serving as a committee member for the National Academies' consensus study on measuring community resilience .

The ad hoc committee is conducting a study on effective ways to measure the resilience of a community to natural hazards and other disruptions. The report will identify knowledge gaps, research directions, and approaches that could be useful to a range of communities, including the Gulf Research Program’s efforts to support the development of healthy and resilient coastal communities. Specifically, the committee will:

Document similarities and differences among approaches used by federal agencies and other organizations to measure resilience;
Describe the methodologies used for quantitative and qualitative data collection and data analysis;
Examine measurement work underway by organizations such as the Zurich Foundation, Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, The Nature Conservancy, NOAA, NIST, FEMA, federal cross-agency groups, others, and
Comment on their different approaches, as well as
Identify common challenges or research needs related to measuring resilience; and
Discuss applications for these or other approaches at the community level.
Confer with community leaders and decision-makers who have implemented resilience measures about the approaches, challenges, or successes they have encountered in measuring resilience in their respective communities; and
Provide findings and recommendations on common approaches to measuring resilience that has shown success, ways to overcome the challenges of measuring resilience, and key issues for future programs to consider in measuring the resilience of a community.

The committee will produce a consensus report presenting effective options for measuring resilience at the community level.

Committee Chairs:

Adm. Thad Allen (Booz Allen Hamilton)
Dr. Gerald E. Galloway (University of Maryland, College Park)

Committee Members:

Dr. Michael Beck (The Nature Conservancy)
Dr. Anita Chandra (RAND Corporation)
Erin Coryell (Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies)
Dr. Susan L. Cutter (University of South Carolina)
Dr. Ann-Margaret Esnard (Georgia State University)
Dr. Howard Frumkin (University of Washington)
Dr. Melanie Gall (Arizona State University)
Dr. Maureen Lichtveld (Tulane University)
Dr. Carlos Martin (The Urban Institute)
Chris Poland (Chris D. Poland Consulting Engineer)
Dr. Liesel Ritchie (Oklahoma State University)
Dr. Kathryn Sullivan (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)

Project Staff:

Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine
Dr. Charlene Miliken
Jamie Bigelow

Consensus Study Report:

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Project Period: September- December 2018

Partner: Florida VOAD

Funder: pro bono

Opioid Crisis App

Dr. Sommers, PLSA Program Academic Director, is exploring tools for first responders to combat the opioid epidemic.

Opioid misuse is a major public health concern with 116 people dying from opioid-related drug overdoses each day (USDHHS, 2017). In Arizona, the number of possible opioid overdoses reported weekly ranges from 103 to 270 with 5,810 suspected overdoses reported between June 15, 2018, and February 8, 2018 (Arizona Department of Health Services, 2018). The proposed project is an innovative, solution-driven, and practical approach to addressing the opioid crisis.

The goal of this research is to create a mobile application for use with community members who engage with first responders in emergent overdose-related situations. Working with community stakeholders, research staff will utilize pilot data to inform a National Institutes of Health, Multi-Site Pilot & Feasibility Study for System-Level Implementation of Substance Use Prevention and Treatment Services (R34) which will be followed by its companion R01. This exploratory/developmental application to the College of Public Service & Community Solutions seeks three phases of support: (1) an initial phase of exploratory work to determine community stakeholder needs, (2) a phase dedicated to the development of a tertiary prevention prototype known as FR-BRIEF or First Responders - Bridging Response in Evidence-based facilitation of services for people who misuse opioids, and (3) a final pilot phase dedicated to training and testing the FR-BRIEF application.

Project Period: May 2018 - December 2018

Funder: ASU College of Public Service and Community Solutions

two SUVs driving on road overlaid with dates and location of national mass care exercise

Determinants of Disaster Mass Care Services Production and Impacts by Arizona Voluntary Nonprofit Organizations

The purpose of this study is to address an important research gap by assessing the scale of the nonprofit sector’s activities and capacities in the context of disaster mass care, including the hosting of evacuees and the continued provision of services to local communities. The strength of the proposed project lies in the integration of disciplinary perspectives of three College centers in the areas of emergency management, nonprofit leadership, and social work and community health.

The overall goal of the project is to account for nonprofit organizations’ mass care services production and impact. This includes accounting for how such service production activities are coordinated with governmental and private sector organizations and how nonprofits identify community needs in their resource allocation decisions.

This proposed project will use the National Mass Care Exercise held in Arizona in May 2018 as the study site and will employ a mixed-methods design approach integrating organizational-level survey data with in-depth qualitative interviews and observational data to gauge service production decisions and potential impacts.

Deliverables will include a project report to the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, a peer-reviewed publication, a proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Science of Organizations program and a public event sharing study findings with practitioners. In sum, this project represents a cross-disciplinary collaborative effort aimed at addressing a critical gap in current understanding of the critical disaster mass care contributions made by nonprofit organizations; as such it bodes well for the pursuit of future external funding opportunities.

Project Period: April - September 2018
Funder: Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Dr. Gall, CEMHS Co-Director, is conducting uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the City Resilience Index (the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities effort), a measurement tool pioneered by Arup that helps cities understand and quantify their capacity to respond and adapt to current and future environments.

For more information see Arup's CRI work and 100 Resilient Cities, an initiative pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Project Period: September 2017 - April 2018

Funder: Arup/Rockefeller

Multi-scale Spatiotemporal Evaluation of Mitigation Effectiveness in Reducing Natural Hazard Damage and Loss

Led by Dr. Carol Friedland at Louisiana State University, together with Bob Rohli and Kris Mecholsky along with Dr. Andrew Joyner at East Tennessee State University, Dr. Gall is analyzing and evaluating past disaster losses, recovery costs, and hazards mitigation expenditures in the State of Louisiana.

The goal of this project is to determine the economic benefit of hazard mitigation projects. The methodology includes quantification of avoided losses, calculation of loss-avoidance ratios (LARs) considering the performance of mitigation measures for multiple scenarios, and an analysis of the spatiotemporal relationship between direct losses and mitigation spending. The findings are anticipated to assess project impacts, identify gaps in hazard mitigation as well as parishes in need of mitigation projects, and suggest future mitigation priorities.

Project Period: March 2015 - February 2018

Publication:

Gall, Melanie, and Carol J. Friedland.

Funder: Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness