Extreme Smoke

Mentees: 

PhD student: Caroline Beckman             Postdoc: TBD

Metoring Team: 

Nancy French,  Alexandra Paige Fischer,  Francisca N. Santana,  Sue Anne Bell,  Eric Kaischke,  Dana Redhuis,  Michael Billmire,  Shiliang Wu,  Todd Hawbaker,  NASA Interdisciplinary Science Program

Purpose

To help decision-makers develop strategies to protect people from extreme smoke, we need to understand the conditions that motivate people to protect themselves, when policy interventions are needed, and what needs and capacities policy interventions must address. Theories regarding cognitive biases suggest that people may be less inclined to take the initiative to protect themselves from natural hazards that occur infrequently, come on slowly, last for short periods of time, and that impose little immediately observable damage. Little research has investigated the influence of these spatiotemporal characteristics on people's risk perceptions and responses to wildfire smoke events. Wildfire smoke is an ideal case to explore concepts about the role of spatiotemporal hazard attributes in risk perception and smoke because it varies widely across many of these dimensions. 

Approach

We will collect and analyze social data on the experiences, perceptions, and behaviors of households and other actors in communities that have experienced extreme smoke events with different spatio-temporal characteristics. We will begin with exploratory interviews in communities with different types of smoke experiences (Task 2.1). Qualitative analysis of these interviews will inform a metric driven survey (Task 2.2). 

Anticipated Outcomes