Extreme Event Policy Analysis: Identifying Stakeholders and Preferencesfor Natural Hazard Mitigation Policies

摘要

Extreme events can cause severe damage and potential harms to many people in a veryshort period of time. Considerable challenges confront policy makers who seek to changeindividual and community behaviors to mitigate disasters. Previous research efforts forextreme events and natural hazards have tested the impact of disasters on policy makingby using each disaster as a discrete event, exogenous to the system. The model developedfor this research develops an endogenous view of changes to extreme event policiesthrough stock and flow feedback structures.Floods are among the costliest natural hazards in the United States, account for thelargest category of federal disaster declarations, and the hazard is broadly distributedacross the United States. While the first piece of this research begins with floods, furthersegments will attempt to develop a generic structure for extreme event policy making andimplementation. Future research will replicate this effort with other natural hazards, andwith technological or social problems such as terrorism or aviation safety.A key insight from the modeling process showed some tensions in extreme event “policyanalysis.” At times dominated by a traditional cost/benefit approach, these analysesleave out variables which could provide endogenous explanations for changes in policyover time. The modeling effort recognized the contributions of several disciplines thatstudy different aspects of the “policy process.” By taking a multi-disciplinary approachto extreme event policy making, this research intends to open new avenues for policyanalysis.