With the support of this Small Grant for Exploratory Research, Dr. Heather McIlvaine-Newsad and David G. Casagrande, both of Western Illinois University, will undertake research on community resilience after natural disaster. The researchers' goal is to quantitatively model resiliency of agricultural communities in western Illinois after flooding during summer of 2008 using the community as the unit of analysis.
Resiliency is conceptualized as a dependent variable comprised of five social characteristics: 1) social equity as a function of income; 2) population change; 3) local school consolidation; 4) ability to buy food, hardware, and medical services locally; and 5) quality of life measured with a standard happiness index. Four independent variables that affect resiliency are: 1) knowledge of past disasters and responses; 2) amount of kin in social networks; 3) access to financial capital; and 4) whether cultural models of social responsibility are orientated primarily towards kin, community, or the nation.
The researchers will conduct semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 60 families and community meetings. Transcriptions of these materials will be analyzed to determine how people talk and think about the focus variables. Results of the qualitative analysis will be used to develop a structured survey to be mailed to 2000 families in 20 different communities within one year after the floods.
This research is important for its potential contribution to both disaster theory and to improved post-disaster interventions. Although the variables will differ, the methodology can be broadly applied to studies of disaster and resiliency. This research will benefit society at large by explicating a social science approach to resiliency that is compatible with ecological conceptualizations and policy considerations. It will be possible to integrate results directly into state recovery policy. Research findings also will be presented to participating communities in a series of informational meetings.
Project Summary The goal of this research was to develop a quantifiable approach for modeling the resiliency of agricultural communities in western Illinois as they attempt to recover from the summer floods of 2008. We defined community resiliency as a dependent variable comprised of five quantifiable social characteristics: 1) social equity as a function of income; 2) reproduction of population; 3) institutional reproduction of social skills through local schools; 4) ability to buy food, hardware, and medical services locally; and 5) quality of life. Past research by the applicants indicated that community resiliency is influenced by four key independent variables: knowledge of past disasters and responses, depth of kin networks, access to capital, and cultural models of social responsibility. Whether models of social responsibility are orientated primarily towards kin, community, or the nation influences community resiliency. Intellectual merit A primary contribution of ecological conceptualizations of resiliency has been to explain or understand unpredictable behaviors of systems. Our research builds on this success by developing a model applicable to human communities that is compatible with ecological analyses. A major impediment to modeling resiliency is that it is often not known which variables are most important for maintaining system integrity until after the system undergoes a major transformation. We drew on our observations of communities on the Gulf Coast that have, or have not, recovered from disasters to identify key variables. We tested how broadly applicable these variables are by using them in an analysis of the Midwest. Past qualitative anthropological approaches by others have been helpful for contextualizing resilience. We have built on this work by using qualitative analysis of discourse to develop a large-scale, quantitative, structured survey to model community resilience. Research activities The researchers electronically recorded semi-structured interviews and focus groups in four contiguous counties that were affected by the floods (Mercer, Henderson, Hancock and Adams). We transcribed and thematically analyzed discursive data to determine how people talk and think about the variables of analysis. We conducted six focus group discussions at the Bott Center in Warsaw, the Henderson County Health Department in Gladstone, and the Pontoosuc Village Hall between March 7 and 18, 2009. The 60 focus group participants included community leaders and home and business owners impacted by the floods. General Findings People strive to achieve quality of life by organizing themselves as communities. Long term recovery should be evaluated at the scale of community in addition to the county. It is not difficult to quantify well-being at the community level.[1] This would complement and clarify economic county-level analyses. These should also be included when evaluating or modeling floodplain management alternatives. In particular, we advocate adapting the ecosystem services approach for regional watershed planning, and including a robust quantitative analysis of quality of life.[2] Our research findings on the effects of flooding within communities emphasize the need for equitable representation of local communities in regional watershed planning. This is consistent with the recommendation of the Interagency Floodplain Management Review Committee[3] to include all levels of government in regional floodplain planning. Several interviewees insisted that the level of the lake above the Keokuk dam was not lowered to allow for additional storage despite widespread knowledge that a large volume of water was moving downstream. The dam at Keokuk is designed to allow for water to pass over it without slowing the water and causing flooding in such a situation. However, most of our study participants are convinced the lake should be lowered and that there is a lack of communication between the government agencies and private utilities that operate the various dams along the river. Broader impacts The research described above will benefit society at large by explicating a social science approach to resiliency that is compatible with ecological conceptualizations and is therefore more likely to influence policy. In June 2008 Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s office requested that Western Illinois University provide expertise and technical assistance in determining the economic, environmental and social impact of the flooding in the region. This research is meant to inform recovery policy as requested by the governor and has also been presented to the communities themselves in a series of informational meetings. [1] See: Myers, D. G., and E. Diener. 1995. WHO IS HAPPY? Psychological Science 6:10-19; and Veenhoven, R. 2002. Why Social Policy Needs Subjective Indicators. Social Indicators Research 58:33-45. [2] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. [3] Sharing the Challenge: Floodplain Management into the 21st Century. Report of the Interagency Floodplain Management Review Committee. Washington, DC. June, 1994.
