Anand Harsh, Swarup Samarth, Shafiee-Jood Majid, Alemazkoor Negin
Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA.
Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 21;14(1):28829. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-79754-9.
As hurricanes become more frequent and destructive, understanding evacuation decision-making is crucial to refining disaster response strategies. Several studies have explored how socioeconomic characteristics such as income and race impact evacuation behavior. Most of these studies focus on a single hurricane event with the geographic extent limited to one or two states, each using a distinct study design, making them difficult to compare. This raises the question of whether findings from isolated cases can be generalized across different hurricane scenarios and geographical settings under a similar study design and consistent parameter definitions. To address this gap, in this study, we conduct a comparative analysis to understand income and racial disparity across multiple hurricane events. The results indicate that, even with a consistent study design, disparities in evacuation among different socioeconomic groups vary on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, we show that the study design significantly impacts the observed trends within a single case. This highlights the importance of avoiding generalized conclusions based on limited case studies. It further emphasizes how flawed study designs may fail to capture the complexities of real-world behaviors, thereby leading to suboptimal or ineffective policy recommendations or designs.
随着飓风变得愈发频繁且破坏力巨大，了解疏散决策对于完善灾害应对策略至关重要。多项研究探讨了诸如收入和种族等社会经济特征如何影响疏散行为。这些研究大多聚焦于单个飓风事件，地理范围局限于一两个州，且每项研究都采用独特的研究设计，这使得它们难以进行比较。这就引发了一个问题：在相似的研究设计和一致的参数定义下，孤立案例的研究结果能否推广至不同的飓风场景和地理环境。为填补这一空白，在本研究中，我们进行了一项比较分析，以了解多个飓风事件中的收入和种族差异。结果表明，即便采用一致的研究设计，不同社会经济群体在疏散方面的差异也因具体案例而异。此外，我们还表明，研究设计对单个案例中观察到的趋势有显著影响。这凸显了避免基于有限案例研究得出一概而论结论的重要性。它进一步强调了有缺陷的研究设计可能如何无法捕捉现实世界行为的复杂性，从而导致次优或无效的政策建议或设计。
