2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 52: Engagement in Practice: Role of Community Engagement in Disaster Recovery

Presented at Community Engagement Division Poster Session - Exploring the Transformative Power of Service, Engagement, and Research

This work-in-progress paper examines the role of community engagement in disaster recovery through the lens of Household-Community Resiliency Nexus (HCRN) model which explains how household resiliency contributes to community resiliency in the aftermath of a natural disaster. HCRN consists of six capacity factors: tangible resources, investments, network support, household network, grit and attitude towards change. Post-disaster survey responses of a community were utilized to validate the HCRN model. Our preliminary results indicate that involvement of impacted households in local community meetings almost doubled post-disaster. Furthermore, there was a strong relationship between a household’s community meeting attendance and their confidence in handling future difficulties. Additionally, a strong relationship was observed between households’ confidence to recover and households’ belief in the community’s recovery. Findings of this research have implications for development and implementation of community-based, sustainability-focused engineering projects and outreach efforts.

Authors

Dr. Azadeh Bolhari P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6289-7771 University of Colorado Boulder [biography]

Dr. Bolhari is a professor of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her teaching focuses on fate and transport of contaminants, capstone design and aqueous chemistry. Dr. Bolhari is passionate about broadening participation in engineering through community-based participatory action research. Her research interests explore the boundaries of engineering and social science to understand evolution of resilience capacity at family and community level to sustainable practices utilizing quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Eric Matzke Flaska University of Colorado Boulder
Dr. Kenneth Stewart [biography]

Dr. Kenneth L. Stewart is retired professor of sociology at Angelo State University where he served on the faculty from 1975 through 2018. He was also among the founding faculty members of the Master of Public Health Degree at Texas Tech University Health

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