Current Projects

Improving understandings of consequences, vulnerabilities, and adaptation strategies to climate change related hazards
The project goal is to facilitate hazard mitigation and adaptation planning by coastal communities facing the potential consequences of climate change. We are using the VCAPS (Vulnerability and Consequences Adaptation Planning Scenarios) process which involves a structured dialogue and mediated modeling process, to help community...
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Promoting climate change awareness and adaptive planning in Atlantic fisheries communities using participatory vulnerability analysis, mapping, and systems dynamic modeling
Problem statement Marine fishing provides the base for an economic sector important to many coastal communities in the United States for centuries. In addition to the economic benefits, this sector has also shaped and preserved the unique cultural and social fabric of coastal communities along the Atlantic shore and continue to define an important...
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Characterizing harmful behavior of divers and snorkelers to coral reefs in Puerto Rico through systematic observation and testing the effectiveness of pre-trip media-based interventions.
We are studying the recreational misuse of coral reefs in Puerto Rico. The purpose is to establish baseline data on potentially harmful behaviors of divers and snorkelers to reefs. Such baseline data are necessary in order to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies to influence the behavior. Studies elsewhere have documented...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
A Participatory Approach to Building a Systems-Based Understanding of the Vulnerability of Commercial Fishermen to Workplace Hazards
 
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Examining predictors of public action in response to climate change
Our ability to alleviate some of the worst consequences of anthropogenic climate change hinges upon wide-scale behavior change at all levels of society. Researchers contend that an effective way to mitigate climate change lies at the intersection of two levels (i.e., individual behavior change and government regulation) and therefore citizens must...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
A communicative approach to understanding the association between procedural performance and legitimacy of outcomes
This research explores the connection between the process for making a decision and the satisfaction that people have with the final decision. Making decisions in a democratic society about managing the environment or managing risks usually ends up displeasing some interest groups while pleasing others and yet, without widespread acceptance,...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Disaster Resilience in Rural Communities
 This research will contribute toward the collective social good of increasing the resilience of rural communities to disasters by developing a conceptual framework of the barriers to change. This framework can be used as a diagnostic aid to empower institutions and individuals to selectively focus attention and resources on strategies to...
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Long-term health effects, risk perceptions, and implications for agricultural markets: modeling consumption patterns for aquacultured seafood
A project to investigate the consumer perceptions and purchasing behaviors in relation to their understandings of long-term health effects, risk perceptions, with an emphasis on aquacultured seafood.  SERI is a subcontractors for this project.  The project is based at the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics,...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Addressing public health risks from operating and closed US nuclear weapons facilities
The legacy of nuclear weapons production, testing, research, and waste management affects the physical and social health of communities throughout the United States. Both radiation and chemical contamination have affected ground and surface waters, air, and soil; in some cases, additional contamination continues. Recent history has brought...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment

Completed Projects

Informing coastal management adaptation planning and decision making for climate change using an interactive risk-based vulnerability assessment tool.

This project consisted of refining and testing a participatory mediated modeling process to inform scenario-building and planning for coastal management.
 
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Social disruption from oil spills and spill response.

The objective of this project is to design a process to help Area Committee planners anticipate and plan for the socially disruptive, or “human dimensions” of spills. This will be a procedure in which planners and other stakeholders...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Case study of the long-term human impact, vulnerabilities, and resilience of Cordova, Alaska 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill

The objective of this project is to complete a case study to document the longterm human impacts from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and to characterize the qualities of the Cordova community that have shaped the vulnerability and resilience of...
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
A risk-based approach to rapid vulnerability assessment in New England fishery communities

The primary goal of our project was to demonstrate the practicality and utility of an innovative rapid vulnerability assessment method for gathering routine social, economic, and cultural information about vulnerabilities of sub-groups to inform...
Vulnerability and Environmental Change
Three evaluative tools to empower local communities in the environmental clean up of sediment contaminated sites

 In spite of long commitment to community involvement and recent scholarship in the field, comprehensive efforts to evaluate "what works" and translate this information into improved practices is wanting. This project addresses...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Assessment of Oil Spill Response Planning and Performance

The primary goal of this project was to develop a framework to guide the selection of metrics for assessing spill responses, prior to a spill response during response planning, by a broad range of potentially affected and interested parties. Our...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Relationships among preferences for process, preferences for outcomes, perceptions of context, and individual characteristics in environmental and risk decision-making

Beginning with the assumption that members of the public, stakeholder interest groups, and professional experts should be involved in decision making about environmental and risk policies that are contentious and non-routine, this research...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Evaluating public involvement processes by combining perspectives from planners, participants, and normative theory

 From 1995-1997 we conducted a study of public participation in a forest policy-making process in northern New England and New York. We sought to understand various perspectives about the process held by planners and participants in this...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Process and outcome evaluation of the sustainable rural community development project in Vermont

Between November 1995 and October 1997 we led a participatory evaluation of the substantive impacts of the Sustainable Rural Community Development Project (SRCD) and the processes which the SRCD Project employed. The SRCD Project uses the “...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Social and ecological transferability of integrated ecological assessment models

As part of an interdisciplinary project with colleagues from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA and University of Connecticut, Avery Point Campus, Groton, CT we studied the social and ecological transferability of integrated...
Public Participation and Decision Making
The role of social networks in the formation of risk perceptions about low dose radiation risks

SERI is working as a sub-contractor to Decision Research in Oregon.  The project conducts basic research in the areas of risk perception and decision making and their application to risk communication. The work specifically applies to policy...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Factors influencing participation of local government officials in environmental policy making and implementation

From 1996-1998 we investigated motivations behind decisions by local government officials (LGOs) to participate in environmental policy making and implementation. LGO participation is recognized as a critical component of successful policy...
Public Participation and Decision Making

Non-SERI Projects

Environmental and health risk communication in Thailand

Seth Tuler spent four months during 2008/2009 as a Fulbright Scholar at the Faculty of Public Health, Thammasat University, Rangsit Center, Pathumthani, Thailand. He studied the public health risk communication activities about air emissions from...
Public Participation and Decision Making
Employee safety in national parks

Three projects were done on this topic:

1. Social science research needs assessment and proposed research strategy on occupational risk, safety, and health for the National Park Service. Report prepared for the Social Science Research...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Human dimensions of wildfires

We completed a social science research literature review on the human dimensions of wildland fire, as part of a broader project for the Social Science Research Director of the National Park Service on a proposed research strategy for wildland...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Visitor safety in US National Parks

A social risk analysis of visitor safety in the National Parks System. Funded by the Cooperative Park Studies Unit, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID for the Social Science Research Program of the National Park Service. Comprehensive Study of...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment
Design of dolphin exhibits at the New York Aquarium

Thomas Webler participated in a research project with the aim of creating an exhibition that addresses preconceptions and constructed understandings of dolphins. The exhibit was not intended to feature live dolphins; those had been removed from...
Human Dimensions of Risk and Environment