A Mixed Methods Study of Residential Adjustment Following Wildfires
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About the Study
After a major disaster, such as a wildfire, affected homeowners must make a difficult decision: do they rebuild their home as it was before the disaster, rebuild but in a way that better protects them from future disasters, or relocate to a new home elsewhere? These are complicated decisions that impact homeowners and communities for many years. Such decisions are influenced by many factors, including household income, access to insurance, location of employment, the need for local services such as medical care or schools, and connections to family and friends. One underlying factor that affects all these others is place attachment, or the emotional and functional ties that people have to the place where they live.
This study focuses on understanding how place attachment influences the decisions people make after disasters, specifically decisions about where they live and whether they invest in measures that reduce their risk to future disasters. Focused on four California counties that have been affected by recent, major wildfires, findings from this study will help local governments and practitioners develop programs that better support households that are affected by disasters and inform community planning for hazards associated with climate change.
This collaborative research is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (Award #2135424 and Award #2135440).
The Photovoice Method
This study is one of the first to use a method called photovoice to examine post-disaster recovery. The method has been used widely in public health and education, but it has rarely been used to study disasters.
Photovoice is a participatory action research method, meaning participants actively create the data that researchers use to understand a problem. Simply put, photovoice involves telling stories about one's experience through pictures. Researchers will ask participants a few broad questions that participants will answer by taking photographs during their daily routines. Participants will later discuss the photographs they have taken over an interview with researchers. In this study, photovoice will enable researchers to better understand how residents impacted by wildfire navigate the complex process of housing recovery.
Are you interested in participating?
We are recruiting participants for the study who live in Northern California and whose primary residence has been damaged or destroyed by wildfire since 2015. You must be 18 or older to participate. To learn more and see if you qualify, please answer the questionnaire below.
Questionnaire: Click here to complete our questionnaire.
Research Team
Alex Greer 
Bio: Dr. Alex Greer is an Associate Professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany. His research interests include hazard adjustments, relocation decision-making processes, and organizational culture.
Email: agreer@albany.edu
Webpage: https://www.albany.edu/cehc/faculty/alex-greer
Ronald Schumann 
Bio: Dr. Ronald Schumann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Management and Disaster Science at the University of North Texas. A human geographer by training, his research interests include long-term community recovery after disasters, cultural memory, and risk perception.
Email: ronald.schumann@unt.edu
Webpage: https://hps.unt.edu/ronald-schumann-iii-phd
Miranda Mockrin 
Bio: Dr. Miranda Mockrin is a research scientist at the USDA Forest Service’s Northern Research Station based in Baltimore, Maryland. She studies conservation and land use, combining ecological and social science. Research projects include mapping the growth of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) over time, examining rebuilding after wildfire, and studying ecological effects of housing development.
Email: miranda.h.mockrin@usda.gov
Webpage: https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/about/people/mhmockrin
Sherri Brokopp Binder 
Bio: Dr. Sherri Brokopp Binder is the President of BrokoppBinder Research & Consulting, located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. A community psychologist by training, her research is focused on post-disaster relocation with an emphasis on home buyout programs and housing recovery.
Email: sbinder@brokoppbinder.com
Webpage: https://www.brokoppbinder.com/team
Ayesha Islam 
Bio: Ayesha Islam is a Ph.D. student in Information Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Ayesha holds a master’s degree in Disaster Science and Management. Her research interests include hazard adjustments, relocation decision making processes, risk assessment, vulnerability assessment, and spatial analysis.
Email: aislam2@albany.edu
Webpage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayesha-islam-04b47716b/
Mattisyn Cooper
Bio: Mattisyn Cooper is a master's student in Emergency Management and Disaster Science at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include post-disaster debris management, hazardous materials remediation, and the role of animals in disasters.
Email: mattisyncooper@my.unt.edu
Webpage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattisyn-cooper
Anneka Eastman
Bio: Anneka Eastman is a senior undergraduate Anthropology major at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include cultural dimensions of community recovery and indigenous perspectives on emergency management.
Email: annekaeastman@my.unt.edu
Webpage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneka-eastman-835190226/
Community Partners
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News & Updates
Thank you for spreading the word about our study. We have wrapped up our photovoice interviews in California with a total of 70 interviews. This would not have been possible without the help of our partners and participants. We sincerely appreciate you opening your homes and offices to us and also sharing our study with your neighbors. We are now working to transcribe the interviews so we can begin the analysis.
We continue to share your stories. Given the recent wildfires in Texas, one of our team members Ronnie Schumann, based at the University of North Texas, is sharing what we have learned from you via local media outlets and adult learning lectures in order to reach fire survivors who will soon begin their own recovery process. We are grateful to play a role in this community-to-community knowledge sharing. Also, this summer, our team will be sharing findings from this study at the 2024 Natural Hazards Research and Application Workshop in Colorado. This workshop brings together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss cutting-edge problems in disasters. Our presentations will detail how issues such as trauma, memory, and survivors’ relationships with nature have guided housing recovery decisions across our study sites. We expect, based on our past presentations at this workshop, that this will lead to lively discussions among practitioners and policymakers on how to improve the recovery process for communities affected by wildfires.
We are beginning to plan for our community workshops. As we mentioned during the interviews and in our previous updates, we are looking forward to holding community workshops to share our preliminary findings and collect your feedback. Our team is excited to reconnect with you again in person, show you what we have learned, and hear from you what we got right and what we have missed. We are also looking to learn how we can work with you to use this research to advocate for survivors’ needs. We are working to design the workshops to be engaging, and to provide space for survivors to meet each other. Additionally, we want to welcome policymakers so they can hear your stories and apply lessons learned for the betterment of the community and future fire survivors. We expect these workshops will happen in the fall, but stay tuned for more information.
Do you have any ideas for the workshops? We want these workshops to be engaging, authentic, and, most of all, useful to you. We would love to hear your thoughts about how to make the workshops successful. Please send along thoughts about what we should cover, where we should host it, or even who to invite (for example, local and state government officials, insurance representatives, and other non-governmental organizations) to maximize their impact.