Texas Border Business –
By Gail Fagan,
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – A $250,000 award from the AXA Research Fund to The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will enable researchers to study the flood risks of one of the state’s most vulnerable populations – those living in Texas coast colonias.
The funded project – “An Environmental and Socioeconomic Evaluation of Hydrological Risks in Lower South Texas’ Colonias” – is being led by principal investigator Dr. William Donner, sociology program coordinator and a noted researcher on disasters, environmental sociology and demography.
Donner cited the often substandard housing, lack of infrastructure and access to transportation, language barriers and the legal status of colonia residents as important factors in determining their safety and vulnerability in the face of extreme events.
“What you have in the region is a classic recipe for what we call vulnerability which means to be at risk for suffering negative impacts from extreme events, such as hurricanes, flooding and hail,” Donner said. “If we can understand their vulnerability we can do something to mitigate those vulnerabilities; if we understand their resiliency we can do something to facilitate that resiliency as well.”
The AXA Research Fund was created by the global insurance and financial services company AXA in 2007 to build knowledge on risks to better prevent them. The corporation grants funding worldwide to support research projects on environmental, life and socio-economic risks. The selection process is overseen by a Scientific Board composed of well-known academics.
Grant researchers will work with a local community organization, La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), and the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, which has contributed monetarily to the project and will assist in data collection by providing specialized interviewers who understand the culture and how to gain access and contacts where people might not be 100 percent trustful of the people interviewing them, Donner said.
To collect necessary data, the researchers will use mapping software to identify and map colonia locations in Hidalgo, Cameron and Starr counties and randomly select those to study and interview residents. The team intends to collaborate with researchers from the natural sciences to incorporate analyses of the flood risks and develop models to predict inundation patterns for Gulf Coast hurricanes that have a heavy impact on the colonia populations.
“We are hoping to really develop a set of policies or information that can be used to develop policies that can help assist folks who live within these communities to better prepare for and respond to floods when and where they occur,” Donner said.
Karen Rodriguez, 23, a May 2016 graduate from UTRGV with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, said she was excited to be hired as one of the graduate research assistants for the project.
Set to enter the master’s program in sociology and become a professor, Rodriguez said, she appreciates the opportunity to work on the background research – called literature review – of flooding, disasters and other topics related to the project, as well as to designing the survey questions.
“I knew I was going to learn a lot from Dr. Donner on research techniques, writing and statistics. I think it is going to help me a lot, not only giving me professional experience but in my personal experience, to be more in touch with people in the community,” Rodriguez said. TBB
