| Literature DB >> 31649275 |
Mariah Fowler1, Arash Modaresi Rad1, Stephen Utych2, Andrew Adams1, Sanazsadat Alamian3, Jennifer Pierce4, Philip Dennison5, John T Abatzoglou6, Amir AghaKouchak7, Luke Montrose8, Mojtaba Sadegh9.
Abstract
Wildfire smoke presents a growing threat in the Western U.S.; and human health, transportation, and economic systems in growing western communities suffer due to increasingly severe and widespread fires. While modelling wildfire activity and associated wildfire smoke distributions have substantially improved, understanding how people perceive and respond to emerging smoke hazards has received little attention. Understanding and incorporating human perceptions of threats from wildfire smoke is critical, as decision-makers need such information to mitigate smoke-related hazards. We surveyed 614 randomly selected people (in-person) across the Boise Metropolitan Area in Idaho and 1,623 Boise State University affiliates (online), collecting information about their level of outside activity during smoke event(s), knowledge about the source of air quality information and effective messaging preference, perception of wildfire smoke as a hazard, and smoke-related health experiences. This relatively large dataset provides a novel perspective of people's perception of smoke hazards, and provides crucial policy-relevant information to decision-makers. Dataset is available to the public and can be used to address a wide range of research questions.Entities:
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Year: 2019 PMID: 31649275 PMCID: PMC6813346 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0251-y
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Sci Data ISSN: 2052-4463 Impact factor: 6.444
Summary of survey questions for 614 in-person and 1,623 online participants.
| Category | Questions content |
|---|---|
Demographic Data (6 questions) | • Age, • Gender, • Race, • Zip code, • Education level, • Income |
Activity Data (3 questions) | • General health status, • Engagement in outside activities, • Frequency of outside activities |
Air Quality Notification (13 questions) | • Receiving/Seeking air quality information and its source, • Frequency of seeking air quality information, • Reducing outside activities, • Longest period of consecutive days to reduce outside activities, • Minimum air quality index that convinced to reduce/eliminate outside activities, • Effective warning content and delivery method, • Timing of warning, • Future mitigation planning |
Natural Hazard Questions (3 questions) | • Perception of smoke as a hazard, • Comparison with other hazards such as tornadoes and hurricanes, • Evacuating home to prevent smoke impacts |
Health Questions (3 questions) | • Smoke-related health experience, • Type of observed symptoms, • Mitigation strategies to reduce health issues |
Fig. 1Spatial distribution of residence zip codes identified by survey participants. (a) In-person participants. (b) Online participants. Frequency of the collected samples in each location is color-coded in log-scale.
Fig. 2Socioeconomic background of participants. (a,b) Racial, (c,d) household income level and (e,f) education level distribution of participants in in-person (a,c,e) and online (b,d,f) surveys.
Fig. 3Demographic of survey participants. (a) Age and (b) gender distribution of in-person survey participants. (c) Age and (d) gender distribution of online survey participants.
Contingency table that shows associations between wildfire smoke induced illness and perception of smoke as a hazard, as well as Fisher’s and inter-rater reliability tests’ results.
| In-person | Online | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hazard | Not hazard | Hazard | Not hazard | |
| Illness observed | 98 | 10 | 340 | 33 |
| Illness not observed | 336 | 39 | 731 | 63 |
|
| ||||
| p-value | 0.86 | 0.65 | ||
| Odds ratio | 1.14 | 0.89 | ||
| 99% Confidence interval | 0.44–2.97 | 0.50–1.58 | ||
| Null hypothesis | Accept (there is no association) | Accept (there is no association) | ||
|
| ||||
| Observed agreement | 0.28 | 0.35 | ||
| Random agreement | 0.27 | 0.35 | ||
| Cohen’s kappa | 0.0055 | −0.0061 | ||
| 95% Confidence interval | −0.0503–0.0613 | −0.0480–0.0358 | ||
| Level of agreement | Slight agreement | Poor agreement | ||
| p-value | 0.95 | 0.91 | ||
| Null hypothesis | Accept (observed agreement is accidental) | Accept(observed agreement is accidental) | ||
| Measurement(s) | Perception • response to |
| Technology Type(s) | survey method |
| Factor Type(s) | hazard condition • age • sex • income • education |
| Sample Characteristic - Organism | Homo sapiens |
| Sample Characteristic - Environment | wildfire • smoke |
| Sample Characteristic - Location | Ada County |