Technically speaking, my research focuses on the intersections between individual risk perception and decision making under uncertainty. I have published in peer-reviewed scientific journals including 'Disasters', the flagship journal in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction.
I am currently developing and testing a collaboration theory in the field of human stigmergy on how autonomous acts leave digital traces that become reproducible in domains and scalable by platforms. This theory is called 'Stigmergy Network Theory' and key concepts it measures and evaluates are: (i) mediated digital environments; (ii) uncoordinated flow and error-control; (iii) recurrent collective needs; (iv) perceived reward satisfaction; and (v) deliberate algorithmic manipulation.
summary by Claude:
This study examines perceptions and decisions around flood insurance among residents in flood-prone areas of Brisbane, Australia after the major 2011 floods. The main findings are:
There is a need to clearly define "flooding" in insurance policies to minimize confusion and rejected claims from policyholders.
Insurers' recommendations do not significantly influence households' decisions to undertake flood risk reduction measures for their properties.
Residents show self-reliance in managing flood risks rather than relying on government assistance, even without public flood insurance schemes.
Residents object to increased insurance premiums based on updates to flood hazard maps by authorities.
The study used a questionnaire delivered to 1796 households across 11 Brisbane suburbs, with a 26.16% response rate. It applied logistic regression modeling and descriptive statistics to analyze the relationships between flood insurance perceptions/decisions and various explanatory variables.
The findings highlight issues around insurance policy definitions, the limited influence of insurers on household mitigation actions, residents' self-reliance, and resistance to premium increases from updated hazard maps. The study aims to inform flood insurance policies from these empirical insights in the Australian context.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2022). Governance in Crisis: Institutionalizing Reflective Report to Guide Decision Making Under Uncertainty. In Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Vol. 16). https://paris.pias.science/article/FP_Starominski
summary by Perplexity:
The paper proposes a method called "reflective reports" to guide national leaders in making decisions under uncertainty, such as during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. The key aspects are:
Leaders gather a small group of thoughtful advisors from different fields to provide concise recommendations in a structured narrative format.
Advisors expose the assumptions, limitations, and trade-offs of their recommendations to help leaders grasp the complexity.
The structured format of brief narratives helps leaders easily understand and remember key points before deciding, without being overwhelmed by information.
Limitations include advisors oversimplifying or missing key facts, lack of diverse perspectives, and cognitive biases of leaders.
The aim is to optimize decision-making processes under time, information and resource constraints by incorporating critical thinking and transparency about uncertainties. The paper discusses applying this approach in the context of Brazil's COVID-19 response.
Starominski‐Uehara, M. (2021). How structural mitigation shapes risk perception and affects decision‐making. Disasters, 45(1), 46-66.
summary by Claude:
This paper examines the relationships between risk perception and structural measures like dams for flood mitigation in southeast Queensland, Australia. The key findings are:
Most residents believe that existing dams on the Brisbane River can reduce damage from major floods in the future, despite the dams not preventing damage from the 2010-2011 Queensland floods.
Residents attribute the 2010-2011 flood damage primarily to organizational decision-making regarding dam water releases, rather than a lack of trust in the dams themselves. They have low risk acceptance of future flood losses caused by mismanaged dam releases.
Contrary to the "levee paradox", most residents take protective actions like buying flood insurance and making home improvements, indicating they do not have a false sense of security from the dams.
The paper argues that enhancing organizational decision-making processes around dam operations, rather than residents' risk perceptions, should be the priority for reducing future flood impacts. It recommends facilitating protective actions by residents as part of an integrated flood risk mitigation approach.
Starominski‐Uehara, M. (2021). Heuristics and protective behavior for floods. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 12(4), 434-450.
summary by Claude:
The article examines the role of heuristics (rules of thumb or mental shortcuts) in influencing protective behavior against flood risks among households in flood-prone areas of Southeast Queensland, Australia. The key findings are:
Contrary to expectations from the literature, not every heuristic or maladaptive response (like fatalism, denial, wishful thinking) significantly correlated with the decision to not take protective actions against floods.
When all the heuristics were analyzed together, negative flood experience emerged as the main factor driving households to take protective actions like purchasing flood insurance, retrofitting/raising their property, or relocating.
The results support the Theory of Ecological Rationality, which argues that heuristics based on real-world experience can be effective decision-making tools under uncertainty, rather than being necessarily irrational or leading to more risk exposure.
The author suggests that flood mitigation policies should create models mimicking real-world decision processes to better understand how flood experience shapes risk perception and decision-making under uncertainty.
The study analyzed survey data from households in flood-prone Brisbane suburbs, modeling the influence of selected heuristics on taking four protective actions against floods. The key takeaway is that negative prior flood experience, rather than other hypothesized maladaptive responses, was the main driver of households adopting protective measures.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2021). Stigmergy Leadership: Indirect Digital Coordination for Social Change Based on Autonomous, Reproducible, and Scalable Individual Acts.
summary by Claude:
This paper investigates digital leadership traits observed in recent and relevant political events through the lens of stigmergy theory. Stigmergy refers to the coordination and regulation of collective activities based on individual autonomous, reproducible, and scalable acts that leave traces in the environment triggering subsequent actions.
The paper analyzes several case studies from 2019-2021, including the Hong Kong protests, Myanmar protests, archiving of COVID-19 news on GitHub, Belarus protests, and the George Floyd protests in the US. It argues that digital platforms have enabled individuals to autonomously create and share narratives that get socially recognized, reproduced, and scaled up by like-minded people with minimal direct communication, challenging conventional leadership notions.
Key findings include:
Autonomous digital actions by individuals, even inadvertently, can provoke exponential responses online and offline when fitting mainstream/emerging narratives.
Digital networks allow protesters, mainly young adults, to organize and share narratives without formal leaders.
Anonymity encourages individuals to share provocative information without compromising identity.
Central governments try to control information flow and online narratives against their regimes, with varying success.
The paper concludes that digital platforms have expanded leadership possibilities by enabling autonomous, reproducible, scalable acts to drive social change, though more research linking stigmergy principles to leadership is needed.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2021). Strengthening community resilience through network building. International Journal of Emergency Management, 17(1), 30-46.
summary by Claude:
This paper argues that individuals tend to mimic the actions taken by close neighbors when deciding how to reduce uncertainty and mitigate risks from floods or other hazards. The key findings are:
The quality of personal relationships with neighbors who have taken protective actions like purchasing flood insurance, raising their homes, or making home improvements is the most significant factor influencing an individual's decision to take those same protective actions. Having a "close" relationship with those neighbors increases the likelihood of mimicking their actions.
The number of neighbors who have taken protective actions and the perceived effectiveness of those actions are less influential than the closeness of the relationships.
Building network communities where residents can interact and develop interpersonal trust is recommended as a cost-effective strategy for increasing community resilience to disasters. This can be facilitated by authorities creating opportunities for residents to meet and connect informally.
The rationale is that close relationships lead to shared norms, values and identities that shape collective risk perception and decision making under uncertainty in ways that motivate protective actions.
In summary, the closeness of neighborhood relationships emerges as the key social network factor driving individual decisions around risk mitigation actions like flood preparedness. Fostering these close-knit community networks is proposed as a policy approach for enhancing resilience.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2020). Powering Social Media Footage: Simple Guide for the Most Vulnerable to Make Emergency Visible.
summary by Claude:
This paper provides a framework for guiding vulnerable people experiencing harsh conditions to effectively use social media to draw attention to their situations and get help. The framework is based on the theory of mediatized conflict and an analysis of the hashtag #FallecidosCovid19Ec on Twitter during the COVID-19 outbreak in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
The key aspects of the proposed framework include:
Subject: Identifying yourself, clearly describing the problem with visuals, revealing emotional impact.
Structure: Conveying urgency, focusing on visual information over quality, using relevant hashtags to reach target audience.
Platform: Using Twitter to directly reach authorities/media, being available to respond to inquiries, providing consistent updates.
The goal is to empower vulnerable individuals to bypass reliance on media professionals and directly amplify their voices during emergencies through effective social media use. However, the paper acknowledges challenges like access to technology, privacy/safety risks, and ability to reach intended audiences.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2020). Mass Media Exposing Representations of Reality Through Critical Inquiry.
summary by Claude:
The paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a public interview given by Brazil's newly appointed Health Minister in April 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author argues that journalists could more effectively expose contradictions and shallow thinking in authorities' statements by asking straightforward questions invoking the interviewee's personal notions of space and time, based on Immanuel Kant's ideas of "a priori intuition" laid out in his work Critique of Pure Reason.
The analysis finds that the minister's statements and responses to journalists' questions highlighted confusion, ignorance of best practices, manipulative language, and lack of understanding about contingency planning amid uncertainty. The author suggests that by depriving themselves of prior knowledge and instead personalizing questions to reveal how authorities' experiences shape their representations of reality, journalists could better help the public grasp complexity and critically assess political rhetoric during crises.
The paper provides examples of how journalists could reframe their questions along the lines of Kantian space and time intuitions to expose flaws in the minister's reasoning and crisis management strategy. The author argues this "personalized" inquiry approach, guided by Kant's epistemology, can enhance public trust by clearly contrasting facts with manipulative narratives that may put lives at risk amid uncertainty.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2020). Reducing the Risks of New Coronavirus in Vulnerable Areas in Brazil.
summary by ChatGPT:
The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has significantly impacted Brazil, particularly urban areas, but rural and impoverished regions are at imminent risk. This paper proposes a preventive policy called "Island Resizing" aimed at protecting these vulnerable communities by implementing localized isolation measures.
Background:
The virus has severely affected urban areas and will likely spread to rural and poor regions, causing devastating effects due to inadequate healthcare infrastructure.
Federal efforts have focused on urban containment, neglecting rural areas that have yet to report cases but remain vulnerable due to ongoing travel.
Proposed Policy - "Island Resizing":
Local leaders should create "islands" by disconnecting from larger urban centers and establishing physical boundaries to prevent virus entry.
The policy includes creating multiple layers of isolation within communities to manage suspected cases.
The strategy is flexible, allowing adaptation based on the virus's spread and local conditions, aiming to minimize social and economic disruption.
Method:
Risk levels determine boundary establishment: high-risk areas require immediate and strict isolation; medium and low-risk areas need preemptive measures.
The policy advises a three-week quarantine for high-risk areas, maintaining essential services while restricting movement.
Smaller units like nursing homes should have tighter controls, easing only after ensuring no new infections.
Limitations:
Accurate risk assessment is challenging due to data limitations.
Enforcing boundaries requires resources and cooperation, and prolonged isolation may lead to social unrest.
Conclusion:
While the policy cannot guarantee complete protection, it provides a framework for reducing virus transmission and safeguarding vulnerable populations in resource-limited areas. The goal is to mitigate health and economic impacts in these communities.
Starominski-Uehara, M. (2020, April 4). Brief Communication Analysis of Brazilian Presidency during COVID-19. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/jr7eq
summary by ChatGPT:
The article analyzes the Brazilian presidency's communication strategy during the COVID-19 crisis, highlighting a conflict between the president's calls for normalcy and governors' advice for isolation. Using Arjen Boin's crisis management framework, it argues that effective crisis communication requires clear, credible leadership. The Brazilian president's downplaying of the virus and inconsistent messages undermined public trust, leading to confusion and uncertainty among citizens about whom to believe. The study underscores the importance of credible, timely communication in managing public crises.
Uehara, M. S. (2018). Individual risk perception and flood mitigation: an empirical study of protective actions in Australia.
summary by Perplexity:
Here is a summary of the key points from the provided file:
This thesis applies Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to understand how Australian households decide to take protective actions against flood risks.
PMT explores the relationships between threat appraisal, coping appraisal, vulnerability factors, and decisions to take protective actions.
This is the first study to apply PMT in the Australian context, providing novel insights for policymakers.
Shared Responsibility
The concept of shared responsibility expects individuals to take action to reduce residual risks from major hazards like floods.
However, policymakers need to better understand the complexity of household decision-making processes.
Conditions like perceived risks, capacity to act, and vulnerability factors affect decisions, as do circumstances like exposure levels, threat nature, and protective action type.
Case Study and Method
The study focuses on households in Brisbane affected by major floods like 1974 and 2011.
It uses regression analysis to model factors influencing protective actions like home improvements, house raising, insurance, and relocation.
Qualitative data provides nuances on significant associations.
Key Findings
In the Australian context, an individual's capacity may not be the main predictor of taking protective actions, contrary to findings elsewhere.
Conditions (perceived risks, capacity, vulnerability) and circumstances (exposure, threat, action type) significantly influence household decisions under uncertainty.
Demographic and socioeconomic factors like location, tenure, and education also play a role.
In summary, this thesis provides novel insights into how Australian households perceive flood risks and decide on protective actions, highlighting the importance of understanding specific conditions and circumstances beyond just individual capacity.
Starominski-Uehara, M., & Keskitalo, E. C. H. (2016). How does natural hazard insurance literature discuss the risks of climate change?. Journal of Insurance Regulation, 35(6).
summary by Perplexity:
The article discusses how the natural hazard insurance literature examines the risks posed by climate change. Here are the key points:
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, leading to higher insured losses for the insurance industry.
Insurers are adapting business practices to manage growing climate risks, such as improving catastrophe modeling, risk analysis, and data collection. However, long-term adaptation strategies are limited.
Insurance can incentivize risk mitigation by pricing premiums based on risk exposure, discouraging development in hazard-prone areas. But it also creates moral hazard by reducing motivation for individuals to take protective measures.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are emerging as a way for insurers and governments to share climate risks, with insurers providing expertise and governments providing financial capacity. PPPs can prevent insurer insolvency after disasters.
Insurers are collaborating with research institutes, development banks, and other groups to improve climate risk assessment and develop products like micro-insurance for developing countries.
Challenges remain in developing robust risk transfer tools like catastrophe bonds and making insurance affordable, especially in developing countries where public resources are limited.
Starominski‐Uehara, M., & Keskitalo, E. C. H. (2014). Integrating Adaptation to Climate Change Within Risk Management? The Case of Insurance System Signals and Policy Responses in Hawaii. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 5(4), 405-424.
summary by Claude:
The paper examines the integration of climate change adaptation into policy-making processes related to insurance programs in the highly vulnerable state of Hawaii and its county Kauai. It discusses the role of federal programs like the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Disaster Mitigation Act in guiding regional and local mitigation plans, but notes limitations like lack of funding for comprehensive risk assessments. The study finds that the integration of climate change adaptation is constrained by competing priorities at different administrative levels and limited disclosure from private insurers, resulting in increased exposure of local communities to climate risks. While insurance is seen as a potential bridge between public policy and private sector in managing risks, the study shows that priority-setting mechanisms and business interests can limit this bridging role. The case highlights the challenges of integrating long-term climate risks into policy amidst short-term economic pressures and competing funding needs.