Sociology professor leads grant from U.S. Dept. of Agriculture

Dr. Fernando Rivera was awarded a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. He will lead the Sociology component of a two year grant with two UCF faculty members from the department of Public Administration.

The trio will study how risk and vulnerabilities can be managed by identifying factors influencing community capacity and resilience in communities in Central Florida. Further research for the project will study how risk can be communicated to reduce public complacency toward disasters.

Dr. Rivera will study how culture, complexity and social networks play a role in the communities. He will investigate sociological issues to address how pre-disaster social and economic inequalities need to be identified in order to create resilient communities. His team will research ways to communicate risk in order to reduce public complacency towards disasters in rural communities.

When the grant is finished, the team will organize and host a major conference at UCF for scholars, emergency relief managers and the general public to discuss the team’s results.

The conference is aimed at creating a collaborative environment for people to share and develop ways to ensure disaster resilient communities exist.