Tristan Lin
University of North Texas, TX·Social Science
When a flood or tsunami threatens, what actually makes people protect themselves? Many people intend to prepare for hazards but never follow through.
- Fields
Social Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
flood risk
flood preparedness
hazard adjustment
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2028
What they work on
- Track how coastal households in 100-year flood zones turn intentions into flood protection behaviors, surveying them six times over three years based on Paton's Social-Cognitive Preparation Model.
- Test whether receiving a brochure on flood protections changes households' adoption of hazard adjustments, using an experimental intervention built into the longitudinal survey.
- Model how factors shape flood adjustment decisions over time with structural equation modeling and latent growth curve mediation modeling, and co-develop a toolkit for flood adjustment programs.
- Examine how social and physical surroundings, past experience and COVID-19 shaped household tsunami evacuation decisions at night after a 2024 earthquake, extending the Protective Action Decision Model with structural equation modeling.
- Compare nighttime response decisions and shelter preferences of affected households and emergency management professionals, using a convergent mixed-methods design of surveys and interviews.
More about the research
Others must decide in seconds whether to evacuate, sometimes in the dark. Tristan Lin's research studies how households and emergency managers make these protective decisions, in order to design programs and plans that work for the people they serve. The two projects cover the long-term side of preparing for coastal floods and the immediate side of responding to a nighttime tsunami. Both use surveys and statistical models of decision making.
Why it matters
The findings could help emergency managers in coastal communities design flood preparedness programs that remove the barriers stopping households from protecting themselves, supported by a practical toolkit for local and state agencies. The tsunami study could inform nighttime evacuation and sheltering plans, helping communities facing earthquakes and tsunamis in the United States and worldwide respond more safely.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Brittany Brand
Boise State University, ID·Social Science
Identify the factors that influence whether households in four wildland-urban interface communities adopt mitigation, stay-and-defend preparedness, or evacuation readiness, extending the Protective Action Decision Model.
Jennifer Henderson
Texas Tech University, TX·Social Science
Understand how individuals assess their own risk and decide to take protective action as flash floods and other weather hazards develop, using a human-centered approach.
Hemant Purohit
George Mason University, VA·Computer Science
Build a dynamic knowledge graph using probabilistic graphical models that combines sensor data, citizen movement and infrastructure interdependencies such as power and transportation to predict risks to emergency shelters.
The school
University of North Texas: 4 labs on PI Pages, $124M a year on research, 283 research doctorates a year.
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