Louise Comfort is no stranger to disaster. Her career was built following it around the world.
Focusing on decision-making particularly during chaotic situations, Comfort says in any emergency, information and knowledge are key. The more knowledge, the better.
For decades she has worked to answer the question: "How do you figure out the right decisions in life-and-death situations?"
In an effort to provide knowledge to support and help inform decisions of government during the pandemic, Comfort has convened 20 researchers from 12 countries to gather data and provide leaders briefs on COVID-19. Among those researchers, six are GSPIA alumni.
Having taught at GSPIA for 33 years, Comfort is quick to say one of the benefits of that experience is having students from all over the world. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, she was able to convene a network from China to Italy to the United States built largely of colleagues and former students/alumni to address the pandemic.
From China to Italy and across the United States, Comfort has convened a analytics dream team of sorts. The goal is to contribute updated and timely information to the global information infrastructure that has become integral to decision making in crisis.
"COVID-19 has become a silent outbreak that has spread around the world," said Naim
“The critical ….” - Naim “How to organize potential panick…..
"We have to work together to control COVID-19 in the world. In the future we have to figure out how to work together to control the spread of COVID-19." - Kilkon Ko
Comfort, who was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.....
“We can only act once we understand what the risk is,” Comfort said, adding that cognition is the first step in solving a problem and that information helps to shape the actions and reactions of the public in response to the crisis.
“The network keeps growing, and we’re making interesting and exciting progress,” Comfort said. “We have young researchers across the country with a diverse set of skills and what we’re really looking to do is look at the emergence of a global network of informed analysts who are able to provide timely, valid information and give it as policy briefs to their countries while also looking at the international network for providing information.”
Comfort sees this work as important, especially as leaders in the United States continue to disparage national and international health organizations such as the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.
“It’s this kind of comparative analysis based on the evidence that our network is seeking to develop and provide some really rigorous research.”
Editor of Natural Disaster Review sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers
Comfort’s research interests have long focused on information and information flow within a technical information structure. The group’s research is focusing on the socio-technical aspects of moving online.
She calls the collective cognition and reaction to the pandemic “shocking, astonishing, encouraging and hopeful.”
“There has been a rapid and collective move to recognize this risk,” Comfort said. “When people understand the risk, they voluntarily take action to reduce that risk and there’s a transition from collective cognition to collective action to reduce the risk.”
She said this can be seen in South Korea to the reaction of the government in California, where Louise currently is. A governor or state giving a stay-at-home order isn’t enough to curb the spread, she says the important part is the people seeing the risk and understanding it so that they voluntarily comply with that order.
“People are monitoring their own behavior and what we’re seeing is neighbors helping neighbors,” Comfort said. “It’s that kind of collective action that is lowering the risk here in California. And it’s a phenomena that we’ve never seen before, except in wartime.”
Comfort said studying events like COVID-19 present their own challenges. Studying earthquakes throughout her entire career, she said COVID-19 is a different animal. When an earthquake occurs buildings tumble, bridges fall, and people can see and conceptualize the event and the impact. By comparison, COVID-19 is “invisible” in many ways and the lasting impacts or timeframe remains unknown.
“People respond to them (earthquakes) much more easily because you can see it. People can respond to that much more easily because it’s easy to recognize. But this event, where slowing the spread depends on collective action, a really important step is enabling people to understand what that risk is and enabling them to understand the risk not only for themselves but their neighbors.”
“It’s been remarkable for me to listen to some of the government leaders, like Gov. Cuomo,…..part of this concept of collective cognition is based in empathy. You have to be able to understand the risk not only for yourself but for someone else.”
When Cuomo asks ‘who are you staying home for?’
“This is really a remarkable occurrence, and we’re watching it happen in real time.”
She said unfortunately, we also have a front seat to watching what happens when people don’t adhere to collective cognition and action, from the meat packing plant in South Dakota that surged to hundreds of cases in a week? to
School of Public Health Margaret Potter did research with H1N1 in four counties in California, looking at the flow of information to decision makers and how that changed their public action and their public response. That article was published in 2018/2019.
“My focus on all of these events has not been on the disaster itself but has been on the decision processes. What kind of information do leaders look for and choose as the basis of their decisions,” Comfort said.
Timely valid information is important for people to make informed decisions on their own.
“Also, what is important for me is to have the information infrastructure in place so that people can update the information that comes in.”
Public policy analysts are essential workers — day by day.
“This situation is changing so rapidly and so fundamentally that it changes the way news os shared. It changes the way policy needs to be designed and communicated to every single person in society. Public policy is absolutely critical.”
Having students with an acute focus on information and decision making is crucial at this point. “I mean, we’re talking about life and death decisions.”
“This whole experience has made me very proud of the students that have graduated from GSPIA.”
Data analysis in complex adaptive systems, but also how to search for and collect that information, and use it to bring public policy initiatives up to date based on incoming information….
“I think those are core GSPIA skills, and they’ve never been more important than they are today.”