Privacy Policy

CASA Alerts Mobile Apps (iOS, Android) 

The purpose of this study is to explore individuals’ perceptions of severe weather risks such as storms, tornadoes, rain, hail, and floods. It will also explore views on different ways of communicating the risks of these threats. Users are selected at random from households in the greater Dallas Fort Worth metroplex or have volunteered to participate through our other recruiting efforts.

Types of information collected. CASA Alerts uses user location to customize warning and alerts. In addition, in the settings section of the CASA Alerts app, the user picks locations, such as home or work, where the user is interested in receiving severe weather information. The user does not receive alerts unless location services are enabled or fixed locations are selected. CASA Alerts users receive brief surveys about the weather, the alerts and warnings, user perceptions, and how users react to this information. CASA Alerts collects information on the app settings users chose, changes to those settings, how often users receive warnings and alerts, and user location.

Collection of your location information. We will collect location information. This is an essential part of the project. Please know that this study is governed by strict ethics of confidentiality and neither the researchers nor the University of Delaware and the University of Massachusetts will reveal the names of individual participants involved in this study unless legally obligated to do so. Only researchers involved in the study at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Delaware will have access to the data. Participants will be assigned a numerical user ID that will be used in all research. Data is stored on a password-protected server.

We will make every effort to keep all research records that identify you confidential to the extent permitted by law. In the event of any publication or presentation resulting from the research, no personally identifiable information will be shared. The University of Delaware Institutional Review Board and/or the University of Massachusetts Institutional Review Board and project related staff may view your research records, but the confidentiality of your records will be protected to the extent permitted by law. As part of the experiment, participants’ location data will be collected and stored at the University of Massachusetts on a standard database platform under password protection. The complete data will only be accessible to Principal Investigators on the project. Subsets of the data will be extracted for specific analyses however user e-mail addresses will be replaced with numerical user ID. The resulting data will be saved only on password protected computers or servers.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact University of Delaware Professor Joe Trainor at jtrainor@udel.edu, or CASA Director at the University of Massachusetts Brenda Philips at bphilips@ecs.umass.edu. If you have any questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant, you may contact theUniversity of Delaware Institutional Review Board at (302) 831-2137 or the University ofMassachusetts Institutional Review Board at (413) 545-3428.