The mission of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder is to advance and communicate knowledge on hazards mitigation and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Using an all-hazards and interdisciplinary framework, the Center fosters information sharing and integration of activities among researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from around the world; supports and conducts research; and provides educational opportunities for the next generation of hazards scholars and professionals. This grant enables the Natural Hazards Center to conduct its information clearinghouse activities, which include: a website at www.colorado.edu/hazards; other web-based products, including the biweekly publication Disaster Research and a quarterly Research Digest; library and information services; publication of a newsletter, the Natural Hazards Observer; support for post-disaster quick-response research and publication of quick-response reports; and an annual workshop for researchers, students, the private sector, and government representatives. This grant also supports various outreach activities, such as public presentations and media-related activities?all aimed at transferring knowledge on research findings and best practices for disaster loss reduction.
The Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder engages in information dissemination activities and fosters linkages among social science disaster researchers, practitioners, decision makers, and young professionals. During this three-year grant period, the Center held 3 summer workshop/conferences attended by between 275 and 450 participants; published 18 issues of its well-regarded newsletter, The Natural Hazards Observer; released a short electronic newsletter called DR-Disaster Research News You Can Use approximately every two weeks; and moderated a listserve for over 1,000 graduate students and other academics whose work focuses on hazards and disasters.The Center staff also expanded its presence on social media. Over the period of this grant, the Center continued with the modernization of its library database, which will ultimately make thousands of publications available on line at no cost for researchers and practitioners around the world. Throughout the grant period, the Center's web site was one of the world's most-accessed sites for those seeking information on the societal dimensions of hazards, disasters, and risk. Four graduate students and more than one dozen undergraduate students received training at the Center. Two graduate students received doctoral degrees during this grant period. One dissertation focused on the ways in which youth in a fishing community were affected by the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The other dissertation focused on decision making among occupants of World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 during and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. During the three-year period covered by the grant, the Principal Investigator engaged in a variety of scholarly, outreach and leadership activities. She published four journal articles and one book chapter, made approxominately two dozen presentations at practitioner-oriented meetings and conferences, presented papers at professional meetings, and was interviewed for a number of media stories following events such as Hurricane Irene; the March, 2011 Great Tokoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant accident in Japan; and other events. After the 2011 catastrophe in Japan, she traveled to the impact region as part of a social science team sponsored by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. She served on three National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committees during this grant period, and in 2012 she received the Fred Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award from the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association. Related Center activities during this period of this grant award included the following: Collaborations with researchers in the Netherlands on disaster preparedness for that nation; collaboration with Beijing Normal University on research and education related to hazards and disasters; and other NSF-sponsored studies on the long-term community impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the long-term psychosocial effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster on residents of Ukraine.
