This project is an interdisciplinary workshop focused on establishing a disaster research agenda for the systematic development of knowledge and solutions aimed at reducing the risk of environmental and technological disasters in the United States. Over 150 of the leading disaster experts from engineering, social science, and geoscience from the United States and from around the globe will probe existing knowledge in light of increasing societal vulnerability and suggest how what we know and what we need to know can help the society confront the persistence of hazard. The workshop participants will focus upon the relationship between scientific research findings on disaster risk reduction and disaster policy adoption and implementation. Societal benefits include enhanced utilization of scientific knowledge by disaster and emergency officials that should increase the resilience of communities to disasters.
The two-day workshop is organized around two plenary and four working group sessions. It will for the first time include the multidisciplinary integration of hazard and disaster researchers with researchers from implementation science. The workshop will point to an entirely new way of looking at hazards by collecting commentary and data from participants before they arrive, throughout the workshop in multiple settings, and after as well. This process will achieve the most complete assessment of the views of a large number of influential disaster scientists, from all areas, than has heretofore been attempted. The workshop's goal is to provoke discussion on the present state of hazard knowledge and to percolate fresh thinking about hazard that takes the community away from standard research topics and to looking about how that research can inform policy in ways that make sense and are implementable at multiple scales of activity. The workshop should therefore incite new research projects, initiate fresh collaborations amongst scientists, generate new ideas for engaging officials, and stimulate the imaginations of newer scholars and experienced veterans.
