This award to The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) will support the 13th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment. The 2013 theme is Disasters and Environment: Science, Preparedness, and Resilience. The conference will be held January 15-27, 2013 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. Over 1,100 participants from higher education institutions, government, civil society organizations, research and policy organizations, business, international organizations and governments are expected to attend.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that in 2011 14 disasters caused greater than one billion dollars of damage in the United States. This figure exceeds the damage incurred during the entire decade of the 1980s.
This conference will consider the range of environmental disasters including but not limited to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, heat waves and droughts, earthquakes, winter storms, wildfires, oil and chemical spills. The conference will share research questions and findings on many physical, biological, social and engineering topics related to the causes and impacts of disasters. The conference will emphasize how to achieve more resilient communities, saving lives and livelihoods. The Disasters and Environment conference will connect science and decision-making on range of levels with a focus on six interconnected themes: cascading disasters; the intersection of the built and natural environments; disasters as mechanisms of ecosystem change; rethinking recovery and expanding the vision of mitigation; human behavior and its consequences; and, "no regrets" resilience case studies.
The conference will feature eight keynote presentations, eight plenary roundtables, 24 symposia and 23 interactive breakout workshops. The individual workshops will engage conference participants with experts in generating science-based recommendations on theme areas. Over 200 distinguished thought leaders, scientists, federal agency officials, policy experts and international authorities will speak over the course of the 2.5 day event. NCSE is requesting funding to support travel and related expenses for approximately 33 conference speakers.
The Disasters and Environment conference will have five main impacts: 1. sharing the current state of knowledge; 2. establishing new and stronger relationships between scientists and decision-makers in the public and private domain; 3. developing targeting and actionable science-based recommendations on each of the 23 workshops; 4. catalyzing partnerships among institutions and organizations to advance research and policy related to environment and disaster issues; and 5. publishing a report of conference highlights and recommendations, that will be disseminated nationally and internationally and available on the conference website at www.DisastersandEnvironment.org.
The major project outcomes were the strategies for increasing the utility of science related to environmental disasters were developed through workshop bringing together scientists and discionmakers from diverse communities. These strategies aim to result in greater public safety, preservation of property and community functioning, and increased resiliency of communities. These strategies included: Guidance on connecting tools with decision makers for key federal agencies such as FEMA; Guidance on research related to achieving greater resilience of the electrical grid in times of environmental disasters; particularly related to DOE, NSF, and NOAA; Guidance on creating an international agenda to build greater resilience in coastal communities; Recommendations on how science can support more effective fire management at the wildland-urban interface; Guidance on recent advancements related to flooding to incorporate greater use of risk management concepts and tools; Guidance on how the impacts of earthquakes on the environment and human health can be anticipated, mitigated, and assessed rapidly in the event of a disaster, through collaboration between EPA, USGS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NSF, FEMA, and NIST, and state and local agencies along with National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program; Guidance on how buildings and communities can utilize science to become more resilient to disasters, particularly in the context of climate change; Guidance on how to create policy frameworks for integrating natural resources into disaster planning; Strategies for reducing risk and vulnerability through "green disaster management" and climate change adaptation; Guidance on how to recognize the disaster risks to natural resources and the benefits of protecting these resources as part of disaster risk reduction; Strategies for creating an action plan to enhance preparedness and building resilience in the rapidly changing Arctic; Strategies for integrating science into a long-term response to "megadroughts"; Guidance for responding to drinking water and waste water disasters; Guidance for better understanding how people respond to disasters because of risk perception and communication and how risk perception can be more aligned to science and communication can be more effective; Strategies for more effective prediction and response to famine; and, Guidance for how cities can more effectively prepare for disasters. The full recommendations were compiled, reviewed by participants, and disseminated for professional implementation An additional major product was the event website www.EnvironmentalDisasters.net, which continues to provide valuable resources including videos, interviews, and other related materials. The project engaged over one thousand participants from key scientific and non-scientific communities. It reached a much larger audience though the live broadcast of part of the event by CSPAN (see video here) and coverage by other media outlets. The impact on participating scientists was to advance their work across both disciplinary boundaries and scientific-non-scientific boundaries connecting their work to the needs of decision-makers on environmental and disasters issues – providing an essential perspective and skill as they seek to make their public-funded research of greater value to the public.
