A Clearinghouse on Natural Hazards Research and Applications

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

CMS 00-80977 A Clearinghouse on Natural Hazards Research and Applications Mileti, Dennis S. University of Colorado, Boulder This award supports continuation of support for the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder for the two-year period from October 2000 through September 2002. The Center's basic function, to serve as a bridge between the hazards research and practitioner communities in the United States, will not change. The Center will monitor and disseminate hazards research information to multiple users: administrators, practitioners, policy makers, engineers, and scientists of all disciplines. The Center will publish and distribute the Natural Hazards Observer to over 15,000 subscribers six times a year; operate an electronic newsletter, Disaster Research; and disseminate information via the World Wide Web and traditional hard copy publications. In addition, the Center will continue co-sponsorship of the Natural Hazards Review journal with the American Society of Civil Engineers and seek outside funding to produce and distribute issues of the Natural Hazards Informera publication series designed to synthesize state-of-the-art hazards knowledge so that it can be easily applied by practitioners. The Center will continue to build its library database, and information will be provided on a day-to-day basis in response to inquiries. The Center will sponsor an annual, national and international workshop involving users and producers of hazards research each year. It will also support social science research following disasters by funding researchers throughout the nation to carry out quick response studies of specific hazard events. The Center's in-house research program, which is largely funded with separate research grants, will focus on conducting research recommended in Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States (Mileti, 1999) which presents the results of the Center's five-year research project taking stock of what is known and not known about natural hazards and examining the relationship of hazards to a sustainable society. In particular, the Center's research will address the issue of what, exactly, sustainable recovery from disasters entails. Facilitating and ensuring links among the highly diverse group of academicians and practitioners involved in sustainable hazards management remains the greatest challenge for, and the most significant result of, Center activities. The Center is co-funded by the National Science Foundation, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.