13th National Conference on Disasters and Environment: Science, Preparedness, and Resilience; Washington, DC

National Council For Science And The Environment/Cedd, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

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.