New Scientific Partnerships Enabled by the Fifth World Congress on Risk; Cape Town, South Africa; May 6-8, 2019

Society For Risk Analysis, Herndon VA

Investigators

Abstract

Where developing regions lack the physical and social infrastructure capacity to respond and adapt to disruptions, they are vulnerable to both predicted and unpredicted threats. Resilience and development are interconnected concepts, benefiting from multidisciplinary research. There is opportunity for international collaborations to share concepts, models, data, metrics, best practices, and lessons learned. This effort enables representatives of a next generation of young scholars based in the US to partner and build research collaborations with researchers who are based in developing countries. The effort bridges the gaps of disciplines and national boundaries, where US-based researchers partner with international researchers with whom they would not otherwise meet. The effort disseminates lessons of development and resilience from across Africa and elsewhere through both established and new channels, enhancing the international community of scholars. The effort is a key step in furthering the science of resilience and risk across multiple disciplines. The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Fifth World Congress on Risk convenes on the theme of Development and Resilience at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, May 6-8, 2019. The NSF support is enabling thirty-five US-based early-career scientists to contribute to the World Congress on Risk and collaborate on topics of risk, resilience, and development with coauthors from developing nations. The effort partially defrays the travel costs for these scientists, who have submitted an abstract with at least one scientist or practitioner coauthor from Africa or another developing region as a coauthor. The US-based scientists and their partners from developing regions are thus building new relationships with international research partners. The collaborators will show evidence of additional collaboration within 6 months after the World Congress, for example through jointly-published papers, presentations, courses, webinars, etc. The aggregated outcomes of the funded collaborations will be reported to the scientific community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.