The morning after Hurricane Maria in Dominica. Source: Roosevelt Skerrit via Wikimedia.

 

Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis threaten society: its people and its places. With a $3M award from NSF, social scientists will join engineers to protect the built environment — and the communities within it. The newly created CONVERGE center will help keep natural hazards from becoming societal disasters.

At the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, sociologist and CONVERGE principal investigator Lori Peek will discuss the specific ways social scientists are working with natural hazards engineers to understand and reduce systemic risk among vulnerable people, structures and places. Peek will detail the center’s connection with NHERI, the NSF-funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure.

“Convergence science is about bringing together diverse people, perspectives and skillsets to solve the world’s toughest challenges,” Peek said. “CONVERGE will allow us to link various research communities, to develop and share best practices for the ethical conduct of research, and to promote social science, engineering and interdisciplinary natural hazards research to reduce vulnerability.”

At the AGU conference, Peek’s talk is part of the discussion in Critical Geohealth Disaster Research to Support Response, Recovery, and Future Preparedness.

 

Related Links

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2018 AGU Fall Meeting

Prof. Lori Peek, University of Colorado

Release: NSF Creates $3M CONVERGE Center