Summary
On May 14 and 15, Hub researchers traveled to the University of Maryland to participate in the annual NHERI event. The goal of the conference was to enhance the impact, depth, and utility of natural hazards research and build partnerships to strengthen community resilience.
Nearly a dozen members of the CHEER team representing four of the Hub’s core institutions – including East Carolina University, the University of Florida, Texas A&M University, and the University of Delaware – were among the roughly 300 attendees at the 2024 Natural Hazards Research Summit.
Over the course of two days, Hub members had the opportunity to present and listen to lightning talks, engage in roundtable discussions, participate in panels and poster presentations, and lead important conversations with members of the natural hazards community.
Nearly a dozen members of the CHEER Hub met at the University of Maryland meeting to share their work and build community with others in the natural hazards field.
Lightning Talks
Rachel Davidson, the Hub’s principal investigator and a SimCenter domain expert, led one of the event’s six lightning talks that kicked off the summit. Her presentation, Collaboration to Advance Regional Hurricane Risk Management, introduced the audience to CHEER, focusing on the substance of the project and how work within the Hub is being conducted to achieve convergence. She highlighted the Hub’s development of its computational framework, the Stakeholder-based Tool for the Analysis of Regional Risk (STARR), explaining how the framework is designed to capture stakeholder interactions and inform the creation and analysis of government policies for regional disaster risk management.
David Prevatt, a member of the Hub buildings thrusts from the University of Florida, capped this portion of the conference. His talk, Planetary Forces and Societal Choices in Tornado-Resilient Residential Communities, tied into Hub research when he called upon civil engineers in the audience to embrace their code of ethics and duty in using engineering wisely to improve the societal outcomes when hurricanes make landfall.
Panels
Alongside other researchers in the field, Hub researchers led two interactive panels at the summit.
Exploring Equity in Mitigation: Concepts, Interventions, and Outcomes
Hub Presenter: Joseph Trainor (University of Delaware)
This session explored the concept of equity in disaster risk reduction efforts, with panelists unpacking the various dimensions and measures of social equity as it pertains to disaster risk management. As a testament to the collaborative approaches needed to expand how experts think and talk about representing equity in the natural hazards field, members of the audience were invited to provide additional perspectives and examples from their work.
Longitudinal Observation, Analysis, and Modeling to Measure and Enhance Community Resilience
Hub Panelists: Meghan Millea (East Carolina University); Rachel Davidson (University of Delaware)
This combined presentation and an interactive panel discussion shared successful approaches to measuring long-term recovery while also highlighting the need to support more longitudinal data collection and community support after disasters. The session identified opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned in longitudinal observations, testbed development, and working with community participants.
Posters
The summit provided an opportunity for the Hub’s graduate students to shine alongside their mentors.
Mitigation Household Decision-Making: An Application of the Precaution Adoption Process Model to the SYR Program
Maria Porada (University of Delaware)
A Decision-Support Tool for Evaluating Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Land Use Policies
Caroline Williams, Rachel Davidson, Joseph Trainor (University of Delaware); Linda Nozick (Cornell University); Jamie Kruse and Meghan Millea (East Carolina University)
Hurricane Wind Loss Modeling Using Insurance Claims Data
Nii Otu Tackie-Otoo and Rachel Davidson (University of Delaware)
Predicting Hurricane Damage and Loss to Mobile Manufactured Homes
Christopher Alegbeleye and Rachel Davidson (University of Delaware)
CHEER researcher Christopher Alegbeleye won the award for best student poster.
Notably, Christopher Alegbeleye won a Best Student Poster Award for his poster, which addressed the increasing reliance on mobile homes in coastal areas. This analysis, which he says is crucial for modeling stakeholder decisions for advising on policy making, is just one example of how CHEER’s thrusts collaborate to produce tightly integrated and interdisciplinary research that supports the Hub.
