Integrating Drought Professionals with Emergency Management and Hazards and Disaster Research Communities
This project is designed to expand the U.S. network of emergency managers and hazards and disaster researchers to more actively involve experts from the drought research, policy, and practice community. To achieve this vision, it is critical to bridge the divide between acute- and slow-onset research and practice communities. As such, this project responds to recent calls for deeper integration and involves activities that will bring together the traditional disaster research and emergency management community with professionals from the drought and slow-onset hazards community.
The authors in the second edition of Drought and Water Crises: Integrating Science, Management, and Policy (see Wilhite and Pulwarty, eds., 2018) write convincingly that if communities and states are going to reduce the soaring human, economic, and environmental costs of drought, it is going to require multiple paradigm shifts from:
- Drought and crisis management to drought risk reduction
- Drought response and recovery to environmental mitigation and preparedness
- Post-drought assessments to drought early warning systems
- Piecemeal approaches to comprehensive policy regimes.
As with any fundamental paradigm shift in any field, this work is going to require cross-sector and interdisciplinary approaches to research, practice, and policy. It is also going to necessitate the integration of researchers, emergency managers, and policy experts who are working on drought and water scarcity issues with other professionals who are working at the nexus of other acute-onset natural hazards that are similarly increasing in frequency, intensity, and severity.
Research Snapshot
Results of This Research
The Natural Hazards Center, which is the National Science Foundation-designated information clearinghouse for the societal dimensions of hazards and disasters, brought together drought and emergency management research, practice, and policy communities that are concerned with reducing drought and other forms of disaster losses. Specifically, the Center:
- Convened several drought-specific activities (e.g., concurrent sessions, add on drought tour) at the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshops (program archive here). This involved active recruitment and engagement with drought research, management, and mitigation communities.
- Communicated drought-specific research and other relevant information to the broader hazards and disaster research, practice, and policy community via the Research Counts and Disaster Research - News You Can Use publications. Examples of these publications include:
