Y. Gurt Ge, assistant professor of emergency management, presented two papers at the Interdisciplinary Methods of Hazards and Disaster Research Workshop – Part II at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Feb. 8-9. The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Humans, Disasters and Built Environment Program.
Ge was the lead author on a paper titled “Building an Interdisciplinary Team for Disaster Response Research: A Data-driven Approach,” and he was the second author of “Critical Time, Space, and Agent Considerations for Data and Modeling in Interdisciplinary Hazards and Disaster Research.”
Both papers recognized challenges and complexities for interdisciplinary research teams to collect and integrate diverse data and methods from the participating disciplines in disaster response studies.
Three team formation approaches were analyzed in the first paper, including ad hoc/grant-driven, research center/institute based and spontaneously formed. The second paper was focused on time, space, decision making agent and level of observation for interdisciplinary teams. The papers were reviewed for publication in an upcoming special issue of Risk Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal.
Ge and other workshop attendees participated in a series of group and panel discussions to develop an edited volume intended to update the current scholarship of disaster research methods and advocate interdisciplinary approaches in hazards and disaster research. The potential topics for the edited book were grouped in the sections of inventory of disciplinary methods with case studies, interdisciplinary research design and implementation, and operational and ethical issues for interdisciplinary hazards and disaster research.