Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this workshop.
I get to be on a great panel, and I’m looking forward to the
other presentations and discussion. And happy Groundhog Day.
This talk is an overview of some of the ways that the U.S. Geological Survey
is currently working to deliver its science to those who need it most.
I’m going to use some examples that may or may not be familiar to
a Bay Area crowd, but in doing so, I’m well aware of the many
great examples of community engagement that have been generated
here for multiple hazards, ranging from earthquakes to wildfires
to coastal storms and atmospheric rivers.
Indeed, this workshop is a wonderful showcase of the commitment that exists
here to sharing USGS science and learning from our partners.
As shown on the slide, I want to thank Dale Cox, Lindsay Davis,
Jonathan Godt, Kris Ludwig, Alice Pennaz, Dave Ramsey,
and Anne Wein for lending slides and material and reviews for this.
You know, I was preparing this talk on the morning of the presidential
inauguration, which was taking place five blocks north of where I sit, which
is where I live and where, for the past 10 months, I have also worked.
Events of the past three weeks have certainly made me think about
the resilience in my own neighborhood and city
as well as the role that information plays in a crisis.
Likewise, the pandemic has made us consider what makes a community,
what connects us when we’re apart, and the nature of compounding disasters.
And finally, the events of this past summer have made us confront
what sort of communities and what sort of nation we want to be.
As a science agency, our role at the USGS has never been so important.
But, to realize our potential, we need to ensure that we’re
providing science to those who are most impacted by disasters.
The USGS provides science to support mitigation, response,
recovery for a wide range of natural hazards.
For some, we have the direct responsibility to deliver information,
alerts, and warnings to the public and decision-makers.
For others, our data and analysis support
the information delivery of partners like NOAA.
In all hazards, the actions that are taken to change outcomes are done by others.
We’re there to inform and support.
Working across so many different hazards, the tools and methodologies
for monitoring and assessment may vary, but what ultimately determines
the utility of the information is impact – conveying,
how do these hazards matter to those who must face them.
In providing examples of how we work with communities, I should note that,
in this presentation, “community” can refer to communities of practice –
for example, scientists, emergency managers,
utility managers, businesses – or communities of those living in
a specific geographic area or even [inaudible] with shared experience.
But, in all of these, we are talking about communities of people.
And, because of this, we value the input and engagement from the
social science community in informing the development
and the delivery of our hazards information.
In 2018, we put out a science strategy for our work in the risk arena.
The purpose was to capture what was already being done in this space across
the survey, much of it dispersed across a number of different science centers.
We wanted to build a community of practice in USGS to connect and
nurture those efforts. Hats off to Kris Ludwig for leading that charge.
We also wanted to build off existing efforts and the many partnerships
that have been developed to set a future course and
seek good ideas through an internal request for proposals.
Recent examples of funded projects that relate to community-focused
science include efforts that focus on evaluation and usability testing.
Beyond the risk community of practice and the RFP, the risk plan was also
a roadmap to guide fundamental changes in the way of doing business.
That is, using risk reduction, and not just hazard reduction or scientific
interest, as a means to set data collection and research priorities.
Central to the plan is improved risk communication and co-development
of our science and the tools we seek to deliver with those we hope will use it.
These efforts are very much an outgrowth and extension of the
work of the SAFRR project – Science Application for Risk Reduction.
It was originated by Lucy Jones and to which so many have contributed.
Beginning with the ShakeOut scenario, and more recently here in the Bay Area,
the HayWired scenario, these were experiments in large-scale engagement.
Engagement with partners to develop the scenarios as a means
to make catastrophic hazards real to people and engagement
through those partners with a wide array of stakeholders.
These scenarios are a means for communities to seek to change
outcomes before disaster strikes. They also provide a lens
through which we can look at disparate impacts.
Being a part of the Department of the Interior, the USGS has
a special responsibility to make our science useful for
public land management and for tribal communities.
Nate Wood, Alice Pennaz, and a number of others have
worked closely with the Department’s Office of Emergency Management
to develop a tool known as SHIRA – Strategic Hazard Identification and
Risk Assessment – that can be used to look across a broad swath of hazards
that could disrupt a park or refuge or tribal community to help them
better understand what it is that they’re facing.
A key element of the project has been to directly engage with
DOI land managers and tribal emergency managers to understand
how planning is done at the local level and what barriers exist
to better planning, reflected in the quotes that you see here.
This project is also an opportunity for us to explore what DOI’s special
responsibility to tribal nations means. From the risk perspective, it may mean
broadening our thinking to include Native perspectives and understanding
how policy decisions created unique vulnerabilities in those communities.
Risk communication is at the heart of getting our science put to use.
We have a great example from Puerto Rico of how this can be done
in a collaborative fashion to increase the impact
of the resulting information products.
The USGS sent a team of geologists to Puerto Rico in 2017 to assist
the federal response to Hurricane Maria by identifying any ongoing landslide
threats and by providing recommendations to response
and recovery efforts. The USGS conducted field work
across the island and had conversations with local emergency response
and planning officials who requested a landslide guide that local stakeholders
could use to help educate residents about these hazards.
With disaster supplemental funding, the USGS was able to partner with the
University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez and the University of Colorado’s
Natural Hazards Center to develop such a guide, shown on the right.
It was intended to complement the scientific efforts of the USGS
and the University of Puerto Rico and to support a broader campaign
of landslide risk awareness in the aftermath of the hurricane.
In addition to producing the guide in Spanish and English and print
and digital formats, this great collaboration involving UPRM
undergraduates yielded a diverse array of information tools
and activities to support landslide risk communication efforts.
These products were developed with input and collaboration from
stakeholders and resident across Puerto Rico, including media figures.
And it’s worth highlighting that the landslide guide and derivative products
were developed first in Spanish and translated to English
to bolster the quality and impact of the science communication.
I’ve long been a fan of the multilingual Putting Down Roots in Earthquake
Country and the Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety that emerged from
the collaborations here in California. And we’ve recently, in order to improve
our capability to provide information in other languages, we’ve established
an agreement with the National Language Service Corps.
Closer to home in California, record-setting wildfire seasons
introduced increased potential for post-fire debris flows.
These events can impact multiple communities, and for this reason,
the USGS works closely with the National Weather Service to anticipate
post-wildfire debris flows and so that warnings can be issued in conjunction
with their flash flood warnings. The USGS conducts post-fire debris
flow hazard assessments for select fires in the western U.S. to support state
and federal burned area emergency response teams.
And, with the recent passage of the National Landslide Preparedness Act,
we hope to ramp up our partnerships in this arena.
Building community-focused partnerships takes time and
intentional effort. In Puerto Rico, we were able to tap into longstanding
collaborations with the university as well as the local presence
of our Caribbean-Florida Water Science Center.
Likewise, built-up trust in relationships played a huge role in the success of
risk communication during the 2018 Kilauea eruption response.
That played out in public meetings, through media responsiveness across
multiple platforms, and through a sustained presence at
Emergency Operation Centers at multiple levels of government.
As we think about what it means to deliver actionable information,
we need to consider the right formats and accessibility for the products
but also be able to bring the expertise to answer the questions
and interpret the results. Emergency Operation Centers
operate at the local, state, and federal level gather the common
operating picture that enable them to make decisions and ascertain
unmet needs to solve problems. EOCs are self-contained ecosystems.
We can’t expect people to wander around and find our data.
We need to help interpret and translate. That means being in the room –
whether virtual or real. During the Kilauea response under
a FEMA mission assignment, USGS subject matter experts
staffed the county EOC 24/7 for nearly three months and
the state EOC in Honolulu on 12-hour day shift for nearly two months.
As I noted near the outset, we want to ensure that the science
we undertake can be useful to those most impacted by disasters.
We do this globally through the longstanding partnership with
the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau of
Humanitarian Affairs. This partnership has enabled volcano
disaster assistance program teams from our volcano observatories
to respond to over 70 crises at more than 50 volcanoes, bringing expertise
and caches of equipment there in support of host country partners.
As dramatic and effective as that crisis response can be, the real power of VDAP
is in the capacity-building, training, and relationship development
that takes place outside the crisis. And VDAP has used those relationships
to support preparedness back home, bringing local officials from
Washington state to visit with counterparts
in Colombia and vice versa.
VDAP is rightly viewed as a good government success story,
and I’m pleased that we see a strong ongoing commitment from USAID
to build on its success and expand the activities of its counterparts in
the earthquake and landslide areas. Their technical assistance work includes
collaborations with a number of partners, including Bay Area-based
GeoHazards International, working on family preparedness.
If we likewise want to ensure that we reach those most impacted by disasters
in this country, then we must meet the challenge to produce and deliver
science in a way that is useful and usable by diverse communities to
reduce their risk to natural hazards. We know that minoritized groups
are disproportionally impacted by hazard events.
And we know that addressing this challenge is not something we can
do without looking inward to our own workforce development
as well as outward toward improved information delivery needs.
A diverse workforce brings adversity of perspectives and experiences to bear.
We need to better understand what the front-line most impacted
communities need and how to effectively engage.
Earlier, I spoke about what it takes to build trust, to build relationships.
We have a widely distributed footprint across the country,
but we aren’t everywhere, and we can’t count on having
a local relationship that we can sustain.
Who, then, are the key partners that already have those relationships
and can sustain them? Well, we have to start by learning.
This fall, our Natural Hazards Mission Area undertook a speaker series
on hazards, race, and social justice to learn from experts who are
working at the intersection of these issues – both community
leaders and academic researchers. We have several new Mendenhall
postdoc opportunities that emphasize hazards and equity-focused science,
connecting coastal change hazards to societally important risk assessments.
Front-line and underserved communities – multi-hazard research,
engagement and products to inform risk reduction.
And developing socially equitable USGS earthquake
risk strategies and solutions.
This is all very much a work-in- progress. But I see a tremendous
amount of enthusiasm across many of our science centers.
If we do this right, we expand the utility of our science.
And, in doing so, that also strengthens our case for the science itself.
The foundation enables us to keep pushing ahead to generate
the next generation of knowledge.
In engaging with our users, we also help target and shape the science we do.
Thanks again for the opportunity to be a part of this dialogue,
however virtual we may be.