Earthquake Preparedness and Education: A Collective Impact Approach to Improving Awareness and Resiliency
Abstract
The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), headquartered at the University of Southern California, is a collaboration of more than 1000 scientists and students from 70+ institutions. SCEC's Communication, Education, and Outreach (CEO) program translates earthquake science into products and activities in order to increase scientific literacy, develop a diverse scientific workforce, and reduce earthquake risk to life and property. SCEC CEO staff coordinate these efforts through partnership collaborations it has established to engage subject matter experts, reduce duplication of effort, and achieve greater results. Several of SCEC's collaborative networks began within Southern California and have since grown statewide (Earthquake Country Alliance, a public-private-grassroots partnership), national ("EPIcenter" Network of museums, parks, libraries, etc.), and international (Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills with millions of participants each year). These networks have benefitted greatly from partnerships with national (FEMA), state, and local emergency managers. Other activities leverage SCEC's networks in new ways and with national earth science organizations, such as the EarthConnections Program (with IRIS, NAGT, and many others), Quake Catcher Network (with IRIS) and the GeoHazards Messaging Collaboratory (with IRIS, UNAVCO, and USGS). Each of these partnerships share a commitment to service, collaborative development, and the application of research (including social science theory for motivating preparedness behaviors). SCEC CEO is developing new evaluative structures and adapting the Collective Impact framework to better understand what has worked well or what can be improved, according to the framework's five key elements: create a common agenda; share common indicators and measurement; engage diverse stakeholders to coordinate mutually reinforcing activities; initiate continuous communication; and provide "backbone" support. This presentation will provide an overview of SCEC's partnership activities and how we are adapting them within the Collective Impact framework. The goal is to present our collaborations as case studies for similar efforts seeking to improve the translation of applied research into policy in order to reduce the impact of natural hazards.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.U42A..04B
- Keywords:
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- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATION;
- 6349 General or miscellaneous;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES