Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES): Building Inclusive Excellence, Diversity, Equity, and Community into Earthquake Science

Fundamental questions remain about the nature of stress and faulting within the Earth: What is the true state of stress in the crust and along faults? Are all faults near failure? How do earthquakes initiate along faults? How can the harmful effects of low probability, high impact (LPHI) earthquakes be mitigated? Answering these broad, difficult questions has implications for reducing risk and hazard estimation for vulnerable infrastructure and population centers. The Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES) is a recently funded center by National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Centers for Innovation and Community Engagement in Solid Earth Geohazards program. The C-CIES mission will be to advance earthquake science with the aim of meeting the natural hazard mitigation needs of all communities in regions of low probability but high impact earthquake risk. The vision for the center is to become a world-class earthquake research center dedicated to improving resiliency from geohazards in an equitable, accessible, and sustainable manner. The core values of the center are scientific integrity, equity, excellence, diversity, access, justice, inclusion, and collective impact. The goals of the center will be to 1) Advance basic earthquake science and engineering; 2) Establish a foundation for a shared, value-driven understanding of science; 3) Be responsive to the needs of all communities through user-inspired research; 4) Grow to national prominence; 5) Recruit, retain, and train the next generation of diverse, interdisciplinary earth scientists 6) Develop a framework for impactful geoscience that translates results of scientific discovery into actions that can improve resilience and reduce risk from geohazards. To achieve these goals requires an innovative and robust research plan that incorporates community engagement. The project will adopt the collective impact model for establishing this center, which develops a network of community members, organizations, and institutions through the development of a common agenda, centralized support, continuous communication, mutually reinforcing activities, and shared measurement. This presentation will cover the main elements of this newly funded planning grant to establish a Center of Innovation.