November 18, 2020

New research by Prof. Ann Bostrom on the NHERI Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (RAPID) published in Frontiers in Built Environment

Prof. Ann Bostrom has worked with Joe Wartman, Jeff Berman and the other co-authors on these teams to help develop the RAPID facility for disaster reconnaissance research from the time NSF awarded the funding for the RAPID in 2016, up to the point at which it began operations in 2018.

In Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance the authors describe the vision for disaster reconnaissance research that guided the development of the facility. As the abstract notes in its conclusion, “Continued progress in natural hazard reconnaissance requires adaptation of new, strategic approaches that acquire and integrate data over a range of temporal, spatial, and social scales across disciplines.”

Another paper, Natural Hazards Reconnaissance with the NHERI RAPID Facility describes how the RAPID Facility is transforming reconnaissance methods following natural disasters in collaboration with the NSF-funded CONVERGE Center, by supporting and advancing the integration of data across disciplines, not only through advanced instrumentation and data handling, but also through considerations of data formats, ethics, and questions about appropriate standardization of disaster reconnaissance data.