New NHERI Facility: CONVERGE
Published on August 31, 2018
To extend the NHERI portfolio and more fully connect it with the social science hazards and disaster research community, NSF has created a CONVERGE Facility through the CMMI 1841338 award. This new NHERI Facility headquartered at the University of Colorado Boulder Natural Hazards Center will identify, train, and coordinate social science hazards and disaster researchers and interdisciplinary teams and link them to the existing NHERI 5-Year Science Plan.
This facility is run by PI Lori Peek, professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The CONVERGE facility, which falls under the scope of the NHERI Network Coordination Office (NCO), establishes and supports a new Extreme Events Reconnaissance Research Leadership Corps that connects researchers from different disciplines, develops best practice guidelines for reconnaissance research, and supports public communications in the event of a major disaster. Additionally, it advances platforms, networks, mobile research applications, cyberinfrastructure and research opportunities for Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) and Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research (ISEEER). Through CONVERGE, ISEEER will serve as the connecting body for the GEER (Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance), StEER (Structural Engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance), and SSEER networks and the NHERI RAPID Facility and NHERI DesignSafe-Cyberinfrastructure.
In addition, the CONVERGE team has established partnerships with the Bill Anderson Fund and the NSF-INCLUDES Minority SURGE Program to ensure that emerging scholars from historically underrepresented groups are engaged in future reconnaissance efforts. Stay tuned for details!
