HRRC director pitches RAVON proposal to
president’s science, technology council

A presidential committee on disaster reduction learned about a proposal for a nationwide research initiative aimed at lessening the effects of natural disasters in an April 1 presentation from the director of Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center.

Walter Gillis Peacock, professor of urban planning, made the presentation at the White House Conference Center in Washington, D.C. to the President's National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction.

Plans for the initiative, called the Resiliency and Vulnerability Observatory Network, or RAVON, were developed at Texas A&M during a June 2008 conference of leading disaster researchers hosted by the HRRC and funded by the National Science Foundation and the United States Geological Survey.

The researchers envision RAVON as a collection of nodes collaborating on a research agenda aimed at providing the social science community, policy makers and society with the knowledge and predictive understanding necessary to reduce vulnerability and enhance resiliency of individuals and communities struck by natural hazards.

In December 2009, Peacock presented the RAVON plans to officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and prior to that made a presentation at the United States Geological Survey's headquarters, and at the National Academes of Science.

“There’s a growing recognition from people involved in emergency management planning and those who address recovery issues as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Geological Survey that simple physical science and engineering solutions are not going to solve the problems” related to natural disasters, said Peacock.
“What we need now is to change the nature of how it is we are addressing these issues; broader social science and planning and those aspects that we deal with in the College of Architecture need to be a critical component in that solution,” he said.

In a world informed by RAVON’s research, said Peacock, communities would not be impacted as negatively as they have been by natural disasters. “We would see a reduction in losses; we certainly wouldn’t see the things that happened with Katrina,” he said.

See related story on RAVON at http://archone.tamu.edu/college

The President's National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction's homepage can be accessed at http://www.sdr.gov.

See related story in the Bryan/College Station Eagle, A&M prof heads to White House.

- Posted: Mar. 30, 2010-