Open AccessScience and Practical Disaster Risk Reduction: Role of Universities and Academia in Disaster Risk Reduction – From the Discussions at the UNWCDRR Public Forum by APRU and IRIDeS –
Author(s) -
Takako Izumi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of disaster research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.332
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1883-8030
pISSN - 1881-2473
DOI - 10.20965/jdr.2016.p0454
Subject(s) - disaster risk reduction , public relations , political science , bridging (networking) , disaster research , engineering ethics , engineering , sociology , geography , environmental planning , computer security , computer science , meteorology
The Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) organized a public forum in March 2015 at the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in collaboration with the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) of Japan. Discussion focused on three topics – bridging the gap between scientific theory and practice, how science and technology could contribute to practical Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and the role of social science in DRR. These sessions led to three major recommendations: 1) Enhanced collaboration between the private sector and academia 2) Multisectoral collaboration, including local schools and communities, to make data and technologies useful, usable and accessible 3) Social science elements such as psychology, cultural studies, communication, ethics and history incorporating disaster risk sciences because most current problems involve social rather engineering aspects. Social science potentially balances qualitative and quantitative methods well.