Columbia World Projects (CWP) on Monday held a Forum on “Disaster Preparedness, Resilience, and Response,” bringing together more than 30 experts to help develop ideas for projects that CWP can implement to better anticipate, prepare for, mitigate the impact of and improve responses to natural disasters such as pandemics, hurricanes and floods.
The Forum was the fifth meeting of its kind organized by Columbia World Projects, an initiative that seeks to bring Columbia University’s unique knowledge and capacities to bear on real world problems by working with practitioners to test promising cross-disciplinary innovations in the field. CWP holds three to four Forum meetings per year to develop ideas for projects that it will consider implementing in the United States and around the world. Each meeting focuses on a specific challenge, with past topics including maternal health, cybersecurity and inequality.
The experts spent the day at Columbia identifying the most urgent and intractable challenges in disaster preparedness, resilience and response, and evaluating individual project proposals that participants had prepared in advance. All proposals brought together partners from inside and outside of academia to address a specific issue and achieve a measurable impact within five years, while also enriching research and scholarship.
Among the challenges that projects sought to address were the inequities that are often exacerbated by disaster resilience and response efforts and increasing risks associated with the effects of climate change, increased mobility and other complicating factors.
The Forum participants were drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines, including engineering, physics, mathematics, architecture, public health, international affairs, environmental science, the law, urban planning and data science. Practitioners included first responders, state emergency coordinators, health officials, heads of non-governmental organizations, officers of humanitarian agencies, private sector officials and officers of multilateral organizations.
After an opening session in which participants discussed some of the primary challenges in the field, participants considered specific project proposals in smaller working groups: Public Health Emergencies; Inequities and Vulnerable Communities in Disaster Response; Ecosystems of Resilience; Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies; and Data and Disasters. Participants not only presented their own ideas, but also reflected on how proposals could better draw upon skills and innovations in their respective disciplines and fields. A report detailing the topics of discussion and which projects will move into the next phase of development will be published to this website in the coming weeks.