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Abstract Building an interdisciplinary team is critical to disaster response research as it often deals with acute onset events, short decision horizons, constrained resources, and uncertainties related to rapidly unfolding response environments. This article examines three teaming mechanisms for interdisciplinary disaster response research, includingad hocand/or grant proposal driven teams, research center or institute based teams, and teams oriented by matching expertise toward long‐term collaborations. Using hurricanes as the response context, it further examines several types of critical data that require interdisciplinary collaboration on collection, integration, and analysis. Last, suggesting a data‐driven approach to engaging multiple disciplines, the article advocates building interdisciplinary teams for disaster response research with a long‐term goal and an integrated research protocol.
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Expertise Across Disciplines: Establishing Common Ground in Interdisciplinary Disaster Research Teams
Abstract Hazards and disasters arise from interactions between environmental and social processes, so interdisciplinary research is crucial in understanding and effectively managing them. Despite support and encouragement from funding agencies, universities, and journals and growing interest from researchers, interdisciplinary disaster research teams face significant obstacles, such as the difficulty of establishing effective communication and understanding across disciplines. Better understanding of interdisciplinary teamwork can also have important practical benefits for operational disaster planning and response. Social studies of science distinguish different kinds of expertise and different modes of communication. Understanding these differences can help interdisciplinary research teams communicate more clearly and work together more effectively. The primary role of a researcher is incontributory expertise(the ability to make original contributions to a discipline); butinteractional expertisein other disciplines (the ability to understand their literature and communicate with their practitioners) can play an important role in interdisciplinary collaborations. Developing interactional expertise requires time and effort, which can be challenging for a busy researcher, and also requires a foundation of trust and communication among team members. Three distinct aspects of communication play important roles in effective interdisciplinary communication:dialects,metaphors, andarticulation. There are different ways to develop interactional expertise and effective communication, so researchers can pursue approaches that suit their circumstances. It will be important for future research on interdisciplinary disaster research to identify best practices for building trust, facilitating communication, and developing interactional expertise.
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- PAR ID:
- 10448949
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Risk Analysis
- Volume:
- 41
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0272-4332
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 1171-1177
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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