Technology transfer entails the systematic transference of scientific research results to practical tasks. The research product may be a novel design, an effective process, a tool or a set of tools. Effective technology transfer depends on many factors. It includes recognizing a gap in knowledge, focusing on the end user’s needs, long-term planning, effective communication and collaboration between researchers, standards organizations, and potential users, and a successful reduction of the knowledge or training burden required by the user. This Research Topic provides five examples of robust technology transfer from researchers seeking to mitigate the effect of natural hazards on the built and natural environment—transfers of knowledge that will significantly advance our nation’s resilience in the face of growing natural hazard threats.
In 2016, the National Science Foundation established the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) network. NHERI provides engineering and social science researchers with access to a world-class research infrastructure to support their efforts to improve the resilience and sustainability of the nation’s civil, natural and social infrastructure against earthquakes, windstorms and associated natural hazards such as tsunami and storm surge in coastal areas. Supported by the National Science Foundation, NHERI is a nation-wide network that consists of 12 university-based, shared-use experimental facilities, a computational modeling and simulation center, and a shared community cyber-infrastructure.
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Weaving equity into infrastructure resilience research: a decadal review and future directions
Infrastructure resilience plays an important role in mitigating the negative impacts of natural hazards by ensuring the continued accessibility and availability of resources. Increasingly, equity is recognized as essential for infrastructure resilience. Yet, after about a decade of research on equity in infrastructure resilience, what is missing is a systematic overview of the state of the art and a research agenda across different infrastructures and hazards. To address this gap, this paper presents a systematic review of equity literature on infrastructure resilience in relation to natural hazard events. In our systematic review of 99 studies, we followed an 8-dimensional assessment framework that recognizes 4 equity definitions including distributional-demographic, distributional-spatial, procedural, and capacity equity. Significant findings show that (1) the majority of studies found were located in the US, (2) interest in equity in infrastructure resilience has been exponentially rising, (3) most data collection methods used descriptive and open-data, particularly with none of the non-US studies using human mobility data, (4) limited quantitative studies used non-linear analysis such as agent-based modeling and gravity networks, (5) distributional equity is mostly studied through disruptions in power, water, and transportation caused by flooding and tropical cyclones, and (6) other equity aspects, such as procedural equity, remain understudied. We propose that future research directions could quantify the social costs of infrastructure resilience and advocate a better integration of equity into resilience decision-making. This study fills a critical gap in how equity considerations can be integrated into infrastructure resilience against natural hazards, providing a comprehensive overview of the field and developing future research directions to enhance societal outcomes during and after disasters. As such, this paper is meant to inform and inspire researchers, engineers, and community leaders to understand the equity implications of their work and to embed equity at the heart of infrastructure resilience plans.
more » « less- PAR ID:
- 10539156
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- npj Natural Hazards
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2948-2100
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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