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Abstract Interdisciplinary research can help address complex issues such as community resilience and climate change. However, transcending disciplinary borders to provide better understandings of these cross‐cutting issues is not an easy task. While there has been a greater focus on improving integration across disciplines, less attention has been paid to the particular challenges in the inclusion and integration of policy praxis into interdisciplinary research. This article argues that to effectively integrate policy‐relevant goals, researchers need to understand the obstacles to transcending disciplinary borders to incorporate the perspectives of policy practitioners. Researchers also need to understand problems in integration when it takes place within research groups or entities comprised of a variety of scholars from diverse disciplines working with a set of practitioners from different agencies or levels of government. Impediments to integration include epistemological, disciplinary, and attitudinal barriers, differences in terminologies and timescales, the role of organizational culture, institutional barriers, data issues, and issues related to risk communication and liability. This article explores these challenges and how they affect the translation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. It concludes with recommendations to help overcome challenges in synthesizing disaster research and policy practices and to enrich interdisciplinary disaster research approaches and designs. 

Abstract There is a growing understanding that cross‐sector risks faced by critical infrastructure assets in natural disasters require a collaborative foresight from multiple disciplines. However, current contributions to infrastructure interdependency analysis remain centered in discipline‐specific methodologies often constrained by underlying theories and assumptions. This perspective article contributes to ongoing discussions about the uses, challenges, and opportunities provided by interdisciplinary research in critical infrastructure interdependency analysis. In doing so, several modes of integration of computational modeling with contributions from the social sciences and other disciplines are explored to advance knowledge that can improve the infrastructure system resilience under extreme events. Three basic modes of method integration are identified and discussed: (a) integrating engineering models and social science research, (b) engaging communities in participative and collaborative forms of social learning and problem solving using simulation models to facilitate synthesis, exploration, and evaluation of scenarios, and (c) developing interactive simulations where IT systems and humans act as “peers” leveraging the capacity of distributed networked platforms and human‐in‐the‐loop architectures for improving situational awareness, real‐time decision making, and response capabilities in natural disasters. Depending on the conceptualization of the issues under investigation, these broadly defined modes of integration can coalesce to address key issues in promoting interdisciplinary research by outlining potential areas of future inquiry that would be most beneficial to the critical infrastructure protection communities. 

Hurricanes and extreme weather events can cause widespread damage and disruption to infrastructure services and consequently delay household and community recovery. A subset of data from a cross-sectional survey of 989 households in central and south Florida is used to examine the effects of Hurricane Irma on post-disaster recovery eight months after the landfall. Using logistic regression modeling, we find that physical damage to property, disruption of infrastructure services such as loss of electric power and cell phone/internet services and other factors (i.e., homeowner’s or renter’s insurance coverage, receiving disaster assistance and loss of income) are significant predictors of post-disaster recovery when controlling for age and race/ethnicity. 

Wave forcing from hurricanes, nor’easters, and energetic storms can cause erosion of the berm and beach face resulting in increased vulnerability of dunes and coastal infrastructure. LIDAR or other surveying techniques have quantified post-event morphology, but there is a lack of in situ hydrodynamic and morphodynamic measurements during extreme storm events. Two field studies were conducted in March 2018 and April 2019 at Bethany Beach, Delaware, where in situ hydrodynamic and morphodynamic measurements were made during a nor’easter (Nor’easter Riley) and an energetic storm (Easter Eve Storm). An array of sensors to measure water velocity, water depth, water elevation and bed elevation were mounted to scaffold pipes and deployed in a single cross-shore transect. Water velocity was measured using an electro-magnetic current meter while water and bed elevations were measured using an acoustic distance meter along with an algorithm to differentiate between the water and bed during swash processes. GPS profiles of the beach face were measured during every day-time low tide throughout the storm events. Both accretion and erosion were measured at different cross-shore positions and at different times during the storm events. Morphodynamic change along the back-beach was found to be related to berm erosion, suggesting an important morphologic feedback mechanism. Accumulated wave energy and wave energy flux per unit area between Nor’easter Riley and a recent mid-Atlantic hurricane (Hurricane Dorian) were calculated and compared. Coastal Observations: JALBTCX/NCMP emergency-response airborne Lidar coastal mapping & quick response data products for 2016/2017/2018 hurricane impact assessments