Past DRC studies have focused on such topics as

emergency medical and mental health service delivery in

disasters, community responses to acute chemical hazards,

and mass evacuation and sheltering. In other projects, DRC

has studied preparations for and responses to major

community disasters by lifeline organizations, community

earthquake mitigation and emergency preparedness in the

Central U. S. and the San Francisco Bay Area, disaster

recovery in Charleston, South Carolina and Santa Cruz,

California, and the utilization of earth science information in

earthquake risk decision making. The Center’s current

research program includes studies on the

interorganizational and intergovernmental response

following the September 11, 2001World Trade Center

attack and on the business and economic impacts of U.S.

disasters, including the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake,

Hurricane Andrew, the 1993 Midwest Floods, and the 1994

Northridge earthquake. Other current and recent research

activities include a project focusing on evacuation and

vulnerability following the 1999 floods in the Mexican states

of Veracruz and Puebla; a collaborative study with Japanese

investigators on societal aspects of the earthquake problem;

a large-scale multi-year study on the implementation of the

Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Project Impact

initiative; and research on the sociobehavioral and public

policy aspects of real-time earthquake warning systems.

DRC is a core member of the Multidisciplinary Center for

Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), an

earthquake research consortium headquartered at the State

University of New York at Buffalo and funded by the National

Science Foundation. DRC’s MCEER-sponsored research

includes studies on the use of new technologies in

emergency management and on hospital seismic safety

decision making.

DRC research yields both basic social science knowledge

on disasters and information that can be applied to develop

more effective plans and policies to reduce disaster

impacts. Besides maintaining its own databases, DRC

serves as a repository for materials collected by other

agencies and researchers. DRC's specialized library, which

contains the world's most complete collection on the social

and behavioral aspects of disasters--now numbering more

than 50,000 items--is open to both interested scholars and

agencies involved in emergency management. The Center

has its own book, monograph, and report series with over

400 publications. DRC maintains ongoing contact with

scholars from Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China,

England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Japan, New

Zealand, Russia, Sweden, and Taiwan, some of whom have

been visiting research associates at the Center for periods

of up to a year. In recent years, DRC has also organized

several multinational research conferences focusing on

disaster issues in Central America, Southern Asia, Europe,

Japan, and Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Since its founding nearly four decades ago, DRC activities

have been supported by diverse sources, including the

National Institute of Mental Health, the Federal Emergency

Management Agency and its preceding agencies, the

NOAA Sea Grant Program, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Major research funding is currently provided by grants from

the National Science Foundation, the Federal Emergency

Management Agency, and the Multidisciplinary Center for

Earthquake Engineering Research, and the Public Entity

Risk Institute.

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