| The Disaster Research Center, the first
social science research center in the world devoted to the study of
disasters, was established at Ohio State University
in 1963 and moved to the University of Delaware
in 1985. The Center conducts field and survey research on group,
organizational and community preparation for, response to, and recovery
from natural and technological disasters and other community-wide crises.
DRC researchers have carried out systematic studies on a broad range of
disaster types, including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hazardous
chemical incidents, and plane crashes. DRC has also done research
on civil disturbances and riots, including the 1992 Los Angeles unrest.
Staff have conducted nearly 600 field studies since the Center’s inception,
traveling to communities throughout the United States and to a number of
foreign countries, including Mexico, Canada, Japan, Italy, and Turkey.
Faculty members from the University's Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice direct DRC's projects. Professor
Kathleen J. Tierney is Director, and Professor
Benigno E. Aguirre is Senior Faculty Associate. Russell
R. Dynes and E. L. Quarantelli,
the founding directors of DRC, are Emeritus Professors. The
staff includes postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, undergraduates
and research support personnel.
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 World Trade Center attack in New York City 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 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.
For more information, consult
the DRC's home page on
the World Wide Web.
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