From the Science Directorate

• Successful Disaster Response Briefing Was No Accident
• New! Psychological Science in the Workplace Infonet (PSWIN)

Successful Disaster Response Briefing Was No Accident

By Geoff Mumford, Public Policy Office

How do people, governments, and institutions prepare for and respond to disaster? Social and behavioral science research has shown that our response to disaster depends in large part on the perception of risk and stress, on how emergency responders communicate with the public and make use of geographic information, and on the processes of team decision-making. Disaster response involves the mass movement of people, goods, and resources and requires high levels of cooperation. Harnessing our knowledge about how people behave in emergencies is important to the strategies, infrastructure, and technologies we are creating now to prepare for future disasters.

With that last point in mind, APA partnered with the American Sociological Association, the Association of American Geographers, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society to co-sponsor a congressional briefing entitled “The Human Response to Disaster” on April 24th. The second in what Decade partners hope will be a series of briefings, provided both retrospectives from decades of sociological, psychological and behavioral research, as well as brand new initiatives in geographic sciences funded by the National Science Foundation.

With nearly 100 attendees packed into one of the House Science Committee Rooms (graciously offered by Chairman Boehlert’s staff), the briefing was standing room only. It was heartening to see so much interest from congressional staff, who represented a third of the audience, five Congressional Committees and fifteen Member offices in both the House and Senate.

Other attendees represented equally important educational targets including the Congressional Research Service (CRS); National Academy of Sciences (NAS); National Science Foundation (NSF); Office of Federal Disaster Assistance (within USAID); Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Department of Defense, General Accounting Office; Defense Threat Reduction Agency; U.S. State Department; Office of Educational Research Improvement (OERI); and Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).

Psychology was particularly well-represented as the moderator, Felice Levine, Executive Director of the American Sociological Association and two presenters, Baruch Fischhoff, (University Professor, Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University) and Eduardo Salas, (Program Director for Human Systems Integration Research, Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida) are all APA members.

The other presenters were Douglas Richardson, (Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives, Association of American Geographers) and Kathleen Tierney, (Director of the Disaster Research Center and Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware).

Copies of the presentation materials have been mounted on the Decade of Behavior website at: http://www.decadeofbehavior.org/policyseminars/Disaster/disaster_main.html.

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