LANDSLIDE RISK REDUCTION IN PUERTO RICO: SCIENCE AND RISK COMMUNICATION

In the wake of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provided technical assistance to agencies responding to the widespread human and environmental impacts from more than 40,000 landslides. In the aftermath of the disaster, Puerto Rican officials expressed a desire for actionable scientific products and accompanying educational materials related to landslide hazards that would guide residents, emergency managers, and mitigation planners in understanding, communicating, and ultimately reducing landslide risk.

In response, the Natural Hazards Center (NHC) at the University of Colorado Boulder and the USGS partnered to (1) gather information on stakeholder needs to inform the USGS landslide team as they develop scientific products and (2) create public information and education materials on landslides. Stakeholder needs are being identified on an ongoing basis through community engagement meetings arranged by the Puerto Rico Planning Board and through ongoing informal and unstructured interviews using a snowball approach. The interdisciplinary and collaborative approach of this project aligns with USGS efforts to incorporate risk reduction into scientific product development, as outlined in the recent USGS publication Science for a Risky World.

Year 1 of this project, which spanned September 2018-August 2019, focused on understanding stakeholder needs and developing a first-draft version of a landslide educational booklet. Year 2, which will run from September 2019-August 2020, will focus on (1) meeting additional identified needs by supporting and engaging in community-level disaster risk reduction activities conducted in collaboration with partners; (2) expanding the educational booklet into multiple formats as part of a larger educational campaign with local, state, and federal partners; and (3) developing a framework for project evaluation and expansion.

This presentation will report on the preliminary results of this multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, stakeholder-driven project. The NHC and USGS are currently working with a wide range of Puerto Rican institutions and agencies. Partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies and organizations such municipal emergency managers, universities, and others enables efficient dissemination of landslide risk reduction information using existing and trusted channels of communication. In turn, these channels of communication facilitate critical stakeholder input to inform USGS technical product development.