HOW CAN WE HELP? GEOSCIENCE, HAZARDS, AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Assessing vulnerability and risk related to natural hazards demands a range of geoscience knowledge, including tectonics and structural geology, seismology, volcanology, oceanography, meteorology, climatology, hydrology, geohealth, geomorphology, and remote sensing. State geological surveys and state and local emergency management agencies, among others, must be able to identify, assess, and communicate the combination of hazard, impact, and associated uncertainty. Geoscientists’ contributions to emergency preparedness are relevant at every scale across the world, including in their own communities – every local jurisdiction faces threats from one or more types of extreme weather and most face flood hazards as well. More than 40% of the US population resides in coastal counties, exposed to some combination of tropical and extra-tropical storms and tsunamis, and almost half of the US population is exposed to seismic hazards. Differences between hazards (e.g., hurricanes vs. earthquakes) in frequency, event paths and uncertainty, mitigation, and protective actions are enormous yet underappreciated by planners, policymakers, and the rest of the public.

Geoscientists can identify and characterize natural hazards, assist in developing planning and exercise assumptions, and participate in communicating risk and uncertainty to policymakers and the greater public. As impacts become more immediate, geoscientists can model possible event paths and thus help define warning criteria, monitor ongoing events to help guide response, and contribute to recovery. Although technical geoscience knowledge and broad scientific literacy apply across many public-safety applications, familiarity with human behavior and its drivers is at least as important if not more so. Effective risk communication requires a grasp of risk perception as well as how people make decisions, what determines whether a source is trusted, and how communities define themselves.