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On Bridging Research and Practice in Disaster Science and Management: Unified System or Impossible Mission?
Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between research and practice. It argues that much can be accomplished by thinking about the emerging and rapidly evolving profession of Disaster Science and Management as a shared enterprise that includes both academics and practitioners. The chapter identifies some characteristics of academics and practitioners that are well suited to improving the profession. It provides descriptions of critical roles that individuals in this area are already engaging in or might engage in. It includes a discussion of barriers to a more-connected and cross-fertilized community and highlights several historical and ongoing efforts to improve the connection between research and application. It concludes with a discussion of the future of research and practice in disaster science and management and a discussion of the research agenda for this topic.
... When these partnerships work well, they can bring benefits that neither researcher nor practitioner can realize on their own. However, if the partnership has problems, it can leave misunderstandings, strained relationships, and missed opportunities to bring novel solutions to emergency management (Trainor et al. 2018). ...
... In the disaster domain, many have reflected on the divide between research and practice (Horita et al. 2017;Hughes et al. 2014;Lorini et al. 2021;Trainor et al. 2018). One challenge is the mismatch between job-related incentives for the two (Hughes et al. 2014;Trainor et al. 2018). ...
... In the disaster domain, many have reflected on the divide between research and practice (Horita et al. 2017;Hughes et al. 2014;Lorini et al. 2021;Trainor et al. 2018). One challenge is the mismatch between job-related incentives for the two (Hughes et al. 2014;Trainor et al. 2018). Emergency managers are incentivized to solve problems in the present. ...
Practice and research collaborations in the disaster domain have the potential to improve emergency management practices while also advancing disaster science theory. However, they also pose challenges as practitioners and researchers each have their own culture, history, values, incentives, and processes that do not always facilitate collaboration. In this paper, we reflect on a 6-month practice and research collaboration, where researchers and practitioners worked together to craft a social media monitoring system for emergency managers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges we encountered in this project fall into two broad categories, job-related and timescale challenges. Using prior research on team science as a guide, we discuss several challenges we encountered in these two categories and show how our team sought to overcome them. We conclude with a set of best practices for improving practice and research collaborations.
... These aforementioned issues have received less attention in the extant literature. Indeed, most extant research either examines the problems of interdisciplinary research as collaboration among different academic disciplines (Gardoni, Murphy, & Rowell, 2016;McEntire, 2007;Tierney, 2005) or focuses primarily on the academic-practitioner divide (Buika, Comfort, Shapiro, & Wenger, 2004;Cwiak, 2006;Fothergill, 2000;Kendra, 2007;Myers, 1993;Neal, 1993;Trainor & Subbio, 2014;Trainor, Stern, & Subbio, 2018), typically viewing academics and practitioners as somewhat monolithic entities, and rarely addressing practitioners as active members of interdisciplinary research teams. ...
... If training is difficult or may not work due to time or other constraints, "translators"/brokers (which could be interdisciplinary institutes or research centers) who are well-versed in the jargon of academics and practitioners could be used to overcome barriers to coordination and communication (Fothergill, 2000;Quarantelli, 1993;Trainor et al., 2018). ...
Interdisciplinary research can help address complex issues such as community resilience and climate change. However, transcending disciplinary borders to provide better understandings of these cross‐cutting issues is not an easy task. While there has been a greater focus on improving integration across disciplines, less attention has been paid to the particular challenges in the inclusion and integration of policy praxis into interdisciplinary research. This article argues that to effectively integrate policy‐relevant goals, researchers need to understand the obstacles to transcending disciplinary borders to incorporate the perspectives of policy practitioners. Researchers also need to understand problems in integration when it takes place within research groups or entities comprised of a variety of scholars from diverse disciplines working with a set of practitioners from different agencies or levels of government. Impediments to integration include epistemological, disciplinary, and attitudinal barriers, differences in terminologies and timescales, the role of organizational culture, institutional barriers, data issues, and issues related to risk communication and liability. This article explores these challenges and how they affect the translation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. It concludes with recommendations to help overcome challenges in synthesizing disaster research and policy practices and to enrich interdisciplinary disaster research approaches and designs.
... The majority of this research has thus far focused the roles of participation in Majority World 8 contexts, in comparison to Minority World contexts. It has been identified, however, that there are perpetual challenges of translating research into practice (Trainor et al., 2018). Community engagement approaches have been categorised to range from public relations and one-way information dissemination, education, through to consultation, collaboration and empowerment initiatives. ...
This thesis aims to advance critical geographical understanding of the knowledges and experiences of state-led emergency management organisation (EMO) volunteers in Victoria, Australia and examine the reasons for volunteer (non)participation in community engagement initiatives. This thesis is situated in the context of recent ‘unprecedented’ natural hazards across Australia. As the frequency and costs of natural hazards grows, there is an increasing recognition in Australian emergency management policy and practice of the importance of community engagement in supporting publics preparedness. Approximately 250,000 volunteers from state-led EMOs form the core of Australia’s response to natural hazards. Numerous natural hazard-triggered disasters over the last 15 years have contributed to increasing expectations for EMO volunteers to be involved in prevention and preparedness, and to ‘do’ community engagement to support publics preparedness.
... A number of these studies emerged following Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, respectively, a time when disaster resilient design-based efforts in the U.S. began in earnest (Ovink and Boeijenga 2018;Smith 2014). Numerous social science researchers have emphasized the need to better translate this knowledge to practice (Fothergill 2000;Neal 1993;Sapat 2018;Trainor, Stern, and Subbio 2018) and to educate the next generation of disaster scholars and practitioners through the use of university-based centers advancing this aim (Peek 2006). Furthermore, resilience research has emphasized how hazard mitigation and disaster recovery can inform emerging climate change adaptation policy issues like a managed retreat and resettlement (Glavovic and Smith 2014;Hino, Field, and Mach 2017;Nelson, Adger, and Brown 2007). ...
This article discusses the results of a study assessing the state of disaster resilient design education at U.S. colleges and universities including architecture, building sciences, land use planning, landscape architecture, and engineering. Based on our findings, we describe proposed future directions for resilient design education, including drawing lessons from a disaster recovery case study titled the Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative (HMDRRI). This two-year student and faculty engagement effort assisted six hard-hit under-resourced communities based on a set of needs identified by participating jurisdictions that were not being addressed by governmental or non-profit agencies and organizations. Understood in the context of the study, HMDRRI has been used to address identified educational shortfalls found in our research and to further the goals of two graduate certificate programs advancing disaster resilience. The key aims of both programs are to build the skills required of the next generation of researchers and practitioners to better understand the complexities of disaster recovery and to apply that experiential knowledge to help improve disaster recovery processes and outcomes throughout their careers.
... 63,64 Beyond understanding how EOCs operate, which is important, this approach enables closer collaboration between the reflective practitioner and the engaged academic to create and pilot programs that enhance the potency of the institution. 65 In that light, we suggest the following research questions: 1) Working alongside emergency management professionals to create practical changes, what sorts of changes are created by emergency managers in the EOC to aid in their work? What novel workarounds, adjustments or improvisations are used to make sense, make decisions, make meaning, 14 and make the space and place? ...
Objective: The emergency operations center (EOC) is an essential component of modern emergency management. Traditionally understood as a place where officials communicate with the public, support coordination, manage operations, craft policy, gather information, and host visitors; there has been little recent research on their structure, operations, or work procedures. EOCs may in fact be, as we argue here, places where emergency managers come to find workarounds, delegate tasks, and find new sources of expertise in order to make sense, make meaning, and make decisions. However, despite their status as a symbol of emergency management and recipients of large amounts of funding, there has been relatively little scientific research into the EOC. With this paper, we synthesize the existing research and propose a variety of research questions to accelerate the process of inquiry into the EOC.Design: Informed by an extensive literature review, this article presents a comprehensive look at the existing state of knowledge surrounding EOCs.Interventions: Research questions to support investigation of the EOC are suggested.Conclusions: The EOC is an underexplored setting ripe for development and discovery by researchers and emergency managers seeking to influence the field of emergency management.
... 63,64 Beyond understanding how EOCs operate, which is important, this approach enables closer collaboration between the reflective practitioner and the engaged academic to create and pilot programs that enhance the potency of the institution. 65 In that light, we suggest the following research questions: 1) Working alongside emergency management professionals to create practical changes, what sorts of changes are created by emergency managers in the EOC to aid in their work? What novel workarounds, adjustments or improvisations are used to make sense, make decisions, make meaning, 14 and make the space and place? ...
Objective:
The emergency operations center (EOC) is an essential component of modern emergency management. Traditionally understood as a place where officials communicate with the public, support coordination, manage operations, craft policy, gather information, and host visitors; there has been little recent research on their structure, operations, or work procedures. EOCs may in fact be, as we argue here, places where emergency managers come to find workarounds, delegate tasks, and find new sources of expertise in order to make sense, make meaning, and make decisions. However, despite their status as a symbol of emergency management and recipients of large amounts of funding, there has been relatively little scientific research into the EOC. With this paper, we synthesize the existing research and propose a variety of research questions to accelerate the process of inquiry into the EOC.
Design:
Informed by an extensive literature review, this article presents a comprehensive look at the existing state of knowledge surrounding EOCs.
Interventions:
Research questions to support investigation of the EOC are suggested.
Conclusions:
The EOC is an underexplored setting ripe for development and discovery by researchers and emergency managers seeking to influence the field of emergency management.
... Eleven years later, Buika and Comfort (2004) found that very few disaster managers enter the profession through degree programs. Trainor, Stern, and Subbio (2018) proposed necessary orientations and engagement by both researchers and practitioners to bridge the gap and outlined the role of reflective practitioners who, "whether formally or informally trained in the their fields and professions, closely observe their work place in many cases for years and decades with a critical eye and an open mind" (p. 164) and the engaged academic who "feels it important and actively works to create useful knowledge" (p. ...
The central concerns of this thesis have been to contribute to modelling science and the understanding of flood event dynamics by coupling hydrological models of inundation to agent-based ones of individual and group response, providing a perspective on the nature of micro to macro system scale interactions that generate disasters or lead to their avoidance. To support this, two bespoke modelling systems were developed to examine the dynamics of such interactions and were applied in two key case studies for the UK and Japan. This supported in the identification of drivers that describe the historical evolution of the landscape, economy, and built environment, to provide the boundary conditions for flood event dynamics through historical land use analysis, modelling, and first order conceptualisation. In doing this, the quantitative endeavours of the modelling exercises are consolidated by a demonstrated engagement with theories and concepts from beyond the traditional boundaries of geographic science that deepen the understanding of human-environment relations by promoting conversations ‘across the divides’ in human and physical geography around the core concepts of materiality, agency, emergence, and sustainability. The results here presented form a dialectic of interdisciplinarity and provide metrics that can be used to support the assessment of future sustainability in dynamic urban environments subject to naturally changing conditions.
Almost all countries are experiencing disasters whose frequency and intensity have increased over the last decades due to many natural and anthropogenic factors, including climate change. These disasters are increasingly deadly, costly, uncertain, complex, and occurring over a range of temporal and spatial scales. They are the outcomes of inevitable hazards that affect highly vulnerable areas and populations with low coping capacities and resilience. The capacity to anticipate, mitigate and adapt to disaster risk is currently making a significant difference as to whether or not a natural hazard turns into a disaster. Presently, there is no region immune to the impacts of hazards and a country’s vulnerability to disaster risk is the outcome of several factors, mainly the failure of its related governance system. Therefore, countries imperatively need to invest in disaster-resilience building, especially through the development of appropriate governance arrangements according to international frameworks while considering local context dynamics. Disaster resilience is understood here as the ability to adapt to and recover from hazards, shocks or stresses without compromising long-term prospects for development. This process, in order to be effective, requires the consideration of many issues, which will be investigated throughout this chapter, such as: the governance implications of the linkages between disaster risk reduction, climate change and sustainable development goals; the impacts of knowledge gap, uncertainty and science-decision divide; the dynamics through which stakeholder perceptions, awareness and involvement are shaped; the different relevant approaches to be mainstreamed; and the role of laws, policies, and regulations as critical tools in reducing and preventing disaster risk, thus fostering human security.
This study synthesizes the public management and emergency management literature to construct dimensions and components of the concept of collaborative competencies. These competencies are classified into four general dimensions: Leadership and Decision-Making, Team Building and Management, Resource Management, and Emergency Management Knowledge Brokerage and each dimension consists of multiple components. To date, the applicability of these dimensions to local emergency managers in Taiwan has yet to be accessed. Using data collected from a survey of 16 emergency management practitioners and scholars in Taiwan, this study uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to compare and rank the identified collaborative competencies. The results reveal the general applicability of the collaborative competencies dimensions to Taiwanese local emergency managers. The Emergency Management Knowledge Brokerage dimension, and the Communication and Negotiation and Conflict Management components of Team Building and Management, however, were considered less important. The results also show that practitioners and scholars hold different perceptions about the importance of the competencies in the dimensions of Leadership and Decision-Making, Team Building and Management, and Resource Management. This study further our understandings of the emergency management collaborative competencies construct, and efforts to bridge the emergency management research and practice communities.
Academic-practitioner divides in disaster management and research can be persistent and pernicious, bearing consequences for disaster survivors and future affected populations. The gap between disaster professionals and academic researchers is often treated as an unavoidable structural problem or a neutral accident of professional silos and circumstance. We suggest that these gaps are not neutral, and that they can and must be overcome. With hundreds of millions of people affected by disaster each year and recovery costs skyrocketing, there is urgency in connecting researcher and practitioner knowledges to avoid expensive mistakes and most importantly, to decrease human suffering. Yet the difficulties that US academic anthropologists and practitioners experienced in their efforts to collaborate became evident in a cross-sector National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshop on the relevance of culture in disaster work. We suggest and illustrate how more systematic cross-field communication can be operationalized through engaging in an ongoing and relational process of bridging. Such a process can offer long-term benefits to the people and institutions involved, dramatically enhance the science of disaster management, and help reduce the social and material costs of disaster impacts.
Part of the Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, Health and Medical Administration Commons, Health Policy Commons, Health Services Administration Commons, Health Services Research Commons, and the Public Health Education and Promotion Commons Many accomplishments of public health have been distributed unevenly among populations. This article reviews the concepts of applying evidence-based practice in public health in the face of the varied cultures and circumstances of practice in these varied populations. Key components of EBPH include: making decisions based on the best available scientific evidence, using data and information systems systematically, applying program planning frameworks, engaging the community and practitioners in decision making, conducting sound evaluation, and disseminating what is learned. The usual application of these principles has over-emphasized the scientific evidence as the starting point, whereas this review suggests engaging the community and practitioners as an equally important starting point to assess their needs, assets and circumstances, which can be facilitated with program planning frameworks and use of local assessment and surveillance data.
The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on findings from research on people's responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The PADM identifies three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehension of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)— that precede all further processing. The revised model identifies three core perceptions— threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions—that form the basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long-term threat. The outcome of the protective action decision-making process, together with situational facilitators and impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard adjustments) and identifies some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.
More than 200 studies of warning systems and warning response were reviewed for this social science perspective and state-of-the-art assessment of communication of emergency public warnings. The major findings are as follows. First, variations in the nature and content of warnings have a large impact on whether or not the public heeds the warning. Relevant factors include the warning source; warning channel; the consistency, credibility, accuracy, and understandability of the message; and the warning frequency. Second, characteristics of the population receiving the warning affect warning response. These include social characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and age, social setting characteristics such as stage of life or family context, psychological characteristics such as fatalism or risk perception, and knowledge characteristics such as experience or training. Third, many current myths about public response to emergency warning are at odds with knowledge derived from field investigations. Some of these myths include the keep it simple'' notion, the cry wolf'' syndrome, public panic and hysteria, and those concerning public willingness to respond to warnings. Finally, different methods of warning the public are not equally effective at providing an alert and notification in different physical and social settings. Most systems can provide a warning given three or more hours of available warning time. Special systems such as tone-alert radios are needed to provide rapid warning. 235 refs., 8 figs., 2 tabs.
This study assesses the knowledge transfer process in the natural hazards and disasters field. The study includes 78 interviews with a diverse sample of hazards professionals. How information travels - or does not travel - from academic researchers to practitioners in the field is analyzed using these interview data, and four conceptual categories emerged concerning factors affecting the knowledge transfer process. These categories are (1) culture; (2) institutions; (3) links; and (4) interaction. This article discusses each of these factors and concludes with several recommendations to improve knowledge transfer in the hazards field.
* This paper represents the opinions of the author and not necessarily the policies or positions of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry or the U.S. Depart- ment of Health and Human Services. As a document compiled by a federal employee, this paper is exempt from copyright protection and may be reproduced without permis- sion.
A method for cognitive task analysis is described based on the notion of 'generic tasks'. The method distinguishes three layers of analysis. At the first layer, the task structure, top-level goals of a certain task are identified that have to be fulfilled during task-execution. This task structure may also be viewed as the global strategy to carry out the task. At the second layer of analysis, the local strategies (procedures) are identified by means of which values are obtained for goals in the task structure. The third layer of analysis consists of a description of the underlying domain knowledge. After a general discussion of the potentialities of the task model in predicting and diagnosing human cognitive behaviour, implications of the model for applied areas such as the development of knowledge-based systems and training, are discussed. Problem solving, Cognitive Task Analysis, Knowledge, Strategies.
How can policy-relevant ideas be effectively communicated to practitioners? While the existing literature has focused on what kind of theory and research are policy relevant, it does not say much about how this knowledge can be communicated. If you want to make a difference, you must know how to reach your target. We take note of the important, but in this context often overlooked opportunities for knowledge diffusion that are provided by the education of young minds and the training of mid-career officials and officers. This article first discusses three contending perspectives on the relationship between scholars and practitioners. It then makes a conceptual elaboration of conditions for communicating research to practitioners, drawing on a wide body of literature on the power of ideas. We conclude by summarizing pointers for how scholars may reflect and how we can act, if we wish to enrich foreign policy practice with research-based ideas.
The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) is a multistage model that is based on findings from research on people's responses to environmental hazards and disasters. The PADM integrates the processing of information derived from social and environmental cues with messages that social sources transmit through communication channels to those at risk. The PADM identifies three critical predecision processes (reception, attention, and comprehension of warnings or exposure, attention, and interpretation of environmental/social cues)--that precede all further processing. The revised model identifies three core perceptions--threat perceptions, protective action perceptions, and stakeholder perceptions--that form the basis for decisions about how to respond to an imminent or long-term threat. The outcome of the protective action decision-making process, together with situational facilitators and impediments, produces a behavioral response. In addition to describing the revised model and the research on which it is based, this article describes three applications (development of risk communication programs, evacuation modeling, and adoption of long-term hazard adjustments) and identifies some of the research needed to address unresolved issues.
In this paper we discuss, on the basis of system theory, the rigour-relevance gap in management research and the proposal to overcome it. From a system theory perspective, social systems are self-referential or autopoietic, which means that communication elements of one system, such as science, cannot be authentically integrated into communication of other systems, such as the system of a business organization. Social systems can only irritate - provoke - each other, i.e. alter conditions in such a way that other systems are forced to respond. Because of the differences between management science and practice it is impossible to assess relevance of research output within the system of science. On the basis of our analysis we show that neither action research nor Mode 2 research nor recent approaches to collaborative research can succeed in producing research that is rigorous as well as relevant. Researchers and practitioners cannot collaboratively produce research, they can only irritate each other. However, sometimes irritations or provocations turn out inspiring. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009.
Objectives:
Globally, the incidence of natural disasters is increasing with developing countries tending to be worst affected. Implementing best practices in disaster management that are evidence-based is essential in order to improve disaster resilience and response. This study explores the barriers to evidence-based disaster management encountered in Nepal.
Study design:
A qualitative study was conducted in Nepal involving interviews with key informants in the disaster management field.
Methods:
Government officials, academics, programme managers, disaster management practitioners and policymakers involved in disaster management were purposively sampled and invited to interview. 11 agreed to participate and were interviewed. The face-to-face interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.
Results:
The interviews uncovered population-level barriers such as contextual factors (e.g. poverty), local custom and culture, as well as community-level issues (e.g. level of engagement and understanding). System-level barriers included limited demand for, availability and accessibility of the evidence-base. The implementation of evidence was influenced by the configuration of the disaster management system and system processes. Political ownership and leadership is an essential determinant of practice.
Conclusions:
Several barriers to evidence-based practice in disaster management exist in Nepal. The relative influence of the different barriers varies with political determinants likely to have greater importance in countries such as Nepal where system governance and leadership is insufficiently developed. These issues affect a country's vulnerability to disasters and need to be addressed.
This book propounds an all-hazards, multidisciplinary approach to emergency management. It discusses the emergency manager's role, details how to establish an effective, integrated program, and explores the components, including: assessing risk; developing strategies; planning concepts; planning techniques and methods; coordinating response; and managing crisis. Complete with case studies, this is an excellent reference for professionals involved with emergency preparedness and response.
In the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, many are asking what, if anything, can be done to prevent large-scale disasters. How is it that we know more about the hazards of modern American life than ever before, yet the nation faces ever-increasing losses from such events? History shows that disasters are not simply random acts. Where is the logic in creating an elaborate set of fire codes for buildings, and then allowing structures like the Twin Towers-tall, impressive, and risky-to go up as design experiments? Why prepare for terrorist attacks above all else when floods, fires, and earthquakes pose far more consistent threats to American life and prosperity? The Disaster Experts takes on these questions, offering historical context for understanding who the experts are that influence these decisions, how they became powerful, and why they are only slightly closer today than a decade ago to protecting the public from disasters. Tracing the intertwined development of disaster expertise, public policy, and urbanization over the past century, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles tells the fascinating story of how this diverse collection of professionals-insurance inspectors, engineers, scientists, journalists, public officials, civil defense planners, and emergency managers-emerged as the authorities on risk and disaster and, in the process, shaped modern America.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
How do ordinary citizens, government officials, opinion leaders, or social scientists attempt to solve social problems? How competent are we at defining the problems, seeking information, and finding answers? In this important and controversial book, a distinguished social scientist meticulously analyzes our attempt to understand society so that we can reshape it. In so doing, he largely bypasses both epistemology and contemporary highly abstract theory on knowledge and society in order to acheive a far more concrete analysis of discourse and inquiry in social problem solving. There is a tragic discrepancy, argues Charles E. Lindblom, between our abilities to solve problems and the difficulty of the problems to be solved. We must make do with inadequate information and inconclusive analyses, for the task is less one of learning the truth than of proceeding in inquiry and decisions when the truth cannot be known. Lindblom discusses the many obstacles that prevent us from solving social problems, focusing in particular on learned incompetence. According to Lindblom, parents teach children not to think certain thoughts, and schools often engage more in indoctrination than education. Political rhetoric and commercial sales promotion feed a steady diet of misrepresentation. Social science does help. But because it is dependent on popular thought, it shares the impairments of thought found in both political figures and ordinary citizens. It also develops its own distinctive impairments and is to a degree crippled by its narrow view of scientific method--often more interested in proving than probing. Although social science can be improved in ways that Lindblom outlines in his book, social inquiry calls for such significant contributions from lay thought that it renders many conventional ideals of scientific problem solving inappropriate. Lindblom contends that the route to better social problem solving is not through either scientific or popular consensus or agreement, however much they are valued in the world of science and social science, but through a competition of ideas. The index of a society's competence, he states, is in its discord over ends, values, or purposes. "As usual, Lindblom cuts through to the core of the issue: How is society to understand its central problems and challenges? With originality and courage, he takes on the social scientists and the policy analysts, and presents an inspiring picture of a self-guiding democracy that continuously deliberates over means and ends. A signal contribution." --Robert B. Reich, Harvard University
In 1984, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) collaborated to foster a community of scholars focused on research and professional practice in emergency management. The intent was to build a community of researchers and professional practitioners who would support improved performance for an increasingly challenging set of problems confronting emergency managers at all levels of jurisdiction. The financial investment was small, but the NASPAA/FEMA initiative led to the evolution of a community of scholars engaged in emergency management research and professional practice. The authors review changes in FEMA since the 1984 workshop and the impact of the NASPAA/FEMA fellows on research and practice in emergency management, placing this initiative in the wider context of public administration.
Philip Zelikow is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Formerly a foreign service officer with the Department of State, from 1989 to 1991 he was director for European security affairs on the staff of the National Security Council.
The author acknowledges gratefully the insights he has derived from discussions with Robert Art, Robert Blackwill, Ashton Carter, Ernest May, Mark H. Moore, Richard Neustadt, Condoleezza Rice, Alfred P. Rubin, Richard Zeckhauser, and the students in his fall 1993 class on Political and Organizational Analysis. None of these people are, of course, responsible for the misuse of their ideas.
1. Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1993), p. 108. From the time he worked for the RAND Corporation during the 1950s, George has spent most of his intellectual life on the frontiers between political analysis and the use of history in focused case studies, psychology, and practical advice for policymakers, usually about the efficacy of using or threatening to use force. He long directed a research program at Stanford devoted to "Theory and Practice in International Relations"; see Alexander L. George, "Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice," in James Rosenau, ed., In Search of Global Patterns (New York: Free Press, 1976), pp. 114-119. Some of the leading examples of George's scholarship are Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: Dover, 1964); Alexander L. George, David K. Hall and William E. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; 2d ed. forthcoming); Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Alexander L. George, Ole Holsti, and R.M. Siverson, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980); Alexander L. George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980); Alexander L. George, ed., Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Alexander L. George, Philip J. Farley, and Alexander Dallin, eds., U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Failures, Lessons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Gordon A. Craig and Alexander L. George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Alexander L. George, ed., Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991); Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1991).
2. Henry J. Aaron, Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1978), p. 165. This intuitive impression is reinforced by the writings of many perceptive practitioners who, after having significant foreign policymaking experiences in government, joined or rejoined the world of scholarship, including George Kennan, Raymond Garthoff, Henry Kissinger, William Hyland, Leslie Gelb, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Blackwill, William Quandt, Robert Pastor, and Gregory Treverton. Careful narrative history is the dominant analytical discipline.
3. James Q. Wilson, "Social Science and Public Policy: A Personal Note," in Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., ed., Knowledge and Policy: The Uncertain Connection (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978), pp. 82-83.
4. Paul H. Nitze, Tension Between Opposites: Reflections on the Practice and Theory of Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), p. 3.
5. Roy Harrod describing a lunch on July 27, 1922, quoted in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937 (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 114-115 (emphasis in original).
6. It is important, however, that Iraq was not actually perceived as an "outlaw state" by the moderate Arab states or Western Europe until the spring or summer of 1990, at the very earliest. Iraq, viewed as the paladin of the Arab world in early 1989 and the host for foundation of the Arab Cooperation Council, was actually much closer to the Arab "establishment" than Syria. Iraq retained this status at least until the mask began to drop at the May 1990 ACC summit. Second, George misunderstands the nature of the incentives being offered, though his description...
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Two decades ago, Alexander George observed a growing gap between academic theorists and practitioners in the formulation of foreign policy. The significance of the gap has been debated, but trends in the academy, society, and government suggest it is likely to grow.
The emergency management field has long been split by an apparent "gap" between academics and practitioners, in spite of efforts over many years to bring these two occupational domains closer together. This paper argues that, while there are differences in the way work is done in these domains, they can actually be seen as part of the same overall profession because they are concerned with the production and application of the same knowledge for the same purpose. The paper bases its argument on the activities considered to be part of Comprehensive Emergency Management, and draws additional support from the relationship between research and practice in other professions. The paper concludes by arguing that the emergency management profession would be strengthened by declaratively closing the gap.
Also CSST Working Paper #29. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51160/1/392.pdf
I have spent most of my professional life since the 1950s doing research on the social aspects of disasters. This social science research in which I have participated, is of course part of a much larger body of studies undertaken in the last 40 years, could be characterized in a whole variety of ways as to findings, motifs, implications, uses, etc. But there is one theme that runs through the bulk of the work that has been done up to now: according to research findings much of what is generally believed about disaster related individual and group behavior is not true or correct. As I and others have phrased it, we are embedded in a great number of misconceptions or myths about behavior in disasters. This disaster mythology clearly does not make for effective planning for or managing of such crisis occasions.
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Unlike the looting after disasters, looting in civil disturbances conveys an important message from the deprived sectors of the population.
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