Science plays a key role when it comes to emergency and terrorism management. For example, when
trying to formulate a plan to mitigate against earthquakes, small armies of geoscientists and engineers
across the globe dedicate their expertise to the study of seismic events. Additionally, to mitigate flood
risks, scientists’ study how to keep homes away from floodplains and how to effectively enforce building
codes to protect property from hurricanes (Sylves, 2015).
Knowing what tools and resources are available at any given point during a response and making them
available to researchers is one of the goals of science preparedness (DiEuliis, 2015). Preparedness
identifies key functions to be performed after a disaster and can involve things such as warning systems
and pre-disaster actions taken to promote safety and initiate community disaster response (Sylves,
2015). Science is always finding better and more efficient ways to prepare a community for natural and
man-made disasters.
Key functions during emergency responses include internal coordination of scientific work, data
management, information dissemination, and scientific publication (Iskander, Rose, Ghiya, 2017). In the
field of medical sciences, for example, when responding to something such as a biological attack, the
public health community helps track the incidence of disease; maintains records of morbidity and
mortality; helps combat the outbreak of epidemics; monitors the adequacy of local health services and
monitors food and drug safety (Sylves, 2015).
The importance of preserving the research enterprise by improving an institution's ability to withstand
expected and extreme events is critical, but equally important is the ability of the research enterprise to
recover rapidly and with significantly enhanced resilience to withstand future disasters more effectively
(McNutt, Leshner, 2017). Disasters, such as hurricanes, can leave behind issues such as mold and mildew
contaminants which can create a toxic environment for people to have to survive in. Science and
engineers must work together in these instances to come up with plans to identify areas of
contamination and how best to treat these contaminations while also protecting the environment.
I think one area that I feel has a tremendous impact on disaster mitigation and response is the work of
scientists to try and create a system to adequately notify people in the event of a tornado. I have
personally experienced (twice to be exact) the immediate and after-effects of a tornado and I have
always been fascinated by the scientific research that goes into the efforts of a notification system for
this type of disaster. When I went through my first tornado (1992), we only had a few minutes notice
from the sirens to take cover. Of course, that being over 25 years ago, I can only assume that notification
and response time has only gotten better. The increased use of Doppler radar by the NWS and other
organizations has done much to improve public warning time in advance of tornado strikes (Sylves,
2015).
Craig Erb
DiEuliis, D. (2015, August 21). The role of scientific collections in scientific preparedness. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4517712/
Iskander, J., Rose, D., & Ghiya, N. (2017, September). Science in emergency response at CDC: Structure
and functions. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5594391/
McNutt, M., & Leshner, A. (2017, August 10). Response and recovery planning - strengthening the
disaster resilience of the academic biomedical research community. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK464149/
Sylves, R. T. (2015). Disaster policy and politics: Emergency management and homeland security (2nd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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