Kathleen Tierney, a professor of sociology and the new director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will receive $400,000 over five years from the National Science Foundation to take part in a large-scale study of how organizations can use new information technology in responding to disasters.
Tierney is among a team of information technology experts, engineers and social scientists who will receive research support through a $12.5 million project announced last week. The project, titled "Responding to the Unexpected," is led by the University of California at Irvine and involves five other universities.
Project investigators will use the emergency preparedness departments of Los Angeles and San Diego as "living laboratories" to conduct research on how local governments can use advanced information technology tools to improve the way they respond to extreme events like earthquakes, acts of terrorism and technological failures, Tierney said.
"This project will blend what we know about organizational and human behavior in disasters with the design and application of information technology," she said. The goal is to help emergency management officials, police, firefighters and other decision-makers make better-informed decisions, to prioritize their responses, and to focus on activities that have the highest potential for saving lives and property.
Tierney is a nationally-recognized expert on the human and social dimensions of hazards, disaster and risk. She was the senior author on "Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States," a volume published in 2001 that analyzed the current state of theory and research on societal readiness for and response to extreme events.
The CU-Boulder Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center is the nation's leading repository of knowledge on human behavior in disasters. Center personnel include faculty, professional staff and graduate and undergraduate students. It is part of CU-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science and is funded by grants from NSF, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other federal agencies and private-sector funders.
The CU-Boulder center "is a center of excellence for advancing our understanding of the social aspects of hazards and disasters," Tierney said. Former Director Dennis Mileti, professor and chair of the CU-Boulder sociology department, will continue doing research at the center as a senior scientist.
"More and more I think you'll hear us referring to ourselves as the hazards center -- not the Natural Hazards Center -- to highlight the fact that we deal with all the hazards that our society faces," she said.
Earlier this year, Tierney was asked by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to join the National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, which is charged with overseeing the federal investigation of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks. On Oct. 27, she will take part in a congressional briefing in Washington, D.C., on the relevance of sociological research in responding to extreme events such as terrorist attacks and major disasters.
Tierney has frequently been a source for national media on disaster-related issues, including the most recent Hurricane Isabel coverage.
Tierney joined CU-Boulder this fall from the University of Delaware, where she was the director of the Disaster Research Center. She will teach classes on social movements, environmental sociology and qualitative research methods.
More information on the CU-Boulder Natural Hazards Center is posted on the center's Web site at .