TERPRO Projects & Working Groups

Proposed Activities

As the world warms and natural disasters become more severe and frequent, it is increasingly clear that geologic processes on Earth are interconnected and a multidisciplinary approach to addressing hazards and defining risk and mitigation strategies are needed. Natural and anthropogenic hazards are quantified by determining the location, magnitude or severity, and frequency of the event, but the risk posed by these hazards requires factoring in the vulnerability and exposure to humans and the built environment. 

This proposed program, Cascading Hazards and Mitigation Project (CHAMP), seeks to provide a thematic framework that both encourages research on the cascading effects of earthquakes and strategies to mitigate these hazards by building a broad network of scientists, engineers, and public stakeholders. 

The PATA Workshops, which began in 2009, have a long history of providing a unique venue for participants to share earthquake hazard data from around the world and to experience and gain new knowledge of diverse tectonic settings through field trips. Previous INQUA grants have supported the participation of 165 ECR/DCRs at these meetings. By conducting the proposed meetings in countries with developing and emerging hazard researchers, we hope to support and engage with a broad community including scientists, engineers, and policymakers.  Furthermore, these workshops will also appeal to the broader INQUA community that seeks to bring societal relevance to Quaternary research and answer the call for “Time for Change.”

 The goal of the CHAMP program is to provide a new forum that broadens the scope of past meetings to include local, regional, and country stakeholders to help provide a venue for discussion on multiple geologic hazards triggered by earthquakes and risk mitigation. The CHAMP proposal seeks to facilitate the translation of earthquake science and the cascading hazards associated with them to the public and policymakers through the inclusion of engineers and government entities that monitor hazards and issue warnings about risks. We would like to help facilitate this communication by increasing the multidisciplinary component of PATA Workshops by designating one day of the meeting for information sharing between researchers and community stakeholders on country-specific cascading hazards. This includes inviting personnel to attend the PATA meetings from the Chile National Seismological Center, National Emergency Management Office of Chile, the Jordan Seismology Observatory and National Center for Security and Crises Management in Jordan, and the National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology and the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction in Guatemala.