Risk, Hazards, Disasters and Cultures: Exploring an Integrated Humanities, Natural Sciences and Disaster Studies Approach

'Natural' disasters are set to become one of the key challenges confronting governments and communities in the decades ahead as climate change, the number of people living in hazard-prone (especially coastal) locations, and the sheer density of the urban fabric increase the potential for loss from natural hazards. Societies in the past were also severely tested by disasters, however, often to the limits of their endurance. Some cultures proved more resilient and overcame these tribulations; others showed less flexibility and failed. What makes any society vulnerable or resilient in the present is in part an historical question, and understanding how different cultures at different times were able to prepare for, mitigate, manage and recover from such events provides useful lessons for disaster risk managers today.

A key aim of this network is to explore how to incorporate the distinctive cultural and temporal insights that history and the humanities more broadly can contribute to DRR. Steps towards collaborative approaches to integrated hazard research are currently emerging through the development of historical databases such as ACRE and the Global Historical Earthquake Catalogue, but there has not yet been a comprehensive conversation to enhance communication between historians, natural scientists and disaster specialists, identify common areas of concern, and frame research questions and methodologies to address them. RHDC is structured to build towards such a conversation. It encourages an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify a) what special input history and the humanities can make to DRR; b) the optimal ways in which our disciplines can collaborate; and c) the practical contribution such an interdisciplinary (but humanities-led) approach can make to disaster risk management today. To this end, we plan to hold a series of themed workshops, each of which will focus on a pressing issue in DRR studies that will enable participants to share perspectives, create a common framework for cooperation, and provide guidance on how such an integrated approach might be better incorporated into disaster risk management.

Selected contributions from the workshops will be published in a special edition of an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal such as Disasters or Global Environmental Change. We will engage non-academic audiences via the participation of organisations such as AXA and CAFOD in our workshops, by producing working papers intended for the research community and stakeholders outside academe which we will publish open-access on the network website, and by maintaining a blog to keep network participants and the wider public informed about RHDC events, and provide commentary on past and contemporary natural disasters. We will also hold public-facing events including a public lecture hosted by the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute and a historians and scientists 'in conversation' evening hosted by the University of Oxford.

The network will benefit a wide range of academic and non-academic stakeholders. It brings together participants with diverse interests and experience who seek common ground in disaster research through integrating methodologies, sharing data, and identifying critical shared questions. As an outcome of establishing strong interdisciplinary connections, it is anticipated that the network will lead to one or more applications for major collaborative research funding.

In keeping with its core aim to build a research community able to make practical contributions to scholarly debate and policy-making, RHDC will engage with stakeholders beyond the academy, including:

1. Industry and humanitarian organisations. The inclusion of AXA and CAFOD as project partners and advisors to the network will help identify areas of common concern, ensure workshop discussions are framed with policy implications and management concerns in mind, and aid in disseminating briefing notes as well as working papers published on the project website to wider sector audiences, including INGOs and UN agencies such as Save the Children and UNICEF. Dissemination of outputs will encourage collaboration across academic/practitioner boundaries and contribute new knowledge with the potential to enhance the effectiveness of disaster response and recovery.

2. Policy makers. Preparing for, mitigating, and responding to natural hazards such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are already key challenges facing policy makers and will become more acute in the future, not only in developing nations but even in more developed societies such as the UK. Vulnerability to environmental hazards and the ability to adapt to them are not, however, solely phenomena of our time. Societies in the past were also severely affected by disasters, and how they reacted, responded to, and dealt with the aftermath of disasters can provide lessons for risk managers and community workers today. In emphasizing the importance of historical sources and an appreciation of the historical cultural context in particular to the work of scientists and disaster specialists, RHDC will contribute to DRR and help in making communities more resilient. Understanding the short and long term impact of past events not only offers instructive parallels but also serves to highlight the importance of culture to understanding people's behaviour in disaster situations. We will also engage with government agencies in the UK and overseas through network participants' contacts as well as the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute in order to increase policymakers' awareness of the long-term nature of disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery.

3. Media and the public. Disasters are headline-grabbing events. RHDC's website and blog, which will contain working papers, discussions of past and contemporary disasters, and commentaries on the value and uses of historical sources will form the beginnings of a significant resource for journalists and the wider public to understand that disasters are not isolated instances but part of a continuing relationship between natural and human processes.

4. Community organisations. As an initial step in the formulation of a large-scale citizen science project that will draw both on the participants' knowledge and experience as well as the cumulative output of the workshops, we will engage with the wider public and tap into local community knowledge and activism.

5. Libraries and members of the public. To coincide with the opening of the first workshop, the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute will host a public lecture to be delivered by Co-I Greg Bankoff. The Oxford workshop will coincide with an exhibition at the Bodleian Library in spring 2017. It will be based around case studies of specific volcanoes including Vesuvius (79) and Tambora (1815), and is designed to demonstrate how archival material of various types can help scientists understand the nature and effects of past eruptions and predict how events may play out in the future. We will hold a public-facing 'in conversation' event featuring scientists and historians engaging with the exhibition materials. Here, as above, we will be engaging with the public understanding of how different disciplines approach the study of disasters past and present and how by collaborating we can improve appreciation of the nature of the risks people face.