Sociologist named NIST Disaster Resilience Fellow

In a national initiative designed to help communities cope with extreme events, Liesel Ritchie, associate director at the Natural Hazards Center in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been chosen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to serve as a Disaster Resilience Fellow.

The goal of this federal fellowship program is to bring experts from across the country together to develop a framework that will help communities better prepare for and recover from natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and floods, as well as technological disasters like oil spills and infrastructure collapse.

Along with eight other fellows, Ritchie will spend the next year developing a Disaster Resilience Framework to analyze community standards for the physical impacts of disasters on buildings and infrastructure, as well as social aspects that affect disaster recovery, such as – community networks and relationships.

“Of the nine fellows, I am the only social scientist,” says Ritchie. “This acknowledges the fact that, while the resilience framework will be focused primarily on the built environment, there is obviously no requirement for that built infrastructure without the societal needs associated with it. Having a sociologist on the team helps the group to think about and integrate the social dimensions that are important when you are considering the built environment in the context of hazards and disasters.”

The NIST Disaster Resilience initiative will also form a permanent Disaster Resilience Standards Panel, which will develop Model Resilience Guidelines to offer best practices to help communities develop their own disaster resilience plan that will help them prepare for hazardous events and restore vital functions quickly.

“The main point of the framework is to examine the interdependencies between various aspects of the built environment, while at the same time relating these to social needs,” Ritchie explains. “It is intended to be a guide for communities that they can use and that their own local leadership can discuss and work through as a process to increase resilience.”

Ritchie’s Sociological research into disasters involves identifying the assets, or “capitals” of the community that can help them to mitigate hazards and prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. In addition to buildings and infrastructure, Ritchie explains:

“Communities also have other forms of capital including financial capital; natural capital, or natural resources; and cultural capital, our shared experiences and knowledge. We have human capital, for example, levels of education in a community and the numbers of emergency responders. There is political capital, the ability to access resources and the power to influence their distribution. Perhaps most importantly, communities also have what is called social capital, the connections and networks in a community that make it strong.”

According to Ritchie, it is critical to “make sure that people understand that those networks can be considered an asset. When we understand that social capital is just as valuable as other forms of assets, then it can be drawn upon in the wake of a disaster.”

Recognizing these assets and developing strong community networks before a disaster strikes is important. Ritchie remarks, “In the emergency management community, it’s very common to say, ‘The time to be shaking your neighbor’s hand is not after a disaster happens, but before it occurs.’”

Experts agree that the social aspects of disaster recovery should not be overlooked.

“When I’ve worked with emergency managers in the past, and I’ve asked them what the difference is between communities that recover more quickly and those that do not, every single individual says something about social capital,” says Ritchie.

“They talk specifically about networks and relationships in communities—how people interact and communicate. Even with all of the other things in mind—like whether they have enough hospital beds, or whether they have enough fire trucks and emergency responders—what emergency managers often highlight is the importance of relationships in the communities that make them better able to respond to and then recover from a disaster in the longer term.”

Ritchie started studying the social aspects of disasters and community resilience when she was a graduate student at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss. A native of Canada, she attended MSU on a track scholarship and never intended to become a sociologist. But a course on the environment and society intrigued her and drew her into the field.

Ritchie eventually received a B.A. and M.A. in history, as well as a Ph.D. in sociology, from Mississippi State University. Her research on how disasters affect communities includes extensive investigation of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

Since 2007, Ritchie has worked at the Natural Hazards Center at CU-Boulder, which focuses on advancing and communicating knowledge on hazards mitigation and disaster preparedness, response and recovery.

Recently, Ritchie was named to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences advisory board on Gulf Research. The advisory board works to promote safety and the protection of human health and the environment in the Gulf of Mexico by seeking to improve understanding of the region’s interconnecting human, environmental and energy systems.

Ritchie is excited to be able to contribute to community resilience before disaster strikes. “What I have been doing in the past few years is trying to take what we know about what happens to communities after disasters and applying that on the front end to mitigation and preparedness activities,” she explains.

“It can be draining and frustrating to go into communities to see the devastation and social disruption. To be able to take information that we have developed over so many years to apply it and do some good is rewarding and highly motivating.”

Laura Kriho is web and publications coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences.