Social Science Research Council
Environmental Risk and Disaster Management
Published on: Nov 13, 2007
The Environmental Risk and Disaster Management (ERDM) seeks to advance work from the social sciences on catastrophe and disaster, beginning with the experience and consequences of Hurricane Katrina.
The ERDM initiative emerges from SSRC programming on “The Public Sphere,” and in particular the program “Privatization of Risk,” where we try to make sense of the consequences of replacing public institutions with private sector mechanisms that shift the burden of life's many risks disproportionately to those without substantial private wealth. This movement of privatization is a pressing concern with regard to natural disasters and efforts to rebuild and reconstruct in their wake.
Current projects of the ERDM include:
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Understanding Katrina, a web forum of essays by social scientists addressing the implications of the tragedy that extend beyond "natural disaster," "engineering failures," "cronyism" or other categories of interpretation that do not directly examine the underlying issues—political, social and economic—laid bare by the events surrounding Katrina.
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The Katrina Research Hub, a digital platform for sharing information and promoting collaboration among social scientists working on issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
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The Task Force on Hurricane Katrina and Rebuilding the Gulf Coast is designed to help social scientists working on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath to create stronger connections between different lines of intellectual work and to bring the results of social science analysis to public actors.
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