Disasters require that researchers be quick on the draw to collect perishable data. Now we at the Natural Hazards Center are pleased to announce we’re quicker, too.
In the past two years, we’ve made significant improvements in how we evaluate and score proposals submitted to our Quick Response Grant Program. Those improvements, which include a blind evaluation based on weighted criteria and a ranking system, allow us to turn our program on a dime—and that has allowed us to make a noteworthy change in how we’ll process grant proposals going forward.
The Program
Since 1986, the Quick Response Grant Program has provided funds for researchers to quickly travel to disaster-affected areas to capture perishable data. The grants are small and intended primarily to defray prohibitive travel costs.
In addition to expanding academic knowledge, funded researchers submit brief reports that make preliminary analyses of recent events available to the Hazards Center's multidisciplinary network of researchers, practitioners, and educators. The program promotes innovation in disaster research by favoring students, new researchers, and novel areas of study.
What's new?
Before this year, researchers were asked to submit proposals every fall anticipating research they would do if the right event occurred during the next calendar year. Center staff dutifully evaluated all of those proposals. But because it's pretty hard to guess what disasters will happen next year, very little of this effort bore fruit.
Instead, researchers got good ideas and submitted proposals immediately after actual disasters happened. Under the old system, after-event proposals sometimes suffered from delayed evaluations and were scored down for being submitted out-of-cycle. Now that we're faster, contemporaneous proposals will be the only way to go.
What do I need to do?
- Sign up for the Quick Response Grant Program e-mail list. In addition to general program updates, if we make a special call for proposals following a particular event, this is where we'll make the announcement. And that's something you'll want to know about right away, because proposals submitted in response to a special call will have an advantage in the revised scoring system.
- Review the program guidelines Web page now. Proposals must meet the same detailed requirements as before. You'll want to have your ducks in a row when the disaster you want to study strikes.
- Take an extra look at the preferred topic areas. If you can substantially engage one or more of them in your research, your proposal will receive extra points.
- Make sure you clearly state the date you plan on entering the field. Not only is this a requirement for us to evaluate your application, but it will let us know how fast we have to work.
Proposals must only be submitted to the blinded Quick Response Grant Program e-mail address, hazards.qrgrant@colorado.edu.
For general program questions and guidance, please contact Jolie Breeden at jolie.breeden@colorado.edu or (303) 492-4180. Do not submit proposals to this address.