43rd Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop

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About the Workshop: Since 1975, the Natural Hazards Center has hosted the Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Colorado. Today, the Workshop is attended by over 500 federal, state, and local emergency officials; representatives of nonprofit and humanitarian organizations; hazards researchers; disaster consultants; and others dedicated to reducing risk and alleviating the harm from disasters.

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Twenty Questions: Looking for Answers to Reduce Disaster Risk

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Our Theme: Experts are still tallying the deaths, damages, and destruction from the succession of disasters that devastated communities in the United States and around the world in 2017. Although they will continue quantifying the losses for some time, early estimates suggest this past year was one of the costliest for disasters on record.

While 2017 was indeed a historic year, these events must be placed in the context of an ongoing pattern of soaring losses linked to poor land use planning, unsustainable development, population growth in high-risk areas, rising economic inequality, and myriad other social and environmental processes.

Although important technical and policy interventions have reduced the number of disaster-related deaths globally, the human toll of these events remains terribly high. This past year alone, hundreds of millions of people experienced profound disruption as a consequence of a seemingly unending series of monsoons and mudslides; droughts and heatwaves; earthquakes and floods.

These are pressing times that require serious consideration of questions that are crucial to our current and future prospects on this planet. To that end, the 2018 Natural Hazards Workshop will be organized around the theme of Twenty Questions: Looking for Answers to Reduce Disaster Risk. We invite you to contribute to answering these essential questions to introduce new ways of thinking and acting to reduce the harm and suffering caused by disaster and to improve the quality of life for all.

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Workshop Information: If you or your colleagues would like to receive email communications about the Workshop, please use this form to sign up!

You can also browse our past Workshops to see previous programs and speakers and to learn more about the Workshop format.