Hazards and Disasters

Westport/South Beach is a rural community located on the central coast of Washington State. The culture and economy revolve around coastal natural resources. Tourists come to enjoy the benefits of the gorgeous coastline. Fisherfolk use the marina for commercial fishing and processing. In 2018, the community passed a school measure bond to construct the first vertical evacuation site in North America to protect school children and the wider community from a magnitude 9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

From 2017-2019, I worked on the National Science Foundation Hazards SEES “Interdisciplinary Research in Hazards and Disasters,” The Magnitude 9 Project NSF#1331412 to study community resilience to local hazards in Westport/South Beach. I have been continued working here through the National Science Foundation Coastlines and People (CoPe), Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), Coastal Hazards Planning in Time NSF#1940024 project to develop and evaluate public communication tools for coastal resilience. To expand our research to the Pacific Rim, I was invited to participate in 2019 the Project Definition Workshop on M9 Disaster Science with the University of Washington, Tohoku University and the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), and Chilean Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN).

Relevant publications:

2020    Maly, E., Terada, K., LeVeque, R.J., Kuriyama, N., Abramson, D., Nguyen, L.T., Bostrom, A., Leon, J., Motley, M., Catalan, P., Koshimura, S., Moriguchi, S., Yamaguchi, Y., Garrison-Laney, C., Suppasri, A., and Mas, E. (2020). Advances of International Collaboration on M9 Disaster Science: Scientific Session Report. Journal of Disaster Research, 15(7), 890-899.

2020    Kuriyama, N., Maly, E., Leon, J., Abramson, D, Nguyen, L.T., Bostrom, A. (2020). Towards a comparative framework of adaptive planning and anticipatory action regimes in Chile, Japan, and the US. Journal of Disaster Research, 15(7), 878-889.

2018    Abramson, D., Depari, C., Dohrn, C., Gonzalez, F., Idziorek, K., Jalali, P., Keber, L., LeVeque, R., Nelson, S., Nguyen, L.T., Sreenivasan, S., Stanton, H., Zhang, Y. [Alphabetical order] (2018).  “Localizing Hazard Mitigation: Recommendations for Westport’s Comprehensive Plan Update.” Institute of Hazard Mitigation Planning and Research, Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington, Seattle. http://mitigate.be.uw.edu/research-and-practice-2/research-and-practice/.

Conference poster:

2019    Nguyen, L.T., Abramson, D., & Idziorek, K. Planning for resilience: Integrating hazard mitigation into comprehensive planning in Westport, WA. 44th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop, Natural Hazards Center, Boulder CO. July 14-17, 2019.

Upcoming conference talks

Rapid Community Partnered Mixed-Methods Approaches to Research in Diverse Communities“, Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. Bloomfield, Colorado, USA (remote). July 11-14, 2022.

Rebuilding social life post-disaster: A case study of Carles, Philippines after Typhoon Yolanda“, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. November3-5, 2022.