a community-developed concept, organization and...

The Alliancefor Integrative Approaches to

Extreme Environmental Events

A Community-DevelopedConcept, Organization and

Start-Up Plan

FINAL VERSION15 January 2017

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3

1. Purpose of this Document, Audience, and Pathway to its Development 5

2. Background and Motivation 7

3. Vision and Mission 9

4. Stakeholders, Partners and the Community 11

5. Operating Principles 12

6. Initial Programmatic Elements 13

7. Organizational and Administrative Structures 15

8. Start-Up Decision Making and Early Trajectory 18

9. Expected Outcomes and Impacts: Metrics for Assessment 19

10. Timeline 20

11. References Cited 21

the alliance for integr ative approaches to extreme environmental events

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Executive Summary

Individuals who study natural hazards and disasters, as well as those working in related operations and response domains, public and private, realize the immense difficulty of understanding and pre-dicting environmental threats, communicating their dangers, anticipating response ranging from the individual up to communities and beyond, and dealing with the complexities of recovery. This difficulty stems principally from two factors: first, the inherently complex nature of the challenges themselves, and second, the use of a reductionist approach that involves deconstructing such chal-lenges into more tractable sub-units and addressing each in mostly conventional topic domains. Such an approach, while completely sensible, inherently leads to disconnects among fundamentally connected elements. As such, it leads to progress on separate pieces individually rather than on the problem as an interconnected whole. Only via a truly integrative approach—in which researchers, operational public and private sector practitioners, regulatory and funding agencies, foundations, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs come together via an appropriate organizing mechanism—can we as a global society truly address the horrific loss of life and property, and the associated econom-ic and social disruption, wrought by extreme environmental events.

Yet building such an interconnected framework of sectors poses significant challenges. Institu-tional, financial and philosophical barriers arise when working across disciplines or organizational boundaries. Seemingly straightforward concepts are not simple at all and often have vastly different meanings when applied across different topic domains or sectors of society. Although some progress has been made during the past several years in addressing these and related issues—particularly with regard to integrating social, behavioral and economic sciences (SBES) with physical science and engineering via workshops, conferences, and even centers—no large-scale, community-wide organizing mechanism yet exists to do so, despite repeated calls for it. And, some of the other sec-tors noted above frequently are absent yet have a strong desire and present a compelling need to be involved.

With strong encouragement from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—and consistent with the importance placed upon integrative approaches to environmen-tal challenges by the U.S. National Academies—the national community has developed a frame-work for addressing the need articulated above. Known as the Alliance for Integrative Approaches to Extreme Environmental Events (or more simply, the Alliance), this framework is an informal public-private partnership comprising researchers from social, behavioral and economic science (SBES) disciplines, engineers, mathematicians and technologists, research and operational meteo-rologists, emergency managers, and other strategic partners including Federal agencies, non-profit organizations, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and the private sector. Funded initially by a $3 million private gift, which is a seed planted with the intent of catalyzing long-term funding from many other sources in a true multi-sector partnership, the goal of the Alliance is twofold: first, to help


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members of the aforementioned broad community overcome obstacles to meaningful interaction so that progress can be made on challenges holistically, and collaboratively, in their full complexity utilizing all resources available; and second, to facilitate interdisciplinary research, and the associated transition of research outcomes to practice—including rapid technology prototyping and insertion—in ways that advance the Nation’s agenda to substantially reduce societal harm from extreme environmental events.

The strength of the Alliance lies in its philosophy of serving as an organizing mechanism to bring sectors, organizations and individuals together to work in an integrative fashion, its emphasis on rapidly translating outcomes into operational practice, its community-based governance, and its emphasis on supporting activities that provide practical benefits for addressing needs that hereto-fore have gone unmet.

This document, developed by the community, establishes the initial concept of, and organizing & start-up plan for, the Alliance. Like a corporate business plan, it serves an important and necessary road map for progress. Yet also like a business plan, it represents only what can be known and en-visioned at the beginning, with the ultimate outcome likely to be different as the effort unfolds and learning takes place.


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1. Purpose of this Document, Audience, and Pathway to its Development

This document describes a new community-initiated and -governed organizing framework that will support the multi-sector and interdisciplinary learning, interaction, and collaboration necessary to help reduce the horrific loss of life and property, and the associated economic and social disrup-tion, wrought by extreme environmental events.1 The end-to-end “research to practice” framework, known as the Alliance for Integrative Approaches to Extreme Environmental Events (or more simply, the Alliance), is an informal public-private partnership comprising researchers from social, behav-ioral and economic science (SBES) disciplines, engineers, mathematicians and technologists, re-search and operational meteorologists, emergency managers, and other strategic partners including Federal agencies, non-profit organizations, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and the private sector. Collectively, these individuals and organizations represent the audience for the present document and the “community” by which the Alliance is to be governed and also is intended to serve.

Funded initially by a $3 million private gift, which is a seed planted with the intent of catalyzing long-term funding from many other sources in a true multi-sector partnership, the goal of the Alli-ance is twofold: first, to help members of the aforementioned broad community overcome obstacles to meaningful interaction so that progress can be made on challenges holistically, and collabora-tively, in their full complexity utilizing all resources available; and second, to facilitate interdisci-plinary research, and the associated transition of research outcomes to practice—including rapid technology prototyping and insertion—in ways that advance the Nation’s agenda to substantially reduce societal harm from extreme environmental events.

The Alliance was crafted partly in response to multiple community recommendations, particularly those made in response to several community workshops (see §2). The most recent (Living With Extreme Weather, or LWEW, Workshop) was held in Norman, Oklahoma on May 18–20, 2015, and therein attendees articulated the need for a structured framework to facilitate multi-disci-plinary community-building, and active, collaborative research engagement—especially involving the social, behavioral and economic sciences (SBES)—to aid effectual responses to extreme envi-ronmental events and reduce the associated loss of life and property (Droegemeier et al. 2016). The core premise of the Alliance is that broad and interdisciplinary scholarly collaborations, interwoven with the needs and work of operational practitioners and involving a multiplicity of partners and stakeholders, provide uniquely powerful foundations for more effective understanding of, commu-nication regarding, and response to extreme environmental events. Reflecting its community-gov-erned and multi-partner framework, the Alliance is a quasi-virtual organization, with a leadership team that likely will be geographically distributed.

1. Here, we define extreme environmental events to include but not be limited to severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, straight-line winds, hurricanes, earthquakes, hailstorms, floods, tsunamis, heat waves, and droughts. Although human-induced activities such as air pollution episodes, toxic spills/releases, climate change, and terrorism are not expressly represented at this time, outcomes from activities assisted by the Alliance will be highly relevant to them as well, and we envision the Alliance agenda expanding over time as its efforts evolve.


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Acting upon the recommendations noted above, a “writing team,”2 drawn from the international community across a diverse array of disciplines and organizations (Table 1) and organized by the LWEW Workshop planning committee, was assembled to build out the Alliance concept, de-scribed provisionally in Droegemeier et al. (2016). The writing team met in Norman, Oklahoma on June 14–16, 2016, and multiple times subsequently via teleconference, to prepare a draft of the planning document for community input. That input was solicited via email requests to all partici-pations of previous relevant workshops, and to members of list serves from organizations including:

• American Meteorological Society (AMS)• AMS Board on Private Sector Meteorology (BPSM)• AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologists (CCM)• National Weather Association (NWA)• National Emergency Management Association (NEMA)• International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM)• National Council of Industrial Meteorologists (NCIM)• Black Emergency Managers Association (BEMA)

Additionally, input was sought from thousands of social, behavioral and statistical science scholars, humanists, and legal scholars who are members of the 110 professional organizations represented by the Consortium of Social Science Organizations (COSSA).

Two open, national conference calls were held on September 16 and 22, 2016, to obtain additional community input, to address questions, and to dialog about the Alliance. The present document, now in final form, reflects careful consideration of that substantial community guidance by the writing team and thus should be viewed as a document created by the community.

2. Writing team member Dr. Joe Trainor, University of Delaware, also serves on the newly created National Research Council panel for the NOAA-sponsored study cited in §2 below.


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2. Background and Motivation

In February 2016, fifty tornadoes affected neighborhoods in the Southern and Eastern U.S., killing 10 people and injuring hundreds. In August, 30 inches of rain fell in just a few days, submerging streets and homes in Louisiana and causing billions of dollars in damages and 13 deaths. In Octo-ber, the entire southeastern seaboard braced for Hurricane Matthew. The associated wind, storm surge, and rainfall led to significant damage and disruption. Stories like these are all too familiar. In fact, data from global resources, such as the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disas-ters (CRED) in Brussels, show that the number of natural disasters has been increasing worldwide, including in the Americas (Guha-Sapir et al, 2016). Most recently, the World Economic Forum (2017) has listed extreme weather events as the number one global risk in terms of likelihood, and the number two global risk, second only to weapons of mass destruction, in terms of impact.

One longstanding question that emerges from these facts is: How can we as citizens, operation-

Table 1. The Alliance Writing Team that prepared the current document, with input from the national community, and in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oklahoma, NOAA, and

the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Last Name First Name Institution Discipline/Interests

Emrich Chris University of Central Flor-ida

Geography/Hazards & Vulnerability

Heinselman Pamela NOAA/NSSL Meteorologist/ Communication

Henderson Jennifer Virginia Tech & NCAR Anthropology, History, Philosophy (Ethics)

Joslyn Susan University of Washington Cognitive Psychology

Lupia Arthur (Skip) University of Michigan

Political Science, Decision Making with Little Information, Complex Information Flows

Sutter Daniel Troy University Economics

Sutton Jeanette University of Kentucky Health/Risk Communication

Trainor Joseph University of Delaware Sociology/Disasters

Etkin David York University, Toronto Disaster & Emergency Man-agement


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al practitioners in the public and private sectors, researchers, regulatory and funding agencies, non-profit organizations, and entrepreneurs and philanthropists, most effectively mobilize and coordinate our collective resources to mitigate impacts like those described above?

As research across the SBES demonstrates, intense “naturally occurring events” take place in complex social and political contexts. Rittle and Webber (1973) called such intractable dilemmas “wicked problems” because they resist straightforward or “tame” definitions, analyses, and solu-tions. They require novel modes of inquiry, new working relationships across a spectrum of groups, and a meaningful integration of SBES and physical sciences (Brown, Harris, and Russell 2010). In-deed, close, strategic coupling among the physical sciences, engineering, technology, SBES, and the humanities represents the best strategy for creating a sustainable future (e.g., NRC 2006; Schultz et al. 2010; Hoekstra et al. 2011; NOAA 2013; and Ripberger et al. 2014, 2015). Yet, institutional and financial barriers arise when groups attempt to work together across disciplines, organizations, or sectors of society. For example, seemingly straightforward concepts are not simple at all and often have vastly different meanings when applied across different topic domains. Plus, tradition-al disciplinary education and practice tends to focus attention on singular parts of an inherently multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted problem. Finally, some of the other sectors noted above—such as entrepreneurs and philanthropists—frequently are absent yet have a strong desire and demonstrate a compelling need to be involved.

Within the weather, climate, and disaster communities, significant steps have been taken to inte-grate social science and meteorological perspectives to offer more holistic approaches to multifac-eted environmental problems. Important and long-standing initiatives have played an important role in laying a strong foundation for developing hybrid social and physical sciences expertise that leverages the strengths of each to generate new insights, research agendas, and action-oriented insights. Principal among them are: WAS*IS (Weather and Society * Integrated Studies: Demuth et al. 2007), which sought to “facilitate a culture change within the weather enterprise” toward a comprehensive integration of social sciences into meteorological practice; SSWIM (Social Science Woven into Meteorology), which created a university curriculum to create scholars with a hy-brid understanding of social sciences and meteorology; and the Weather Ready Nation (hereafter WRN; NWS, 2013; NOAA, 2012; Lindell and Brooks, 2012), an ongoing U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) initiative to help communities build resilience to ex-treme weather and climate events. Many agencies and organizations, such as the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technol-ogy (NIST) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have developed programs, research agendas, and training curricula that integrate SBES into their efforts to better understand disasters. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently launched a Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Fair to better leverage SBE research in public health. Likewise, in


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2016, NOAA commissioned a National Academies study entitled “Advancing Social and Behav-ioral Science Research and Application within the Weather Enterprise.” This effort underscores the essential role of the social and behavioral sciences in addressing current and future challenges of extreme environmental events. The results are expected in early 2018 (http://dels.nas.edu/Study-In-Progress/Advancing-Social-Behavioral-Science-Research/DELS-BASC-PR-15-04). In addition, NOAA established a position at its Washington, D.C. headquarters dedicated to integrating the social sciences into NOAA research and operations portfolios.

These and other activities taking place globally reflect clear recognition that a truly integrative approach to extreme environmental events—one not in which relevant disciplines, organizations and sectors of society work side by side, but rather one in which researchers, operational public and private sector practitioners, regulatory and funding agencies, foundations, philanthropists, and en-trepreneurs come together via an appropriate organizing mechanism—to truly address the horrific loss of life and property, and the associated economic and social disruption, wrought by extreme environmental events. It is this motivation that drove creation of the Alliance for Integrative Ap-proaches to Extreme Environmental Events.

3. Vision and Mission

The vision and mission of Alliance have been designed to reflect the values and needs of the com-munity, with the “community” defined in §1 and restated in §4 below:

The Vision of The Alliance is a society safer from and more resilient to environmental extremes through innovative partnerships, transformative interdisciplinary research, and effective knowledge mobilization.

The Mission of The Alliance is to serve as an organizing mechanism among a wide array of sectors and stakeholders in facilitating rapid and sustained progress toward mitigating the societal impacts of extreme environmental events.

To put this vision and mission into practice, the Alliance is designed to facilitate and promote di-verse and dynamic interactions with existing and new networks of organizations, stakeholders and sectors of society to help a wide range of decision makers understand, communicate, and navigate many of the challenges posed by extreme environmental events. The Alliance will support innovative ideas and approaches for moving research outcomes into operational practice, including the rapid development of prototype technologies that can be tested and inserted quickly to yield maximum benefit. It will expand ongoing and emerging efforts to facilitate the co-production of knowledge by offering mechanisms for strengthening and empowering multiple communities, building inter-disciplinary and multiagency collaborations, tightly integrating research and operations, creating


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opportunities to shape the next generation of researchers and practitioners, and bringing entrepre-neurs and philanthropists together to generate bold, creative ideas that likely would not be forth-coming in traditional settings, but that require multiple, traditionally disparate sectors to interact in new and exciting ways. These goals exemplify the Alliance’s key values of collaboration and community participation.

Effectively harnessing many different sectors and organizations, and considering their motivating factors, perspectives and agendas—in order to tackle complex societal problems— creates many challenges. Among the most important in the context of the Alliance are the following: 1) building awareness of opportunities to use existing knowledge, create new knowledge, and offer practicable, rap-idly testable solutions that can save lives and prevent or lessen economic and other losses; 2) growing a broad community of participants who are aware of both their complementary interests as well as potential to interact effectively across traditional lines; and 3) obtaining the resources necessary to meet these and other needs (e.g., information sharing, knowledge discovery, problem definition, opportunity assessment, rapid prototyping and insertion) and sustainably support them.

In framing the Alliance, careful consideration was given to the role of existing organizations and frameworks and their ability to meet the needs articulated heretofore. For example, professional societies, although oriented toward research, community building, and education, are understand-ably and invaluably prescribed in their disciplinary reach and fundamental mission. Universities encourage interdisciplinary scholarship but often are constrained by historically traditional reward systems and defined organizational structures. Non-profit organizations and for-profit private com-panies have broader reach and arguably greater institutional flexibility, but often have understand-ably narrow goals based upon stakeholder needs and profit demands.

However, some organizations, such as the not-for-profit Canadian Research and Hazards Network (CRHNet; http://www.crhnet.ca) established in 2003, directly work to build interdisciplinary partnerships. CRHNet seeks to build partnerships between disaster risk reduction and emergency management communities in Canada. Citing its web site, “CRHNet’s theme of ‘Reducing Risk through Partnerships’ calls attention to the need for partnerships to enhance the understanding of, and provide tools for, the development of comprehensive programs to mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from all types of disasters - natural, technological or human-induced.”

Likewise, the Natural Hazards Center (NHC; https://hazards.colorado.edu/), which was founded 40 years ago, serves

“as a national and international clearinghouse of knowledge concerning the social science and policy aspects of disasters. The Center collects and shares research and experience related to preparedness for, response to, recovery from, and mitigation of disasters,


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emphasizing the link between hazards mitigation and sustainability to both producers and users of research and knowledge on extreme events. A basic goal of the Center is to strengthen communication among researchers and the individuals, organizations, and agencies concerned with reducing damages caused by disasters.”

Although the NHC does indeed share some characteristics with the Alliance and is viewed as an important partner of the Alliance (as is CRHNet), its focus is somewhat different (e.g., it maintains a library of literature, participates in research as an organization, and administers a competitive grants program for rapid response opportunities).

It was the view of the writing team that the achievement of sustainable progress on the challenges noted previously requires a new approach—a framework that spans many boundaries, builds bridg-es and translates across disciplines, empowers the community, and is flexible enough to both foster collaborative relationships among a variety of groups while also attending to immediate research needs and operational challenges that arise in the face of unexpected events. Through a unique community-based and service-oriented model that emphasizes strong alignment with agency prior-ities and societal needs, the Alliance was seen as a compelling response that will add value to and complement, rather than duplicate or supplant, existing activities and organizations.

4. Stakeholders, Partners and the Community

At its heart, the Alliance places a premium on bringing multiple sectors and communities together and making tangible progress, collaboratively, through pursuit of a common vision while leveraging individ-ual strengths and interests. As noted in §1, “community” is defined here broadly to include research-ers from social, behavioral and economic science (SBES) disciplines, engineers, mathematicians and technologists, research and operational meteorologists, emergency managers, and other strategic partners including Federal agencies, non-profit organizations, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and the private sector. Identifying the complex and nuanced environmental issues facing society re-quires a multiplicity of visions, voices, insights, and participants and demands a community-based approach. The structure of and activities associated with the Alliance (see §6 and §7) reflect the fundamental fact that all Alliance activity is driven by participants from the community; thus, success of the Alliance ultimately will be measured by the successes of its participants and partners, and by the extent to which its vision—which has been defined by the community—comes to pass.

The ethic of the Alliance is one of openness and inclusion, placing participation and engagement within reach of anyone who wishes to become involved (see §7). The Alliance welcomes those who already are committed to developing or are involved in addressing extreme environmental prob-


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lems, and also actively seeks new perspectives and participants from across different disciplines and sectors of society, including diverse social groups and those traditionally underrepresented or underserved by current activities. The Alliance likewise seeks to engage young and early career pro-fessionals, novice experts, and students interested in connecting their unique experiences with the problems being addressed, enabling career development & enhancement, networking, and greater societal understanding. As a result, the extreme event community will remain dynamic and flexible in the face of future change.

5. Operating Principles

“It takes a community” is the Alliance’s key operating principle. That is, the Alliance has been developed by, will be constituted from, managed by, and will serve the community. This principle enables all stakeholders, both individuals and organizations, to build transformative relationships by turning opportunities into synergistic realities that are expected to result in practicable solutions for reducing disaster loss.

Given the evolutionary nature of research, and in light of the complexity and ever evolving realities of societal challenges and those wishing to take part in addressing them, the Alliance itself will evolve to support the development of next-generation ideas, skills, and community participants. To this end, the Alliance operates on the principles that it:

• Works on behalf of the community because it comprises members of the community and is stewarded by the community;

• Translates and integrates information, concepts, methodologies, and plans across disci-plinary and cultural boundaries to ensure that all participating organizations, individuals and sectors are able to interact in ways that are maximally effective;

• Serves as a virtual think tank and resource base for incubating particularly novel and intellectually “risky” ideas, especially those which might not be “ready for prime time” if submitted to traditional funding sources but that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of and ability to deal with extreme environmental events;

• Facilitates co-produced knowledge by creating opportunities for all researchers and practi-tioners, irrespective of discipline, to partner together for the co-production of knowledge and development of solutions to extreme environmental events;

• Enables meaningful progress in enhancing diversity and inclusivity in all of its dimensions (geographic, gender, ethnicity, race, institution type, perspective, etc.);

• Empowers “research conducted within operations,” rather than “research transitioned into operations,” by promoting and supporting the simultaneous conduct of research and operational activities;

• Convenes the community, in collaboration with others, by organizing meetings that facili-


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tate the sharing of knowledge and the free exchange of ideas across a wide array of organiza-tions, perspectives and stakeholders;

• Advocates, on behalf of the communities it serves, for an integrative approach to prob-lem-solving that involves all relevant sectors and organizations; for bold research agendas; for identifying gaps in the translation of research to practice; and in policies that are most effective in addressing extreme environmental events; and

• Serves as a gap-filler such that it does not replicate opportunities and approaches that are already available through agencies, companies, or organizations. Rather it serves as a strate-gic and flexible community framework that can advocate for attention to areas where others cannot or choose not to invest their resources and efforts.

It is important to recognize that the Alliance is not a center or research unit and that its value derives from facilitating multidisciplinary, practical, and community-driven outcomes in ways that otherwise would be notably difficult or impossible. Consequently, The Alliance will not compete with existing research entities or activities, nor by itself set the community research agenda. Rather, it will empower and enable the community to be successful.

6. Initial Programmatic Elements

The Alliance will undertake and support activities, as well as facilitate scholarship, across disciplines to address extreme environmental event problems. It will do so not only by ensuring that scholars from different disciplines, and operational practitioners and other stakeholders, can find one anoth-er, but also quickly become collaboratively productive because they have been familiarized, in new and creative ways, with each other’s challenges, conceptual approaches to problems, study methods, operational procedures, and lexicons. The Alliance also will help dynamic and diverse research teams develop powerful new understandings of societal choices around extreme environmental events, as well as help educate community members about cross-disciplinary research, e.g., translat-ing social and behavioral science knowledge to forecasting or emergency management applications.

Alliance connection and translation activities aim to provide the up-front investment necessary to position for more rapid partnership and contribution to research both individually and in interdis-ciplinary teams. They include but are not be limited to the following:

• Organizing and supporting an intellectual commons that helps bring multiple organiza-tions and sectors together in highly strategic, creative ways to achieve the following: sharing information about their work; learning about compelling needs and research challenges; building mutual understanding and trust; establishing effective communication pathways across disparate lexicons; and positioning participants to find and pursue funding and devel-op ideas individually and in multi-sector teams;


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• Synthesizing information regarding funding opportunities, including deconstructing grant solicitations, and translating them into the language of different disciplines and sec-tors, to help researchers and other participants pinpoint how their skills and expertise might be combined to contribute in ways that otherwise would not be recognized or pursued;

• Providing resources that leverage other sources of support to help rapidly translate research outcomes and other knowledge, both existing and new, into operational practice, including prototyping new technologies, testing them in operational or quasi-operational settings, and collecting data that can be used to stimulate new concepts using existing as well as future infrastructures;

• Helping identify needed, specific collaborators and integrating the work of others to expand the borders of one’s own capabilities;

• Assisting with the preparation of proposals and conducting pre-submission reviews to maximize competiveness, especially for interdisciplinary research activities where success rates tend to be particularly low;

• Providing electronic resources for facilitating effective interaction among Alliance participants, to include 1) facilitating networking via a database of stakeholders that summa-rizes their role(s), expertise, accomplishments, interests and contact information; 2) helping ensure current research expands the existing knowledge base via a portal to past research results (reports, articles, videos, publications) data sets and grant awards; and 3) facilitating collaboration, information about funding opportunities and supporting analyses translat-ing such opportunities across disciplines and information suggesting possible methods for engagement. As noted previously, some of these capabilities already exist, and the Alliance consequently will not duplicate such efforts but rather will coordinate with them to maxi-mize effectiveness and add value where possible;

• Providing travel funding to assist in developing collaborations, for exploratory activities, and to enhance participation in facility-based experiments such as those conducted at the NOAA test beds. This support will be provided to researchers, practitioners, as well as stu-dents and likely will consist of a matching against institutional or grant dollars;

• Developing resources explaining the work of other disciplines including approaches to framing problems, experimental design and hypothesis development, application of quali-tative as well as quantitative methodologies, and integration into broader contextual frame-works. Such resources will include online videos, webinars, and online forums;

• Creating regular forums that intentionally and strategically integrate researchers, opera-tional practitioners, and stakeholders (including agencies, the private sector, entrepreneurs and philanthropists) to present their latest findings and ideas and articulate the most signifi-cant future challenges; and

• Broadening the participation of traditionally underrepresented and underserved popu-lations in everything it does to ensure that all possible contributors to The Alliance mission are given the opportunity to participate.


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Although the Alliance is not a funding organization, it will make targeted investments, within the administrative structure described in the following section, to support the pursuit of high-risk/high-benefit activities that cannot readily be accommodated with Federal or other funding. Exam-ples of such investments might include experiments involving rapidly prototyped, rapidly inserted technology, or in response to environmental events that require rapid engagement to avoid loss of information, perhaps in coordination with the NHC in Boulder, Colorado.

7. Organizational and Administrative Structures

The organizational structure for the Alliance follows from its foundational principles of being community-based, community-serving, and community-governed, with minimal bureaucracy and formality. Although the writing team recognized the need for dedicated professional staff, it want-ed to create a framework that was not encumbered by significant overhead costs or unnecessary, burdensome structure. The organizational design selected for the Alliance is viewed as that most optimal for meeting the needs previously articulated.

The Alliance is structured in a manner similar to, though (at least initially) less formal than, the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR, pronounced “co-gurr;” http://cogr.edu). COGR is a national association of more than 200 leading research universities, affiliated medical centers, and independent research institutes that provides information, analyses, advice, policy perspective, and historical context to its members in the areas of research administration and compliance, financial oversight, and intellectual property. COGR has a small professional staff (6 full-time individuals, all located in Washington, DC), a 21-member community-based Board of Directors that consists of practicing research administrators and executives, and four standing committees, each of which is co-chaired by a COGR staff member and a board member. COGR is viewed as one of the most highly effective organizations in the nation, drawing more than 400 people to its three meetings per year, engaging them continuously via calls and an email list serve, and building a strong com-munity around the common theme of effective research policy for higher education. COGR does not fund studies, but rather has a single goal of empowering the community to work together to address important issues of research policy and compliance in a highly collaborative manner.

Paralleling the COGR construct, The Alliance consists of four principal groups composing the “community” (see Figure 1): Researchers (including academic faculty, students, post docs, and others; scientific labs and non-profit researchers; and consulting agencies), Operational Practitioners (including emergency managers from varying geographical scale and location, Federal and state government officials), Strategic For-Profit Private Partners, and Strategic Non-Profit Private Partners (such as private foundations, entrepreneurs and individual philanthropists). All of these groups are


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stakeholders as well, and it is important to note that Federal and state agencies are not included as “partners” because they generally are not allowed to participate in the governance of organizations such as the Alliance. However, funding from such agencies will be sought to support administra-tive and programmatic aspects of the Alliance, though the principal involvement of such agencies will be via the provision of funding for research and operational implementation directly to Alliance partici-pants and their institutions.

Initially, to minimize administrative bureaucracy, no formal membership structure will be uti-lized within the Alliance. Consequently, no participation fees will exist. In addition to individual participants, the participation of organizations, such as private companies, foundations, etc., will be encouraged when deemed appropriate. In order to become either an individual or organization-al participant, one simply will provide information about themselves, their background, interests, concerns, etc. to a web-based system (which also will serve as baseline data on metrics for impact and outcome evaluation). This information will be made publicly available in a searchable database to facilitate collaboration-building within the community. As The Alliance matures, a more formal governance structure may prove valuable, especially to ensure long-term sustainability. However, the Alliance administrative infrastructure should never be large lest the Alliance, instead of the community, become its raison d’ être.

Regarding Alliance leadership and administration, it is important to establish a core team, small in number as in COGR, which is dedicated to the organization’s activities on a day to day basis (red

Figure 1. Administrative and governance framework of The Alliance.


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circle in Figure 1) while minimizing the cost of such operations. Multiple options were considered by the writing team, and the following was deemed most appropriate for starting the Alliance:

• A full-time Director, who is an accomplished scholar in a relevant field and has the leader-ship skills and perspective to steward The Alliance to success. An important early aspect of this position, owing to the notion of The Alliance as a public-private partnership, will be the development of linkages with agencies, private donors, non-profit foundations and for-profit corporations. Ultimately, this role may lead to the need for a part-time Director of Partner-ships;

• A full-time Director of Community Support and Communications, who will coordinate all community building activities such as workshops, the creation of disciplinary tutorials, meetings, engagement with agencies and other organizations, etc;

• A part-time Director of Research Program Development, who will analyze solicitations, help with the creation of cross-disciplinary teams, assist with identifying collaborators, man-age pre-submission proposal reviews, and serve as a translator across disciplines;

• A full-time administrative assistant, who will assist the Director and serve as the financial administrator for the Alliance; and

• A part-time IT Technician and webmaster.

Unlike COGR, which is headquartered in Washington, DC with all six employees in the same location, it is likely—and perhaps even strongly desirable—that the Alliance leadership staff be geo-graphically distributed, reflecting the Alliance principle of serving the community instead of being an organization at which research takes place. Such a strategy will require extraordinary coordination, communication and accountability, and a thoughtful approach to financial administration.

In addition to the Alliance leadership and professional staff described above, and in a manner mimicking COGR, a Steering Committee (Figure 1) of volunteers, consisting of 12-24 research-ers and operational practitioners drawn from the national community across all relevant disciplines and organizations, will have overall responsibility for stewarding the Alliance and will be the formal group to which the Director reports. Members will serve three-year staggered terms (two consecutive terms allowed) to ensure that opportunity for many to participate is balanced with meaningful time in service, and the Chair of the Steering Committee will be selected by the Com-mittee itself. The Steering Committee will identify three or four topical thrusts (as in COGR), in collaboration with NOAA and other organizations such as NSF, NIST, DHS and FEMA, around which the Steering Committee and thus the Alliance can organize its activities.

An important aspect of the Alliance, described previously, involves engaging community members to serve as “bridges” or “translators” across disciplines. This need will be fulfilled via the creation of Alliance Translators, who will play key roles in community-building workshops, interpretation of


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solicitations, and the development of materials designed to educate researchers about one another from traditionally disparate disciplines. Alliance Translators, the number of which is yet to be de-termined though probably will be on the order of a half dozen at the outset, will come from differ-ent perspectives in the community; however, their primary role will be advocating and facilitating connections and integration among community members. Translators will serve three-year terms and can be reappointed once. Initial members may serve longer in order to establish a rotation that ensures institutional memory preservation.

The Alliance Leadership (Directors and Steering Committee) will establish regular interactions with one another, with DHS, NOAA, NIST, FEMA, and with other entities including private foundations, corporations, and philanthropists, to gauge research interests and operational needs that will help inform the research and development activities of the community. These interactions will be both formal and informal in nature, depending upon the topic and organization.

The Alliance leadership and Steering Committee will engage in quarterly conference calls, open to the entire community of participants, to provide updates on all activities. Steering Committee topical areas will convene a monthly conference call with Alliance Translators to discuss progress on project areas. One face-to-face meeting will be held each year to include all Steering Committee members, Alliance leadership and professional staff, and Alliance Translators with the purpose of identifying annual outcome goals and acknowledging the work of volunteers who give their leader-ship, time, and talent to further the work of the Alliance.

Most importantly, Alliance leadership will continually engage the community to determine and prioritize activities that will directly assist the community, including but not limited to increasing participation, expanding the number of disciplines and organizations, and influencing the identifi-cation and/or development of new disciplinary and interdisciplinary opportunities.

8. Start-up Decision Making and Early Trajectory

When starting any community-based activity involving a large number of participants and/or stakeholders, careful consideration must be given to initial decision making so as to develop strong trust at the outset, and to avoid the perception or reality that one or two individuals are steering the ship. In this regard, the early decision making process of the Alliance will be guided by its founding principles, with the writing team that assembled this document—based upon consider-able community input—augmented by a few additional participants, selecting the first members of the Steering Committee via an open community call for participation. The Steering Committee thereby constituted will have the responsibility not only of guiding and governing the Alliance, but


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also selecting the leadership team, as noted below. Additionally, Steering Committee members will reflect the Alliance’s emphasis on unselfish service to the community with success and fulfilment defined via the success of others.

The Steering Committee will be notably diverse, not only in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, but also with regard to the types of organizations represented, areas of expertise, levels of experi-ence (junior, mid-career, senior), job function, and geographic regions. The Steering Committee will be composed not only of scholars but also of other key stakeholders in the community—the people to whom the Alliance can provide substantial and distinctive value. Initial members must have experience producing the types of outcomes to which the Alliance aspires, as well as experi-ence building dynamic interdisciplinary projects and teams.

A primary task for the initial members of the Steering Committee, as noted above, is hiring the founding Alliance Director and establishing practices and procedures. The Committee will work with other stakeholders to draft a Director job description and will participate in the interview process. Once the Director is selected, other members of the leadership team will be added, with the Director taking the lead in recruiting and hiring, though with the approval of the Steering Committee. Although the leadership team likely will be geographically distributed, the University of Oklaho-ma (OU) will serve as the initial fiscal agent for the Alliance given that a $3 million private gift is being made to OU to establish the Alliance and support its programs for the first few years of op-eration. Memoranda of agreements and sub-contracts can be executed between OU and the home institutions of Alliance leaders (Directors, staff) to effectuate funding transfer and ensure account-ability. Additionally, the Alliance Director and Steering Committee are responsible for determining how Alliance funding is spent and for measuring the progress achieved through those investments.

9. Expected Outcomes and Impacts: Metrics for Assessment

From the outset, it is essential that the Alliance have a clear set of expected outcomes and impacts, thoughtful methods for assessing them, and strategies for collecting and analyzing the associated data needed to do so. Both qualitative and quantitative dimensions are necessary, and the best way to answer the oft-asked question, “What does success look like?” is to engage the community, via The Alliance leadership team, because doing so will bring greater clarity to Alliance goals and processes. Consequently, although the present document does not address the important issue of outcomes/impacts/metrics in detail, it does offer some examples that will guide initial planning. Indeed the relevant outcomes and metrics may evolve with the Alliance such that early outcomes


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may differ from that are assessed after the Alliance has become well established. The leadership team will work with an external evaluator who can help to identify the measurable impacts and outcomes and the strategies for doing so.

By definition, impact indicators monitor the progress of achieving the program’s objectives, such as change in knowledge, attitude, and intended behavior. As such they measure psychological variables directly. Outcome indicators, on the other hand, assess whether the program goal has been achieved, such as longer term changes or changes sustained over time. This may include objective measures.

Because the impacts identified by the Alliance include supporting ideas, developing skills, and sense of community as well as facilitating co-production of knowledge, and translating across disciplinary boundaries, psychological measures might include “feelings of” integration, the degree to which members feel that they have been exposed to new methods, theories and disciplines and satisfac-tion with, or amount learned from workshops or other platforms. To effectively measure impact, it will be necessary to collect data from the target group at the start of the program, as participants formally become engaged. Follow up survey information could be collected annually to identify numerical changes in impacts and to establish qualitative evidence in the form of written responses. The outcomes identified by this document include: organizing and supporting an intellectual com-mons; synthesizing information regarding funding opportunities; helping scholars locate needed, specific collaborators; assisting with the preparation of proposals, providing an online system for facilitating effective interaction (including a database of researchers, research results, collaborative opportunities); providing travel funding; developing resources; creating regular forums; and broad-ening participation. Most of these outcome can be measured by counting the number of instances in a given program year. Therefore, outcome metrics are likely to include counts of the numbers of members, website hits, grant proposals developed and/or evaluated, and workshops or meetings convened. Metrics might also be developed to describe the amount and diversity of information made available to the membership, such as a virtual library of relevant journal articles, solicitations or a graphic showing the names and specialty areas of experts working in pertinent areas of the social sciences - both topically and geographically. Evaluation of outcomes will be measured at the end of years one, two, and three, with a summative report at the end of year four.

10. Timeline

The Alliance will be formally announced on January 24, 2017, at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, with simultaneous announcements made by other organizations listed in §1 so as to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the community-wide framework. The associated $3 million private lead gift will be announced the following day. An Alliance web site is now being developed, which will serve as the community portal for most of the Alliance’s services,


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and in February, a national announcement will be issued seeking inaugural participants for the Alliance Steering Committee. The Committee is expected to be constituted in March, with the search for a Director commencing shortly thereafter.

Once the Steering Committee is in place, an initial budget and “business plan” will be developed, based upon preliminary work of the Writing Team, and attention turned toward engaging other stakeholders, including but not limited to Federal agencies, private companies, foundations, profes-sional societies, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists.

11. References Cited

Brown, V.A., J.A. Harris, and J.Y. Russell, 2010: Tackling wicked problems: Through the transdisci-plinary imagination. Earthscan, London, 312pp.

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Droegemeier, K.K. and Co-Authors, 2016: Living with Extreme Weather Workshop: Summary and Path Forward. 11th Symp. On Societal Applications: Policy, Research and Practice. New Orleans, LA, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 9.1. [Available online at https://ams.confex.com/ams/96Annual/webpro-gram/ Paper290837.html].

D. Guha-Sapir, R. Below, Ph. Hoyois, 2016: EM-DAT: The CRED/OFDA International Disaster Database—www.emdat.be—Université Catholique de Louvain—Brussels—Belgium.

Hoekstra, S. and Co-Authors, 2011: A preliminary look at the social perspective of warn-on-fore-cast: Preferred tornado warning lead time and the general public’s perception of weather risk. Wea. Clim. and Society, 3, 128-140.

Lindell, M.K. and H. Brooks, 2012: Workshop on Weather Ready Nation: Science Imperatives for Severe Thunderstorm Research, Held 24-26 April 2012 in Birmingham, AL, 99pp. Available from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/files/WRN_FinalReport120917.pdf.

NOAA, 2012: Weather Ready Nation: A vital Conversation on Tornadoes and Severe Weath-er, March, 2012, 20pp. Available from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/files/ WRN_Vital_Conversation032912.pdf.

NOAA, 2013: Service Assessment: May 2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes and Flash Flooding. US Depart-ment of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 42 pp. Available from


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http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/assessments/pdfs/13oklahoma_tornadoes.pdf.

NRC, 2006: Completing the Forecast: Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty for Better Decisions Using Weather and Climate Forecasts. National Research Council, National Academy Press, 112 pp. Available from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11699/completing-the-forecast-character-izing-and-communicating-uncertainty-for-better-decisions.

NWS, 2013: Weather Ready Nation Roadmap (Version 2.0). NOAA National Weather Service, 81pp. Available from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/files/ nws_wrn_roadmap_final_april17.pdf

Ripberger J. and Co-Authors, 2014: Social Media and Severe Weather: Do Tweets Provide a Valid Indicator of Public Attention to Severe Weather Risk Communication? Wea. Clim. and Society, 6, 520-530.

Ripberger, J. and Co-Authors, 2015: The influence of consequence-based messages on public re-sponses to tornado warnings. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc, 96, 577-590.

Rittle, H.W.J. and M.M. Webber, 1973: Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155-169. Schultz, D.M. and Co-Authors, 2010: Decision making by Austin, Texas residents in hypothetical tornado scenarios. Wea. Clim. and Society, 2, 249-254.

World Economic Forum, 2017: The Global Risks Report of 2017. 12th Edition, 70pp. Available at http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/downloads/WEF_Global-Risks_2017.pdf.

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