Working Groups



Active:

International Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group
The purpose of the International Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group is to facilitate and promote international cooperation in science and technology as it relates to all phases of natural and technological disasters. The working group provides an interagency forum for the exchange of information and identifies and coordinates opportunities for beneficial collaborations. The group also coordinates the SDR's role as the U.S. National Platform for the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). In this role, the IDRRWG collects U.S. disaster loss and preparedness data and reports progress toward implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).

Integrating GEO and Health Data in Disasters Working Group
The purpose of the SDR Data Integration Working Group is to facilitate and promote opportunities for coordination of data collection and sharing in response to disasters. The effort is exploring the availability geoscience, atmospheric, and human health data that can be used to help federal agencies answer high priority questions of concern in response to a disaster situation, using wildfires in Sonoma County, California as a test case scenario. Understanding the types and scale of data being collected about air, water, soil, and built environment exposures in combination with understanding population vulnerabilities and health impacts, will strengthen informed decision-making, risk communication and related efforts to improve response, recovery, and future preparedness.

Equity in Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group
The purpose of the SDR Equity in Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group is to understand how the Federal Interagency can best address issues of equity and social justice related to disaster risk reduction. The working group seeks to identify ongoing efforts focused on equity or underserved communities in this space, common barriers encountered when doing this work, new areas for collaboration, and opportunities to foster more inclusive risk reduction in the future. A planned deliverable includes a synthesis of equity related federal disaster risk reduction activities that will be presented to the SDR.

Past:

Real Time Flood Inundation Mapping Working Group
Federal, state, local, and/or tribal users of real-time flood inundation mapping products produced by Federal government agencies immediately prior to, during, and after a flood event expressed uncertainty about which products to use when. As a result, Science for Disaster Reduction (SDR) launched a Real-time Flood Inundation Mapping Working Group (RTFIMWG) on March 25, 2019 to coordinate flood inundation mapping across federal agencies. The RTFIMWG was charged with the following:

  1. Reach a common understanding regarding each agency’s missions and boundaries, the tools they have currently, where and when these tools can be applied, the decision space those tools are trying to influence, and the tools that are in development; and
  2. Use this common understanding to communicate a holistic real-time flood inundation mapping products story leveraging product interoperability, providing guidance to users about which products to use when, and identifying new technologies and procedures for inundation mapping.

RTFIMWG concluded their activities on December 31, 2019 with two deliverables:

  1. Deliverable 1 is an infographic that summarizes what information agencies are producing prior, during, and following a flood event.
  2. Deliverable 2 is a high-level memo, which provides recommendations from the RTFIMWG’s members’ collaboration.