From Prediction to Practice: Barriers to Adoption of Tools for Emergency Management

Emergency management agencies rely upon storm forecasts to inform storm-related decision-making. The increasing frequency and intensity of major storm events, paired with growing human populations and infrastructure in coastal areas, will increase the extent and complexity of emergency preparedness and response. Improvements in the capabilities of storm modeling and availability of flood risk communication tools has the potential to better support emergency management practices. However, barriers between research and practice in emergency management can prevent the adoption of such tools. A potential solution to over come these barriers is the development of best practices that support collaborative efforts between tool developers and end-users to ensure preparedness and response tools meet end-user needs and can b adopted into practice.

The need for collaboration between researchers and end-users of research through partnerships has become more apparent in driving innovation within governmental organizations as they seek to develop the capacity to address and solve today’s problems. To support these practices, researchers have proposed the Open Innovation in Science framework. This framework recognizes the need for collaborative and open research throughout the research process, from drafting research proposals to developing methods, sharing findings through publications and open access data, and transitioning research into practice to drive innovation. Open Innovation in Science is a relatively new concept and there is a need to examine practices that drive its successful application in supporting open and collaborative researcher to ensure its intended outcomes are met. Applying this framework to research collaborations between natural hazard researchers and emergency managers as they create tools to support emergency management is a potential starting point for examining and expanding upon Open Innovation in Science practices.

This exploratory research will focus on a decade long inter-disciplinary research project that partners with emergency management decision-makers in Rhode Island to develop a near real-time hazard and impact prediction system for hurricanes and nor’easters called the Rhode Island Hazards, Analysis, Modeling, and Prediction (RI-CHAMP) system. Using RI-CHAMP as a case study, this research seeks to identify the barriers to collaborative research and develop best practices guide Open Innovation in Science applications that ensure research is adopted into practice and meets its intended outcomes.