Disaster Resilience
Today, significant disaster-driven events are occurring that undermine community resilience and increase vulnerability to life-threatening forces. A disaster is any significant disruption in a local environment that impairs the ability of embedded communities or societies to maintain their equilibrium. New Mexico has not escaped the impact of these events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, floods, fires, drought, and crop biodiversity and livestock decimation. Such events only occur more regularly under the worldwide phenomenon of disaster compression, defined as “the accelerated shift in frequency and severity of disaster events such that extant adaptive strategies of communities and societies to restore pre-disaster equilibrium fail, resulting in the potential for… societal and communal decline and death” (Dyer 2023).
Our Grand Challenge is based on a multidisciplinary community-based disaster resilience training, recovery, and capacity-building approach to mitigate disaster compression throughout New Mexico. Disaster resilience is how individuals, households, communities, organizations, and states adapt to and recover from hazards, shocks or stresses without compromising long-term prospects for development. Our team includes experts in community health, disaster response modeling, disaster resilience training, indigenous community resilience, and environmental engineering, which when taken together allow us to further adapt our model to a national and global scale. Initially, our focus will address community wildfire mitigation, which currently is the most prevalent disaster event occurring in New Mexico, Arizona (Navajo Nation), and California.
Conveners
Christopher Dyer, Professor of Anthropology, Arts and Sciences, UNM Gallup
Roberta Lavin, Professor, UNM College of Nursing, Health Sciences Center
Members
Jose Cerrato Corrales, Professor, ARID Institute and Environmental Engineering
Abhishek Roychowdhury, Associate Professor of Environmental Science; Navajo Technical University
William Kennedy, Associate Professor, Co-Director, Center for Social Complexity, George Mason University
Mary Pat Couig, Associate Professor, Center for Health Equity: Planetary Health and Preparedness
Paul Charlton, Indian Health Services, Gallup
Yuqing (Maggie) Zou, Arts and Sciences, Psychology, UNM Gallup
Wendy Greyeyes, Associate Professor, Native American Studies
Carolene Whitman, Adjunct Professor, Native American Studies, FAHSS UNM Gallup, Vice President Navajo Nation Churchrock Chapter House
Research Questions
- How do we best prepare communities and households to withstand the impacts of disaster compression - to become more disaster resilient - as it relates to the increasing risks from wildfires and their aftermath in New Mexico?
Our multidisciplinary approach combines perspectives from disaster adaptations of indigenous communities, environmental engineering solutions, community training, disaster resilience and emergency response, and community health and wellness.
Contact
Email: Christopher Dyer
