Community Perspectives on Simulation and Data Needs for the Study of Natural Hazard Impacts and Recovery

With the aim of fostering the development of robust tools to simulate the impact of natural hazards on structures, lifelines, and communities, the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Computational Modeling and Simulation Center gathered 60 researchers, developers, and practitioners working in natural hazards engineering (NHE) for a workshop to prioritize research questions and identify community needs for data and computational simulation capabilities. Participants used their wide-ranging expertise in earthquake, coastal, and wind hazards from engineering, planning, data sciences, and social sciences perspectives to identify five major thrusts of recommended future work, including detailed suggestions for each: (1) development of housing and household recovery models; (2) integration of existing models into flexible computational workflows; (3) investment in the collection of high-value open data; (4) commitment to sharing and utilizing high-value data; and (5) development of versatile, multidisciplinary testbed studies. Participant responses and workshop data were analyzed with the help of an ontology that the authors designed to support data classification in a broad range of NHE applications. The paper also includes observations and suggestions for planning and conducting interactive workshops of this type.