About Us
NHDR fills a niche where technological advances
in weather detection, warning systems, and model predictions
are used to mitigate disasters resulting from severe weather.
The focus of NHDR is to identify and characterize
natural hazards, foster development of engineered systems
that rely on measurement and detection, predictive models,
and information systems. Better information means better decisions
and therefore reduces losses due to severe weather, drought,
and flooding. NHDR's research is focused
on reducing societal impacts of severe weather.
Through natural disaster reduction, a disaster resilient
society will result through three major principles:
- Anticipate and assess risk, do not simply react to disasters
- Focus on mitigation that builds resilience
- Implement warning and information dissemination systems
that allow society to bring its resilience into play
The center's vision is to identify technological solutions
that would make society more resilient to natural hazards,
thereby reducing or mitigating the disastrous impacts of drought
and extreme temperatures on water resources, damaging winds,
heavy precipitation, and flooding. If every community could
withstand these forces of nature and sustain minimal damage,
a safer and more sustainable place to live would result.
NHDR's current projects include working
on components of the CASA Engineering Research Center related
to space-time scales of quantitative rainfall measurements
in relation to the predictablility of flooding.
Another area of interest to the center is the promotion of
weather resistant building practices in the Great Plains.
Projects include development of a natural and disaster information
center for the Country of Paraguay with funding from the Interamerican
Development Bank.
Symposia have been organized by NHDR to
focus attention of structural and non-structural measures
to reduce societal vulnerability to severe weather. Emphasis
is placed on building measures that allow society to reduce
property damage and loss of life. Integrated warning systems
designed for site-specific hazard warnings benefit from analysis
of the hazards in terms of frequency, watershed characteristics,
and flood prone areas.
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