NHERI CONVERGE Facility at the University of Colorado Boulder

In this episode of DesignSafe Radio, host Dan Zehner interviews Lori Peek, principal investigator for the NHERI CONVERGE facility, based at the University of Colorado Boulder. Peek is also professor of sociology at UC Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center at UC Boulder.Peek explains how, within NHERI, CONVERGE represents the intersection of social science with engineering. For CONVERGE, the focus is on hazards in general, and how they affect populations, and less on specific types of disasters and natural hazards.CONVERGE represents cross disciplinary work, between engineers and social scientists, and it’s particularly notable with the “Extreme Events Reconnaissance” groups that CONVERGE administers. Peek describes the seven “EERs” supported by NSF that collaborate and communicate under the CONVERGE umbrella:GEER, Geotechnical Extreme Events ReconnaissanceSSEER, Social Science Extreme Events ResearchStEER, Structural Extreme Event ReconnaissanceNEER, Nearshore Extreme Event ReconnaissanceOSEER, Operations and Systems Engineering Extreme Events ResearchSUMEER, Sustainable Material Management Extreme Events ReconnaissanceISSEER, Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research Related Links:NHERI CONVERGE FacilityUniversity of Colorado Boulder Converge Facility Lori Peek, NHERI CONVERGE Principal Investigator