Communication with Hazard Maps in Central America: A multidisciplinary science-media-community network (HazMap_CA)

中美洲太平洋沿岸国家面临着地震、火山活动、海啸、气象灾害和山体滑坡带来的高环境风险。在过去的20年里，仅萨尔瓦多、危地马拉和尼加拉瓜发生的灾害就造成了超过90亿美元的损失，影响了1350多万人。由于这些国家复杂的社会政治环境和经济发展办法，它们暴露在这些环境危害中并容易受到这些危害的不利影响的情况更加严重。关于灾害和灾害的信息通常通过地图传播。有用、可用和使用的危险地图具有预防灾害和建立社会复原力的潜力。虽然地图代表着危险研究的重要外表，但它们是固有的复杂信息的地图表示，具有很大的相关不确定性。此外，对地图的有效理解、感知、经验和使用需要多学科参与。这项提议将首次汇集并形成一个研究人员和从业人员的网络，以了解如何更有效地利用危险地图在危机发生之前、期间和之后与决策者、应急管理人员、非政府组织和公众交流危险信息。在这样做的过程中需要解决的挑战需要不同群体的投入，包括学术研究人员和从业人员以及利益攸关方群体。此外，尽管西方科学方法提供的知识在灾害和灾害管理中发挥着极其重要的作用，但如果不与其他方法和理解进行有意义的对话，其作用仍然有限。因此，我们打算建立一个网络，汇聚自然科学、制图学、视觉地理学、景观感知、媒体和传播研究以及中美洲发展研究的专门知识，以促进通常不会相互作用的学科之间的互动。结合起来，这些可以产生更详细和多方面的理解，如何使用地图来传达与景观相关的危险。该网络将把积极参与中美洲发展和备灾倡议的现有但不同的工作组聚集在一起。将通过两个讲习班促进这一工作，一个在英国，一个在中美洲。我们的中心目标是通过加强现有的应急管理系统和创建有益的灾害传播模式来解决该区域的发展问题，以增强社区的能力、提高传播的有效性和增强复原力。

Countries along the Pacific coast of Central America are exposed to high environmental risk from earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunamis, meteorological hazards and landslides. Over the past two decades, disasters in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua alone have caused over US$9 billion in damage and affected more than 13.5 million people. Their exposure to these environmental hazards and their vulnerability to being adversely affected by them are exacerbated as a result of both the complex socio-political setting and approaches used in those countries for economic development.Information about hazards and disasters is very commonly disseminated through maps. Hazard maps that are useful, usable and used have the potential to prevent disasters and build societal resilience. Although maps represent the important outward face of hazard research, they are cartographic representations of inherently complex information, with large associated uncertainties. Further, the effective understanding, perception, experience and usage of maps calls for multidisciplinary engagement. This proposal will bring together and form, for the first time, a network of researchers and practitioners to understand how hazard maps can be used more effectively to communicate hazard information with decision makers, emergency managers, NGOs, and the public before, during and after times of crisis. The challenges that need to be addressed in doing this demand input from diverse groups, including academic researchers and practitioners and stakeholder groups. Further, while knowledge informed by Western scientific approaches has an extremely important role to play in hazard and disaster management, its utility remains limited if it is not brought into a meaningful dialogue with alternative approaches and understandings. Our intention is therefore to create a network that brings together expertise from natural sciences, cartography, visual geographies, landscape perception, media and communication studies and Central American development studies to facilitate engagement between disciplines that would not normally interact. In combination these can produce a more detailed and multifaceted understanding of how maps are used to convey hazards associated with the landscape. The network will involve bringing together existing, yet separate, working groups who are actively engaged in initiatives to address development and disaster preparedness in Central America. This will be facilitated through two workshops, one in the UK and one in Central America. Our central aim is to address developmental issues in the region by strengthening existing emergency management systems and creating useful modes of hazard communication that empower communities, enhance the effectiveness of communication and increase resilience.