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

中美洲太平洋沿岸沿着国家面临着地震、火山活动、海啸、气象灾害和山体滑坡带来的高环境风险。在过去二十年中，仅在萨尔瓦多萨尔瓦多、危地马拉和尼加拉瓜发生的灾害就造成了90多亿美元的损失，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所采用的方法，它们更容易受到这些环境危害的影响，关于危害和灾害的信息通常通过地图传播。有用、可用和被使用的灾害地图有可能预防灾害和建设社会复原力。虽然地图代表了灾害研究的重要外观，但它们是固有复杂信息的制图表示，具有很大的相关不确定性。此外，有效理解、感知、体验和使用地图需要多学科参与。这一提议将首次汇集并形成一个研究人员和从业人员网络，以了解如何更有效地使用灾害地图，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灾害信息。在这样做时需要应对的挑战需要来自不同群体的投入，包括学术研究人员和从业人员以及利益攸关方群体。此外，虽然以西方科学方法为基础的知识在危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，其效用仍然有限。因此，我们打算建立一个网络，汇集自然科学、制图学、视觉地理学、景观感知、媒体和通信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接触。结合起来，这些可以产生一个更详细和多方面的了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独立的工作组聚集在一起。这将通过两个讲习班来促进，一个在联合王国，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造有益的灾害信息通报模式来解决本区域的发展问题，这些模式将增强社区的权能，提高信息通报的效力，并提高复原力。

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.