Emma Visman and Fiona Fletcher – both researchers affiliated with the host institution of the IRDR International Centre for Excellence on Risk Interpretation and Action (IRDR ICoE RIA) – recently released a blog for the UKCDS website (the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, an IRDR partner organization).

Entitled “Here’s how you get scientists and locals sharing disaster knowledge” the blog is inspired by the insight that “developing effective forms of risk communication requires significant resources”. It proposes a new platform that the authors hope will galvanise the entrepreneurial re-use and adaptation of existing, tested tools, “for all to benefit from localized learning about …approaches which have really enabled science to build resilience amongst at-risk groups.”

Unlocking the resilience-building potential of science and technology has been one of the key strands of the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP), based at King’s College London. The site that is referred to in the blog and that currently supported by the King’s Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience (KCIRRR) points to a number of such successful dialogues between science and the humanitarian sector as were identified with the help of research funded notably through a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council NERC.