'Natural' disasters are set to become one of the key challenges confronting governments and communities in the decades ahead as climate change, the number of people living in hazard-prone (especially coastal) locations, and the sheer density of the urban fabric increase the potential for loss from natural hazards. Societies in the past were also severely tested by disasters, however, often to the limits of their endurance. Some cultures proved more resilient and overcame these tribulations; others showed less flexibility and failed. What makes any society vulnerable or resilient in the present is in part an historical question, and understanding how different cultures at different times were able to prepare for, mitigate, manage and recover from such events provides useful lessons for disaster risk managers today. A key aim of this network is to explore how to incorporate the distinctive cultural and temporal insights that history and the humanities more broadly can contribute to DRR. Steps towards collaborative approaches to integrated hazard research are currently emerging through the development of historical databases such as ACRE and the Global Historical Earthquake Catalogue, but there has not yet been a comprehensive conversation to enhance communication between historians, natural scientists and disaster specialists, identify common areas of concern, and frame research questions and methodologies to address them. RHDC is structured to build towards such a conversation. It encourages an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify a) what special input history and the humanities can make to DRR; b) the optimal ways in which our disciplines can collaborate; and c) the practical contribution such an interdisciplinary (but humanities-led) approach can make to disaster risk management today. To this end, we plan to hold a series of themed workshops, each of which will focus on a pressing issue in DRR studies that will enable participants to share perspectives, create a common framework for cooperation, and provide guidance on how such an integrated approach might be better incorporated into disaster risk management. Selected contributions from the workshops will be published in a special edition of an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal such as Disasters or Global Environmental Change. We will engage non-academic audiences via the participation of organisations such as AXA and CAFOD in our workshops, by producing working papers intended for the research community and stakeholders outside academe which we will publish open-access on the network website, and by maintaining a blog to keep network participants and the wider public informed about RHDC events, and provide commentary on past and contemporary natural disasters. We will also hold public-facing events including a public lecture hosted by the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute and a historians and scientists 'in conversation' evening hosted by the University of Oxford. The network will benefit a wide range of academic and non-academic stakeholders. It brings together participants with diverse interests and experience who seek common ground in disaster research through integrating methodologies, sharing data, and identifying critical shared questions. As an outcome of establishing strong interdisciplinary connections, it is anticipated that the network will lead to one or more applications for major collaborative research funding.

Responding to the crisis of climate change is a 'big ask' for all sectors of society. Religious traditions are among the groups responding to the crisis: for example, by campaigning to draw governments' attention to the climate emergency and trying to put their own eco-house in order. This research project will focus on Christianity in the UK to explore in detail the on-the-ground theological changes generated by this big ask. Specifically, it will consider how the need to respond to the climate emergency is both leading to theological innovation and shaping Christian climate responses in three contexts: Roman Catholic and Church of England denominations; a Christian international development agency, and Christian advocacy and activist groups. There is widespread agreement that anthropogenic climate change raises moral concerns as well as scientific and political issues. Moral concerns, however, do not emerge in a vacuum but in a cultural milieu or ethos which depend on certain ethical concepts, commitments and dispositions. Responding to climate change is therefore not only a matter of science and politics but also of ideology and belief. Whose ideology and which belief, however? A central theological and moral tradition of the Christian Church that is challenged by the climate crisis is 'personalism'. Personalism identifies the situation and task of the human understood by reference to personal attributes (will, reason, dispositions, etc.). Personalism relates also to human exceptionalism: personalist categories disembed the human from its 'natural' environment and thereby render the human an exception. Personalism is central to Christian theological traditions and moral deliberations. Such centrality explains why some religion scholars argue that Christianity can never be a 'dark green' religion [Taylor, 2009]. This project seeks to test the ways in which existing theologies are in fact being adapted or extended better to serve ethical enquiry and moral action in the crisis of climate change. It also seeks to explore how the emphasis upon the human person is used among different Christian constituencies and what difficulties it creates for audiences receiving information on climate change and responding to its challenges. It also proposes to provide in a monograph a theological reinterpretation that draws on the project data and moves beyond personalism. The conclusions of the research project will be provided as feedback to partners. Through reports and briefings, partners and similar organisations will be advised of the research findings (both theological and qualitative) and enabled to contextualise these findings in their own work. The reports on the findings of the project will allow partners and others through a process of shared learning to understand more clearly the difficulties they are encountering in fundraising, creating and managing change, and understanding and responding creatively to 'personalist' cultures. The briefings, together with other sources, will explore how to embed the findings in partners' contexts towards consciousness raising and culture change. Such feedback will make it easier for these denominations, agencies and activist groups to meet the demands of the big ask. This same feedback will be of wider interest to other groups as civil society gears up to respond to the adaptation and mitigation demands of climate change.

Earthquake prediction, (where? how big? and when?) is currently not possible but recent, rapid developments in earthquake science have made progress on identification of regions of high seismic hazard on which mitigating actions and scarce resources can be focused. For many scientists, the goal of earthquake prediction has been superseded by the goal of targeted preparation of at-risk populations. Integrated earthquake science, much of it established and uncontested, has produced effective disaster risk reduction preparedness programmes which can be shown to work. In western Sumatra, for example, the city of Padang lies broadside on to the Mentawai Islands segment of the Sunda megathrust which has been shown to be advanced in its seismic cycle and nearing failure in a large earthquake. This event will likely generate a destructive tsunami and, without preparation, a death toll on the same scale as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is thought possible. The population of the city have been the subject of intensive preparedness work based on the current insights from integrated earthquake and tsunami science. On 30 September 2009 an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 hit the city killing some 1200 people. Interestingly, this earthquake ruptured deep in the crust and did not cause any vertical movements of the seafloor and therefore did not generate a tsunami but no one in Padang knew this, it was perfect dry run for the expected earthquake. Later forensic studies of the response of Padang residents show that large numbers of people evacuated the city according to the evacuation plan and many lives would have been saved had the earthquake been tsunamigenic. Unfortunately in developing countries, where the risk to lives is highest, examples of excellent practice in utilising uncontested earthquake science are too rare, and thus avoidable loss of life to earthquakes and their associated hazards is too common. The 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake is a case in point, here, despite several publications in international earthquake science journals warning of the impending threat of an earthquake of magnitude around 7, the population and NGO's working with them remained completely ignorant of the threat and more than 230000 people died when the earthquake (M=7.1) occurred. We aim to change this balance. In this project we will put together an international team of earthquake scientists, NGO actors and government agencies and develop a large consortium project aimed at the integration and demonstration of cutting-edge, hybrid methods in earthquake science in parallel with the development of partnerships and methodologies for dissemination, utilisation and contextualisation of the best methods for disaster risk reduction programming in developing countries. The consortium project will do cutting-edge applied science by taking the best of current methods from different earthquake science fields, all of which have been shown to work, and combine them to produce protocols to identify regions of highest earthquake hazard. We will then take examples of international best practice, like Padang, in preparedness and work with social scientists and end users in the NGO and government agencies to ensure that the lessons from these examples are learned on a global basis so that the at-risk populations can fully avail of the state-of-the-art earthquake science. To enable appropriate use of earthquake science, the consortium will identify the most effective forms of science policy dialogue and develop innovative approaches which best support the effective communication and application of earthquake science for ARCs. This science policy learning will be of enormous transferable value, enabling learning from across scientific fields concerning future vulnerability to directly inform and support at risk communities.