Understanding Risk: SecondMuse and Innovation in Disaster Risk Assessment

SecondMuse recently served as the technical and conceptual lead on a World Bank project using social media tools to develop a collaborative online community dedicated to better understanding natural disaster risk and harnessing new technological innovations to address risk in the world’s most vulnerable communities. The online community, www.understandrisk.org, engaged thousands of technical experts and practitioners from over 130 countries around the world in sharing their experiences and knowledge in preparing for, and responding to, natural disasters. The collaborative online global community served as a forum to harness the energy and expertise of practitioners with many diverse backgrounds in disaster risk management, enable them to share ideas across disciplines and national borders, and to spur the development and use of new innovations and technologies in the field of disaster risk.

The online discussions on the Understanding Risk Community site culminated in the ground-breaking Understanding Risk Forum, held at the World Bank in June 2010, where over 400 experts and practitioners from around the world traveled to Washington, D.C. to share their work and learn from one another. Sessions covered topics as diverse as using state-of-the-art satellite imagery to model risk, to crowdsourcing for risk assessment, to the challenges of perceiving and communicating risk.

From the user-generated content to the Ignite talks about each session topic, to the integration of Twitter and live webstreaming to engage the global online community, the Understanding Risk Forum was innovative in its model as well as its content. In addition to SecondMuse’s lead role in the conceptual and content development of the Understanding Risk Forum, SecondMuse’s Todd Khozein also presented to the assembled experts on the impact of new media on disaster risk.

The Understanding Risk online community anticipates further innovative forums, and continues to grow and develop as a virtual gathering place for experts worldwide to communicate, connect and enhance their own work through discussion and collaboration with other practitioners.