Communicating Local Climate & Hazard Risk Information to At-Risk Residents – CHERP

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The Coast and Ocean Risk Communication Community of Practice (CORC CoP) sponsored by the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction, and Response Network (MEOPAR) cordially invite you to attend a one-hour presentation entitled, Communicating Local Climate & Hazard Risk Information to At-Risk Residents with presenter Dr. Ryan Reynolds, the lead researcher and developer of CHERP (Canadian Hazards Emergency Response and Preparedness Application). The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session facilitated by Dr. Joel Finnis, a Co-Lead of CORC CoP and Associate Professor, Memorial University of Newfoundland. There is no charge for the presentation but please register here to obtain your Zoom Meeting link. We look forward to having you join us!

Canadian communities are increasingly seeking new ways to communicate information about climactic environmental hazards to their residents. At the same time, their residents are asking for more detailed information from community and regional officials than the static websites and 10-item checklist PDFs of yesteryear. Our team set out to help communities make it quicker and easier for their residents to learn about local hazards, take steps to prepare, and take informed response actions should the need arise.

The Canadian Hazards Emergency Response & Preparedness (CHERP) mobile app is the first tool resulting from a partnership between our research team at UBC and several communities on Vancouver Island. The goal of the CHERP app is to help educate community residents about hazards in their communities and assist them to create emergency plans that incorporate local hazard, planning, and emergency response information while also adapting to the unique needs of household members and pets. In this talk, Dr. Reynolds will describe some of the motivations, challenges, and goals behind the development of the CHERP app along with our plans for Phase II of the project.

PRESENTER
Dr. Ryan P. Reynolds, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
School of Community and Regional Planning
University of British Columbia

Dr. Reynolds’s research aims to help Canadian communities and households to better understand, prepare for, and respond to local hazard risk. His work combines elements from geospatial modelling, risk communication, and application development to assess and communicate hazard risk and vulnerability at the community, neighbourhood, and household scales. His research focuses primarily on tsunamis and related coastal hazards in Canada, with special attention to communities on Vancouver Island. Ryan joined the Resilient-C research group in SCARP as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in September 2017 and is the lead researcher and developer for the CHERP research initiative.