One of the most significant barriers to effective research during and after disasters stems from difficulties in communication among stakeholders. Some of these challenges include researchers not knowing if and how they can help, and members of Federal, State and Local Agencies not knowing how to find the expertise that is needed. Furthermore, members of the community would benefit from a better understanding of how research is helping and how they can participate.

To overcome these barriers to communication, we've designed this website to connect community, academics and agencies amongst one another. This prototype website communicates information relevant to disaster research and response, and contains three portals, each optimized for each of the three audiences. There is already a tremendous amount of resources online, and in particular at the DR2 website. Our objective is to make these more accessible and to provide more direct connections among the community, academics and agencies in formats that each can understand and appreciate. 

This website is currently under development by MIT and the Harvard Public School of Health. We are currently exploring methods for gathering key information relevant to DR2. For comments, suggestions on how we can improve, please contact us.