Theoretical Matters: On the Need for Hazard and Disaster Theory Developed Through Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration

Divergent dynamics: disasters and conflicts as 'drivers' of internal displacement?

Disasters and conflicts are both widely recognised as 'drivers' of internal displacement. Yet, despite a growing body of research and policy, there has been little consideration to date of how the different features of each 'context' shape the micro-level dynamics of internal displacement. Where and why are these dynamics similar across the two contexts and how do they differ? This paper draws on general concepts from the disaster field to develop a comparative analytical model of internal displacement dynamics in the disaster and conflict contexts. Based on inferences from the patchy extant data across the two contexts, it identifies and explains points of convergence and divergence between internal displacement dynamics in both the disaster and conflict contexts. This 'contextual' model of the micro-level dynamics of internal displacement has implications for academic debates, as well as for policy and practice, in the disaster, conflict, peace, climate change, and forced migration/displacement fields.

Promoting the Sustainable Improvement of Educational Empirical Research Quality: What Kinds of Collaborative Production Relationships Make Sense?

With the transformation of the knowledge production model, the research system of educational research is becoming more extensive, and academic collaboration has become an important productive method of promoting the sustainable development of educational empirical research. Given this situation, what kinds of relationships will sustainably improve educational empirical research output quality? Taking the influence of educational empirical research article as an example, we selected 4610 empirical research articles in 15 education journals for analysis, published between the years of 2015 and 2020. In the sustainable development progress of educational empirical research, the optimal scale phenomenon has been verified in cooperative research. Identity collaboration, institutional collaboration, international collaboration, and discipline collaboration were all found to have a strongly significant influence on the sustainable improvement of educational empirical research output quality. Meanwhile, the output quality of educational empirical research is affected by the heterogeneity of the number of cooperators and cooperating identities. These findings suggest that the optimal proportion of teacher–student collaboration should be 2–3, and the optimal scale of colleague collaboration should be 3–4. Compared with teacher–student collaboration, colleague collaboration, including cross-organization and interdisciplinary collaboration, was more conductive to enhancing the sustainable improvement of educational empirical research outcome quality. According to these findings, it is reasonable to believe that, in the process of the sustainable development of educational empirical research, fine-guidance-style teacher–student collaboration and small-scale, cross-unit colleague collaboration should be promoted; meanwhile, strengthening the collaboration between normal universities, optimizing the quality of international collaboration, and promoting pedagogy intersection with other disciplines are also critical to promote the sustainable improvement of educational empirical research outcome quality.

A Decision-Centered Method to Evaluate Natural Hazards Decision Aids by Interdisciplinary Research Teams

There is a growing number of decision aids made available to the general public by those working on hazard and disaster management. When based on high-quality scientific studies across disciplines and designed to provide a high level of usability and trust, decision aids become more likely to improve the quality of hazard risk management and response decisions. Interdisciplinary teams have a vital role to play in this process, ensuring the scientific validity and effectiveness of a decision aid across the physical science, social science, and engineering dimensions of hazard awareness, option identification, and the decisions made by individuals and communities. Often, these aids are not evaluated before being widely distributed, which could improve their impact, due to a lack of dedicated resources and guidance on how to systematically do so. In this Perspective, we present a decision-centered method for evaluating the impact of hazard decision aids on decisionmaker preferences and choice during the design and development phase, drawing from the social and behavioral sciences and a value of information framework to inform the content, complexity, format, and overall evaluation of the decision aid. The first step involves quantifying the added value of the information contained in the decision aid. The second involves identifying the extent to which the decision aid is usable. Our method can be applied to a variety of hazards and disasters, and will allow interdisciplinary teams to more effectively evaluate the extent to which an aid can inform and improve decision making.