Successful and effective disaster management is invisible. That is the idea behind the PhD dissertation of Dr. Maricar Rabonza in Episode 21 of Behind the Science Podcast. Disaster news is often depicted in catastrophes such as the number of lives lost, the extent of infrastructure destruction, and the total damage cost. If disaster risk reduction were done well, damages would be minimal to nonexistent and the news would get drowned behind others, or not featured at all.
In her paper, Dr. Rabonza aims to shed light on these invisible successes by generating models that assess the impacts of risk mitigation conducted before known disasters as well as project how existing and planned measures can minimize hazards in the future.
Through this research, Dr. Rabonza and her team were able to establish the “Averted Disaster Award”, which recognizes and incentivizes successful disaster risk reduction efforts. Project NOAH applied for the prize and received an honorable mention in 2022.
Before starting her research career, Dr. Rabonza shares her ‘origin story’ as she jokingly puts it in the podcast, as a Civil Engineering student. During her undergraduate internship, she realized that a standard engineering firm was just not for her. Upon graduation, her first job was in Project NOAH, and in her first 6 months, Typhoon Haiyan hit the country in 2013. With this record-breaking disaster, the numbers on her screen translated into actual lives. This experience solidified her passion for modeling and utilizing her engineering skills to build resilient communities.
Her message to young researchers is the foundation for how she got to where she is today. She shared three key points. Her first advice is to find mentors. While success is built on hard work, insights from people who understand the field or have more experience are essential. Second, be intentional in your career and life. Create plans for the short, medium, and long term and align them with the skills you want to build to conduct the research you wish to do. And finally, she shared, there is no one path to happiness. It’s alright to feel lost in your research aspirations. Try to have a rough plan, and even if you don’t end up where you initially thought you would, what’s important is that you keep moving forward.
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Article spotlight
Rabonza ML, Lin YC, Lallemant D. 2022. Learning From Success, Not Catastrophe: Using Counterfactual Analysis to Highlight Successful Disaster Risk Reduction Interventions. Frontiers in Earth Science. 10. doi:10.3389/feart.2022.847196. https://www.frontiersin.org/…/feart.2022.847196/full
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