NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release
Jan. 24, 2017
For more information contact:
Kari Roop, 405-659-3483, kroop@ou.edu
Keli Pirtle, 405-203-4839, keli.pirtle@noaa.gov
ALLIANCE FOR INTEGRATIVE APPROACHES TO EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL EVENTS
The framework for an informal public-private partnership, involving a wide array of partner-stakeholders focused on reducing societal harm from extreme environmental events, was announced today during the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Seattle, Washington.
Known as The Alliance for Integrative Approaches to Extreme Environmental Events, this community-initiated and community-governed framework will bring together a broad group of collaborators – including researchers, operational practitioners, federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, non-profit organizations, philanthropists and entrepreneurs – to improve holistic understanding, prediction of and response to severe and hazardous weather. In addition, the Alliance will facilitate interdisciplinary research, and its associated transition to practice, in ways that advance the community’s collective agenda.
The Alliance was crafted in response to multiple community recommendations, particularly those made in response to several workshops focused on integrating meteorology with social and behavioral sciences. The guiding plan for the Alliance was developed as a community-wide activity led by a “writing team,” drawn from the international community of researchers and practitioners across a diverse array of disciplines. A volunteer steering committee will oversee the Alliance, and a small paid professional staff will provide day-to-day management.
“The strength of the Alliance lies in its philosophy of serving as an organizing mechanism to bring sectors, organizations and individuals together to work in an integrative fashion; in its emphasis on rapidly translating outcomes into operational practice, in its community-based governance, and in its emphasis on supporting activities that provide practical benefits for addressing needs that heretofore have gone unmet,” explained Kelvin Droegemeier, Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma and one of the Alliance organizers.
The Alliance is being initiated, in part, by a $3 million private gift from ImpactWX, a private social impact fund based in Toronto, Canada, with the expectation that the Alliance will obtain additional, long-term funding from a wide array of sources for a true multi-sector partnership.
More details can be found at the Alliance web site: http://alliance.ou.edu.
