Market-focused and open-systems approaches to earthquake loss-reduction: Contextualizing role of engineering research

To achieve loss-reduction objectives and to enhance community and societal resilience in the event of earthquakes and other disasters, researchers and practitioners must take into account the broader societal environment in which loss-reduction solutions are applied. For that purpose, researchers at the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) have developed two conceptual frameworks that clarify the linkages that need to be made between earthquake research and the application of loss-reduction solutions: an open-systems approach as a strategy for organizing a large-scale coordinated research agenda applied to a significant public problem, and market-based metaphors to introduce a new way of conceptualizing the loss-reduction process. This paper presents these proposed conceptual frameworks, which have been used by MCEER to formulate its research agenda, for consideration as potentially helpful tools for researchers and for the management of large multidisciplinary research endeavors in earthquake engineering, as well as for discussion and possible enhancements by others within the research community.