Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet (CHIRRP)

Synopsis

The Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet Program (CHIRRP) invites projects focusing on innovative and transformative research that advances Earth system hazard knowledge and risk mitigation in partnership with affected communities. Hazards compounded by changing climates, rising populations, expanding demands for resources, aging infrastructure, and increasing reliance on technology are putting our economy, well-being, and national security at risk. Researchers, academics, and community leaders will work together to develop community-driven research questions and actionable, science-based solutions that increase community resilience now and in the future. CHIRRP projects are expected to advance understanding, forecasting and/or prediction of future Earth system hazards and risks, engage communities in development of research questions and approaches, and produce actionable, science-based solution pathways for adaptation methodologies, products, and services. CHIRRP projects may evaluate a single or system of cascading hazards, impacts, and risks at a local, regional, or global scale through the lens of transformative earth system science research. Competitive projects will engage community partners at all stages of a project from development to implementation.

CHIRRP currently supports planning, conference, RCNs, EAGER, and RAISE proposals that support development of community partnerships, provide training for effective community engagement, catalyze ideas, and/or support the initial conceptualization, planning and collaboration activities aimed at formulating new and sound plans for future large-scale projects.

CHIRRP Elements  
CHIRRP projects will demonstrate convergence of three essential elements: (1) Equitable Community Partnerships; (2) an Earth System Science approach to advance knowledge of hazards, impacts, and risks and (3) Actionable Solutions that increase resilience. The initiative seeks solutions to existing as well as next-generation Earth system hazards¹.

Build Equitable Community Partnerships: CHIRRP projects will serve a community and equitably co-produce project research questions and solutions. CHIRRP teams will bring together community members with direct knowledge of hazard impacts and community priorities and researchers with expertise in the natural and human dimensions of the Earth system. Partners may include, but are not limited to, local governments, Tribal Nations, civil society organizations, youth groups, and non-government organizations (NGOs). Robust partnerships are responsive to community priorities, may involve a social science component, and lead to actionable solutions that increase community resilience.

Advance Earth System Science: Generating practical and foundational knowledge on many of the nation’s most urgent challenges requires a systems approach to understand the highly interdependent and complex natural and human components of the Earth system. CHIRRP projects will innovate and advance Earth System Science approaches that explore dynamic interactions and couplings among natural and social processes that affect Earth’s capacity to sustain the well-being of communities, infrastructure, and national security.
 
Evaluate Actionable Science-Based Solutions: CHIRRP deliverables include co-produced innovative, science-based actionable solution pathways that mitigate future hazards, impacts, and risks. Multiple solutions may exist, and new solutions may emerge in the future. CHIRRP projects will inform pathways to resilience through evaluation of different solutions informed by the advancement of earth systems knowledge delivered from the project. An understanding of risk, vulnerability and resilience necessarily entails an understanding of relevant social dynamics including methods and analysis to identify how the impacts of hazards may disproportionately affect specific segments of a community or region. Solutions should be responsive to community priorities, including objectives such as reducing Earth system hazard related risk, increasing resilience, and advancing equity.
 
¹National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Next Generation Earth Systems Science at the National Science Foundation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26042.