A Rapidly-Growing Field: Disaster Research And Planning

"Alongside the engineers and meteorologists stand a small band of social scientists who train their lenses on the human picture. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, last year's tsunami, a catastrophic hurricane season, and a devastating earthquake in Pakistan, their specialty is gaining respect - and an influx of scholars whose skills are in high demand.

...'In Katrina, people who have a wide variety of interests can see the applicability [of the social sciences] ... in the disaster context - and when these people come out [of school], they're going to get jobs,' says Kathleen Tierney, a sociology professor and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Three PhD candidates at Boulder who had never considered disaster research before are now focusing on Katrina, she says. For one of them, 'it never occurred to him that social inequality was related in some way to disasters until he saw Katrina, and it was like a light bulb going on.' "