From evacuation routes to weather updates, risk communication keeps people safe from extreme events. However, not all risk communication strategies are equally effective or engaging. Professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and Fellow of the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), Amir Behzadan, and Natural Hazards Center Research Associate, Mary Angelica Painter, are working to change that. They planned and hosted the Advancing the Science and Practice of Innovative, Relatable, and Engaging Disaster Risk Communication (ASPIRE) Workshop, in April 2025.
“Risk communication is a vital area in need of evidence-based approaches to strengthen community resilience and support informed decision-making in times of disaster. Our vision was to create a bigger and more visible role for both the IBS and the Natural Hazards Center in the national and local conversations on this topic,” said Behzadan.
The two-day event allowed participants to exchange knowledge, methodologies, and best practices in disaster risk communication. Attendees engaged in critical discussions on human behavior, perception, and decision-making across all five stages of disaster management— prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Participants also explored human-centered technology solutions for crafting more effective and tailored risk communication.
Roughly 30 participants attended the workshop, bringing insights from the natural and physical sciences, academia, and disaster and emergency management.
Director of the Natural Hazards Center and Professor of Sociology, Lori Peek, was an invited speaker at the event. She discussed lessons learned for risk communication through project experiences out of the Natural Hazards Center.
“The ASPIRE Workshop brought together leading risk communication researchers and practitioners around the shared goal of keeping all people safe in disasters. There was so much progress made in this space,” said Peek.
The workshop was co-funded by an IBS Research-Building Workshop Grant and Behzadan’s NSF-funded project focused on upskilling the disaster management workforce. The event was also co-hosted by Behzadan’s Connected Informatics and Built Environment Research (CIBER) Lab, which works to design and deploy novel technologies to advance the lives of communities most affected by climate disasters.
Minh Anh Ly, a PhD student in Sociology at CU Boulder, studies hazards and disasters from a sociological perspective. Engaging with practitioners and leading scholars at the ASPIRE workshop provided valuable insights for her.
“Hearing about their first-hand experiences helped me better understand what communities need when it comes to receiving and acting on risk-related information—especially the critical role of trust, relatability, and locally cultural context. I also learned… the importance of collaborative, reciprocal, and community-centered approaches that honor lived experiences and local knowledge in risk communication.”
Behzadan and Painter hope the ASPIRE Workshop will help foster future collaboration in risk communications on national and international scales.
“After months of planning, we brought together many different stakeholders in risk communication work and identified future collaborations and connections that can support more convergence within the field,” says Painter. “Knowing that we have one another as we try to solve pressing issues to reduce harm and save lives… no one needs to work on this alone.”
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