Katherine Thompson, CRED graduate student, speaks at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, on communicating hazards

October 2nd, 2012

Katherine Thompson travels to California to partner with USGS, USC, and CEMA to share and present research

Arts Center College of Design, Pasadena, California

Katherine Thompson, CRED and Psychology Department doctoral student, studies decision making under uncertainty with a focus on how people understand and react to threats posed by natural hazards. Katherine just returned from California where she met with project partners and decision makers at various government agencies.

On October 2nd, she joined partners—from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), University of Southern California (USC) and the California Emergency Management Agency (CEMA)—and gave a talk on communicating hazards risk to a class at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, engaged in the development of tsunami messaging products. The project team attended a series of meetings the next day with the National Weather Service in Oxnard and various Los Angeles county officials. Katherine shared research findings on why people choose to evacuation or not when threatened by hazards such as debris flows or wild fires, the focus of the USGS-led project for the Southern California area.