Role of Boundary Organization after a Disaster: New Zealand’s Natural Hazards Research Platform and the 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence

AbstractThe boundary organization concept has been used to establish that collaborative arrangements and outputs across science and policy domain boundaries need to be credible, relevant, and legitimate in order to be to be effective. Although widely accepted in other issue-driven fields, this concept does not have equivalent currency in the natural hazard and disaster risk reduction context. This paper uses the development of the New Zealand Natural Hazards Research Platform during a recent earthquake disaster to assess the utility of the concept in this topic area. Lessons are also identified concerning the use of larger consortium organizations to increase policy and other end-user involvement in the management and coordination of research funding, and the impact of a major disaster on this research-funding initiative. Mapping the Platform’s collaborative arrangements in relation to boundary tensions over time makes it possible to distinguish disaster effects from preexisting and ongoing structural eff...

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