COMMENT 20 November 2019 Disaster-zone research needs a code of conduct Study the effects of earthquakes, floods and other natural hazards with sensitivity to ethical dilemmas and power

imbalances. By JC Gaillard0 & Lori Peek1 JC Gaillard JC Gaillard is an associate professor in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland, New Zealand; and extraordinary

professor in the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.

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View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Twitter Facebook Email A collapsed building in the city of Palu in Sulawesi, Indonesia, after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake hit the region in September 2018. Credit: Hariandi Hafid/SOPA/Zuma

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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe A magnitude-7.0 earthquake rocked Anchorage, Alaska, in late November 2018. Roads buckled and chimneys tumbled from rooftops. Business

operations were disrupted. Schools were damaged across the district. This was the largest earthquake to shake the region in a generation, and there was much to learn. What was the state of

the infrastructure? Might further quakes occur? How did people respond? Teams of scientists and engineers from across the United States mobilized to conduct field reconnaissance in

partnership with local researchers and practitioners. These efforts were coordinated through the clearing house set up by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute in Oakland,

California, which provided daily in-person and online briefings, as well as a web portal for sharing data.

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Nature 575, 440-442 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03534-z

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