The NHERI Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (referred to as the “RAPID Facility"), headquartered at the University of Washington (UW), is a collaboration between UW, Oregon State University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Florida. The facility will enable the natural hazards and disaster research communities to conduct next-generation rapid response investigations to characterize civil infrastructure performance and community response to natural hazards, evaluate the effectiveness of design methodologies, calibrate simulation models, and develop solutions for resilient communities. The facility engages in a range of activities including (1) acquiring, maintaining, and operating state-of-the-art data collection equipment, (2) developing and supporting mobile applications for interdisciplinary field reconnaissance, (3) providing advisory services and basic equipment logistics support for research investigations, (4) facilitating the systematic archiving, processing and visualization of acquired data in DesignSafe-CI, (5) training a broad user base through workshops and other activities, and (6) engaging the public by facilitating citizen science initiatives, as well as through community outreach and education.

The RAPID facility officially became operational and started supporting field deployments in September 2018. We have already participated in reconnaissance missions to Japan, North Carolina, Florida, and Indonesia and look forward to future lab and field work in Oregon and Japan. This website will continue to evolve as will our operations in this first year of supporting field missions and large-scale laboratory experiments.

Please navigate to the buttons on the right to learn more about how to use the RAPID facility, see where equipment currently is and has been deployed (using the sliding time scale in the upper right hand corner of that link), and request facility resources. Under the equipment porfolio tab (top of page), you can find information about the equipment we have available. Under the resources tab, you can find user rates and fees, a full user manual of how to work with the RAPID and a user agreement. Information about past and upcoming workshops can be located under the workshops tab, including slides from previous workshops. We look forward to working with and serving the natural hazards research community!