About: Our Story

The RAPID Facility was established in 2016 with support from the National Science Foundation as part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) network. NHERI is a distributed, multi-user national facility that provides the natural hazards research community with access to research infrastructure including experimental facilities, cyberinfrastructure, computational modeling and simulation tools, and field research and education services. After two years of development and community engagement, we commenced field operations in 2018.

What sets the RAPID Facility apart as the world's only facility of its kind is our unique combination of capabilities: immediate deployment capability after a disaster, an open data approach that accelerates global scientific discovery, and interdisciplinary integration across engineering, geosciences, social sciences, and public health. Since beginning operations, we have supported over 200 deployments worldwide across earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, wildfires, and other hazards spanning multiple continents.

In 2023, the National Institutes of Health joined the National Science Foundation as a federal co-sponsor of our facility, recognizing the critical importance of public health data collection in natural hazards research. This expanded partnership enables us to better serve interdisciplinary research teams investigating the full spectrum of disaster impacts on human health, communities, and built environments.

Through our partnerships with leading research institutions and federal agencies, we continue to advance the science of natural hazards reconnaissance while training the next generation of disaster researchers and supporting evidence-based approaches to disaster risk reduction.