Alexa Dietrich (SSRC) and Deepak Lamba-Neives (Puerto Rico Graduate School of Planning) worked in collaboration with UNO CLACS Director, Roberto E. Barrios to make UNO the site for this activity. The Center was delighted to host participants from Puerto Rico's Graduate School of Planning (Deepak Lamba-Nieves), Jacksonville State University (Allessandra Jerolleman), The University of Texas at Rio Grande (Celicio Ortiz Garcia and Marla Perez Lugo), the Georgetown University Law Center (Monica Sanders), the University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras (Raul Santiago Bartolomei), the University of Pittsburgh (Fernando Tormos-Aponte), Columbia University (Ariam L. Torres Cordero), Xavier University of Louisiana (Pamela Waldron-Moore) and the Social Science Research Council (Alexa Dietrich). 

The focal point of the workshop was the development of a network of disaster scholars who live and work in communities routinely affected by disasters. Topics discussed involved developing research agendas that are responsive to local community needs, building equity in disaster research between scholars working in minority-serving institutions in disaster-prone regions and external researchers from prominent academic institutions and developing a core set of ethics and values to guide future disaster scholarship. The workshop featured community engagement activities, including a visit and discussion with the leadership and membership of local grassroots non-profit, Familias Unidas en Acción, an organization that assists Latin American immigrants in the New Orleans area in times of disaster. The workshop concluded with plans to seek additional funding for future meetings and projects that promote an exchange of disaster knowledge among researchers in the U.S. Gulf Coast and the Caribbean.