An ad hoc committee will explore the effects of disasters on the academic research community (i.e, biological and biomedical). The end product of this work will be a report that 1) describes the extent of the impact of prior disasters on the academic research community (i.e., biological and biomedical) and 2) provides guidance for individual researchers, research institutions, and sponsors regarding potential actions to be taken that may mitigate the impact of future disasters [1].
The committee will organize and host up to three regional stakeholder meetings as a primary source of information for this work. The goal of these meetings will be to highlight potential hazards and assess various disaster plans employed by researchers, institutions, and sponsors throughout the country with the purpose of identifying both the strengths and weaknesses in current disaster plans. The final report produced by the committee will be based on the information gathered at these regional meetings as well from additional literature review, and will:

• Review challenges that researchers, institutions, and sponsors have had in minimizing the impact of disasters
• Identify key elements of disaster plans for researchers, institutions, and sponsors to use to mitigate the impact of disasters
• Develop resources that can be utilized by stakeholders, including:

o Guidance for individual researchers to employ to minimize the impact of disasters;

o Templates for research institutions to use to develop hazard-based mitigation plans; and

o Potential policies that could be established by sponsors (government and non-government) to ensure that appropriate mitigation practices are implemented by researchers and research institutions.

In making its recommendations, the committee will aim to limit the administrative burden of any guidance or potential policies while still maximizing the potential effect of the guidance in mitigating the impact of future disasters.
[1] The study will not consider human subject research, but will address the infrastructure that supports human subject research, such as biorepositories that store human tissues.