Oregon Hazards Lab

The Oregon Hazards Lab is a research lab within the University of Oregon’s Department of Earth Sciences. Our mission is to use science, technology, and community engagement to understand, detect, and mitigate multi-hazards within the Pacific Northwest. We are building a statewide sensor network that supports both resilience monitoring and scientific observing. Our work advances knowledge of natural and human-caused hazards and the environment, it helps to protect the public, and it contributes to community-level resilience. Our projects include installing and maintaining seismic monitoring stations for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, deploying wildfire detection cameras, and utilizing novel environmental monitoring sensors like Wild Sage Nodes. The real-time data these devices collect deliver actionable and equitable information to the public, emergency managers, critical infrastructure providers, and policy makers. They also provide scientists with the open-access data that are the cornerstones of scientific discovery, thereby simultaneously fostering convergent scientific research that contributes to building a more disaster-resilient society. These projects directly contribute to building a more resilient, just, and livable future. The framework of technology, science, and public engagement that strengthens resilience also enhances environmental stewardship and ecological understanding. Our goal is to be international leaders in using hazards monitoring to support stewardship of place and to inform societal responses to climate and land-use changes.