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C-Urge project is a doctoral network set up to research and better understand the complexity of climate and enviromental change, that is happening on global, as well as on a local scale. 

Through various research approaches set in various countries, we aim to highlight the notion of urgency and need to enrich the debate around the topic of environemtal change, that is both fast, and subtle and poses a serious challenge for the future.   

CITIZEN SCIENCE

Epistemic negotiation

Stakeholders (indigenous groups, activist, scientist, scholars, etc)

The NYS Ebola Preparedness Plan applied to residents and those travelling to and from the State of New York. The policy affected numerous agencies including hospitals, EMS agencies, public safety departments, and transportation authorities. 

Currently, the US Department of Veterans Affairs is engaged in the initiative to prevent and end homelessness among military veterans. The DVA works with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and state governments on this initiative.

As part of the evidence in this article, the author cites Gerard R. and Hailey-Means who are two former inmates of Rikers' Island, Martin Horn who is a former NYC DOC commissioner, Mayor DeBlasio, John Boston of the Legal Aid Society, Kim Knowlton who is a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Susi Vassallo who is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, and a number of additional individuals and organizations.

• "In a place of tremendous economic desperation, people competed for work in the zone of exclusion, where salaries were relatively high and steadily paid. Prospective workers engaged in a troubling cost benefit assessment that went something like this: if I work in the zone, I lose my health. But I can send my son to law school."
• "Opinions about how the state should address the fate of these Chemobyl victims also serve as a kind of barometer of the country's changing moral fabric."
• "At stake in the Chernobyl aftermath is a distinctive postsocialist field of power-in-the-making that is using science and scientific categories to establish the state's reach. Scientists and victims are also establishing their own modes of knowledge related to injury as a means of negotiating public accountability, political power, and further state protections in the form of financial compensation and medical care."

Dr. Miriam Ticktin is an associate professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She earned her doctorate degree in anthropology in 2002 from Stanford University. She focuses her research efforts on gender, humanitarianism, and human rights.

The Burning of the US Capitol Building, 1814. From the very beginnings of its contruction, the US Capitol Building was plagued by conflict between the chief engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who desired a durable and fireproof design, and Congress, which pushed for rapid completion of the building with limited expense. The result was a mixed contruction, with parts of the building constructed to withstand a major fire and others constructed with lumber. Following the fire, Latrobe conducted a relatively thorough investigation, revealing the various points of failure and recontructing the timeline of the disaster. However, as far as the public was concerned, the disaster was the result of diplomatic and military failures, rather than any engineering failures. 

The Hague Street Explosion, 1850. Steam power was widely used in the United States, but safety protocols and standards were not widespread nor maintained by any particular agency. The exact nature and cause of the boiler explosion at Hague Street was widely debated by various experts, engineers, and laypersons. The federal government scrambled to enact new laws regarding boiler inspection and safety with little effect in reducing boiler-related disasters, while city officials instead chose to remember the disaster through a fund-raising campaign for the victims' families. 

The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago, 1903. The disaster called into question the integrity of the building code system in the city of Chicago and caused widespread debate regarding who should be responsible for enforcing building codes. The disaster resulted in a rapid expansion of fire code and fire safety standards and the creation of a network of investigators, comprised of engineers, insurance agencies, testing labs, and fire officials. However, the pressure for such action and progress soon declined as the government, press, and public moved on from the disaster. 

This policy affects all patients, or potential patients, in the United States and further affects all hospitals and care providers. It ensures that all patients suffering from emergency medical condition(s) are provided the appropriate medical care regardless of their initial ability to pay. Furthermore, it requires that hospitals, their emergency departments, and their staff must treat and stabilize these patients prior to transferring to another facility. 

• "Chronic disaster syndrome thus refers in this analysis to the cluster of trauma-and posttrauma-related phenomena that are at once individual, social, and political and that are associated with disaster as simultaneously causative and experiential of a chronic condition of distress in relation to displacement."
• "Despite the overwhelming need for mental health services, few residents were able to access mental health support for their symptoms, simply because health care facilities and health care personnel were so scarce. Most health personnel were themselves experiencing the trauma of displacement, and few clinical facilities survived the disaster."
• "Families had to find a place to live, a way to replace lost income, a place for their children to go to school, a way to obtain their prescription medications and telephones, a way to pay mounting unpaid bills for homes they no longer inhabited. Without their personal documents, they had to try to track insurance policies, if they had them, bank accounts, and health records, to begin the slow process of accessing government or insurance funds to help pay for their displacement and their hoped-for recovery."