Measuring User Satisfaction for the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Consortium

Abstract

The User Forum is a Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI)-wide group focused on providing the NHERI Council with independent advice on community user satisfaction, priorities, and needs relating to the use and capabilities of NHERI. The User Forum has representation across NHERI activities, including representatives working directly with the Network Coordination Office (NCO), Education and Community Outreach (ECO), Facilities Scheduling, and Technology Transfer efforts. The User forum also provides feedback on the NHERI Science Plan. As the community voice within the governance of NHERI, the User Forum is composed of members nominated and elected by the NHERI community for a specified term of 1–2 years. User Forum membership spans academia and industry, the full breadth of civil engineering and social science disciplines, and widespread hazard expertise including earthquakes, windstorms, and water events. One of the primary responsibilities of the User Forum is to conduct an annual community user satisfaction survey for NHERI users, and publish a subsequent Annual Community Report. Measuring user satisfaction and providing this feedback to the NHERI Council is critical to supporting the long-term sustainability of NHERI and its mission as a multidisciplinary and multi-hazard network. In this paper, the role and key activities of the User Forum are described, including User Forum member election procedures, User Forum member representation and roles across NHERI activities, and the processes for measuring and reporting user satisfaction. This paper shares the user satisfaction survey distributed to NHERI users, and discusses the challenges to measuring community user satisfaction based on the definition of user. Finally, this paper discusses the evolving approaches of measuring user satisfaction using other methods, including engaging with the twelve NHERI research infrastructures.