Subduction Zones in 4 Dimensions (SZ4D) is a new community-driven initiative for coordinating interdisciplinary research to improve our understanding of processes underlying destructive geohazards that concentrate in subduction zones. Leveraging strategies from other forms of system science, SZ4D plans to collect critical new observations from a broad swath of disciplines with similar spatial and temporal scope to reveal previously uncharacterizable relationships. Moreover, SZ4D wants to capitalize on the opportunity presented by dense deployments of sensors over large swaths of Chile, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska to be an agent of change in geoscience. In essence, SZ4D wants to facilitate transformation of the mindset in the solid-earth research community to embrace transdisciplinary science through a novel approach to building equity and capacity based on successful strategies in social science. Specifically, SZ4D has embraced the Collective Impact framework for accomplishing cooperative and inclusive science that create sustainable improvements in communities, capacity building, and geohazard mitigation. An example of this effort is the GeoArray group that is seeking to fund a collective large-scale field geology experiment, proposing a pilot project to assess strategies for facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations and interpretations, enabling geologic data collection over broad areas with diverse teams, and reducing barriers to access field data.

To aid in constructing the Collective Impact framework, SZ4D is working to build mutually beneficial partnership with the geoscience education community. In particular, SZ4D is currently recruiting for a community of practice focused on capacity building to launch in 2024 with participant support to afford the time investment in this activity. The goals of the multidisciplinary community of practice will be to co-create funding strategies for cross-disciplinary work and a detailed implementation plan on how to meaningfully incorporate geoscience education and social science research in SZ4D capacity building.