Improved residential risk disclosure is a key component for building resilient communities, yet many residents remain unaware that the building codes and zoning regulations they expect to protect them become outdated as environmental stressors, local development patterns, materials science, and construction practices change.
Please join us for a Gulf Research Program webinar exploring the use of a data-sharing tool, HazardAware, that helps residents and city planners make their homes and communities more resilient to natural hazards presented by the project director, Dr. Christopher Emrich, University of Central Florida.
Speakers:
Dr. Chris Emrich is an endowed professor of Environmental Science and Public Administration within the School of Public Administration and a founding member of the newly formed National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at University of Central Florida. He and his team created HazardAware to support hazard data democratization. Their goal is to enable everyone to access hazard, risk, vulnerability, resilience, and mitigation information so that they can make more informed and safer housing choices and learn how to mitigate hazard losses to their current homes.
Dr. Carol Friedland is the Director of LaHouse Resource Center at the LSU AgCenter, a position she started this March after her tenure as Associate Professor in the Department of Construction Management at LSU for the past 13 years. Dr. Friedland has responded to landfalling hurricanes since 2004 and provides information about natural hazard risk and best practices to strengthen homes and communities.
Dr. Melanie Gall is a hazards geographer studying the interaction between?natural hazards and society. She is an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs where she co-directs the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security and manages the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS). Her expertise lies in risk metrics (e.g., disaster losses, indices, risk assessments), hazard mitigation, and climate change adaptation planning as well as environmental modeling.
Dr. Colin Polsky is Professor of Geosciences, and director of the Florida Atlantic University Center for Environmental Studies (CES). Dr. Polsky is an environmental social scientist whose research and teaching examines how people create, perceive, and respond to climate challenges. His interdisciplinary training is in mathematics, humanities, French, geography, and science & international affairs. His responsibilities include program building, both within and across university departments; fundraising from public and private foundations; staffing diverse and multi-generational teams; and communicating with varied audiences for both persuasive and reporting purposes.