2024 NIST-NSF Disaster Resilience Research Symposium

In cooperation with the National Science Foundation, the Engineering Laboratory at NIST, Gaithersburg, is proud to host the 7th annual symposium featuring the Disaster Resilience Grant Research Program recipients on August 20 and 21, 2024. This virtual event will showcase a wide range of research topics related to Disaster Resilience.

Over two days, recipients will share insights and findings from their research related to Disaster and Failure Studies, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program and Reduced Ignition of Building Components in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires Project.

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Igor Linkov 

Title: Systemic Risk and Resilience: Science and Practice

Bio: Dr. Igor Linkov is Senior Science and Technology Manager with the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and Adjunct Professor with University of Florida and Carnegie Mellon University. He is responsible for ERDC’s project portfolio in the areas of crises mitigation and resilience.  He develops methods and tools for measuring resilience in interconnected network and applies these tools to the environment, critical infrastructure, transportation, energy and cyber systems, supply chains as well as command and control systems.   He is Army representative at the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program as well as several White House committees developing the National Resilience Strategy and other resilience-focused guidance documents.  He has published widely on environmental and technology policy, climate change, and risk and resilience analytics, including twenty eight books and over 500 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in top journals, like Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Climate Change, among others.  Dr. Linkov is Elected Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Society for Risk Analysis. Dr. Linkov has received multiple USACE, Army and DOD Awards and Civilian Service medals, including the highest Civilian Award in the US Army and 2023 Army’s Humanitarian Assistance Medal, as well 2020 DOD Top Scientist Award.  He received multiple awards from the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), 2022 Edgeworth-Pareto Award from the International Society for Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), 2022 IDRiM Distinguished Research Award, and 2021 Arthur Flemming Award for outstanding public service.

Rae Zimmerman

Title: From Cascading Disruptions to Resilient Integration: Reconciling Hazards, Technology, and Environment Interactions with Network Principles

Bio: Rae Zimmerman is Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Planning and Public Administration at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, following a full-time professorship, and currently directs NYU-Wagner’s Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems. She is a AAAS Fellow, past president and Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and recipient of SRA’s distinguished achievement award. Current and prior appointments include National Academies Transportation Research Board standing committees and two NYC Panels on Climate Change appointments as infrastructure leader. Her U. California (Berkeley) chemistry bachelor’s was followed by urban planning emphasizing environment, infrastructure, and disaster planning for her U. Pennsylvania Master’s degree and Columbia U. PhD. Research themes bridge technological, environmental, and socio-economic resilience for climate, weather, earth movement and human initiated hazards encompassing risk communication, social equity, and societal and structural network principles for critical infrastructure flexibility and resilience, such as multiple modes and redundancy. She worked at U.S. EPA and engineering organizations. She co-edited Urban Infrastructure (U. Pittsburgh Press), authored Transport, the Environment and Security (Edward Elgar), authored Governmental Management of Chemical Risk (Lewis Publishers) and published other books and about 200 papers supported with over four dozen government grants. URL: http://wagner.nyu.edu/zimmerman