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The University of Alabama, Center for Sustainable Infrastructure

Alabama
USA

Outline
The mission of the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure (CSI) is to conduct research associated with constructing, expanding, maintaining, and rehabilitating all aspects of physical infrastructure. The Center facilitates and leads multi-disciplinary, collaborative programs and explores linkages between different infrastructure systems that are traditionally studied in separate specialty areas. The Center is particularly focused on the safe and efficient creation of resilient infrastructure, including assessment of infrastructure condition, vulnerability, and recovery from disaster.

Four key research themes of the CSI are 1) multi-hazards community-based resilience, 2) energy simulation and retrofitting of buildings, 3) accelerated and automated construction, and 4) advanced materials for civil infrastructure. Its Large Scale Structures Laboratory (LSSL) contains a 75-foot by 40-foot test floor with a 3-foot thick strong floor, two 15-ton capacity overhead cranes, and 2-foot thick reconfigurable reinforced-concrete blocks that can be stacked and post-tensioned to the strong floor to provide reaction walls on the testing floor. The sponsors of research projects include National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, State DOTs, and the industry.


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Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security (CEMHS)

Arizona State University (ASU)

Arizona
USA

Outline

We want to transform the emergency management and homeland security landscape through transdisciplinary discovery and practice, in which knowledge, risk reduction, community development and sustainability operate collaboratively to reduce risks and vulnerabilities and adapt communities to new "normals."

By connecting practitioners, students and the wider ASU academic community and its resources, CEMHS is co-developing research and knowledge.


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Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER)
National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering
University of California, Berkeley

California
USA

Outline
The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) is a multi-institutional research and education center with headquarters at the University of California, Berkeley. Investigators from over 20 universities, several consulting companies, plus researchers at various State and Federal government agencies contribute to research programs focused on performance-based earthquake engineering in disciplines including structural and geotechnical engineering, geology/seismology, lifelines, transportation, risk management, and public policy.

The PEER mission is to develop, validate, and disseminate performance-based seismic design technologies for buildings and infrastructure to meet the diverse economic and safety needs of owners and society. PEER's research defines appropriate performance targets, and develops engineering tools and criteria that can be used by practicing professionals to achieve those targets, such as safety, cost, and post-earthquake functionality.

In addition to conducting research to develop performance-based earthquake engineering technology, PEER actively disseminates its findings to earthquake professionals who are involved in the practice of earthquake engineering, through various mechanisms including workshops, conferences and the PEER Report Series. PEER also conductsEducation and Outreach programs to reach students, policy makers, and others interested in earthquake issues.

PEER was established as a consortium of nine West Coast Universities in 1996 and gained status as a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center in 1997. PEER graduated from NSF Funding in 2008 and is now supported by federal, state, local and regional agencies together with industry partners. Despite this funding shift, PEER continues to grow and remains an active earthquake engineering research center with a wide spectrum of technical activities and projects. PEER now has ten Core Institutions but also actively involves researchers, educators, students, and earthquake professionals from across the US and worldwide.



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Resilient Communities Research Institute (RCRI)
College of Architecture and Environmental Design
California Polytechnic State University

California
USA

Outline
The Resilient Communities Research Institute (RCRI) in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED) is an applied research unit devoted to advancing the application of knowledge and practice that improves the quality and safety of the built environment.

The RCRI is a catalyst for creating effective and productive applied research partnerships. The RCRI is where answers to real world questions are formulated, where partnerships with the civil society yield community benefits, and where the next generation of student leaders become involved in research and solutions based design.

The RCRI assembles faculty, supervised students and professional affiliates to work on projects of faculty interest and community and professional need. The RCRI engages in grant/contract supported applied research, fee supported projects, and community service programs. These programs and projects are focused on the built and ecological environments and the factors that shape them. It sponsors educational workshops and provides a variety of reports and presentations that further the activities on behalf of RCRI members and partners. While the quality and safety of California's built environment is the primary RCRI focus, broader issues of global importance will also be addressed.

We live in a complex and constantly adjusting world. Solutions require collective work and the RCRI uses the collective expertise approach and innovative technology, to answer the questions of how create, maintain and enhance a sustainable built environment.


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Natural Hazards Center
University of Colorado-Boulder

Boulder, Colorado
USA

Outline
Since 1976, the Natural Hazards Center has served as a national and international clearinghouse of knowledge concerning the social science and policy aspects of disasters. The Center collects and shares research and experience related to preparedness for, response to, recovery from, and mitigation of disasters, emphasizing the link between hazards mitigation and sustainability to both producers and users of research and knowledge on extreme events.

A basic goal of the Center is to strengthen communication among researchers and the individuals, organizations, and agencies concerned with reducing damages caused by disasters. More than a quarter century of cultivating discourse among these groups has placed the Natural Hazards Center center-stage in both the national and global hazards communities.

Ongoing support for Center activities is primarily provided by the National Science Foundation and other agencies that support the Center's mission. Recent funding partners include the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U. S. Geological Survey, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Swiss Re has also provided additional funding.

The Center is guided by a National Advisory Committee comprised of representatives of federal agencies that have an interest in hazards as well as stakeholders from academia, state and local government, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. The Center has always promoted an all-hazards approach for dealing with environmental extremes and has been a leading proponent of cooperative partnerships among varying disciplines.



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Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning
Colorado State University

Fort Collins, CO
USA

Outline
The ability to model community resilience comprehensively requires that experts from a number of disciplines work in concert to systematically model how physical, economic and social infrastructure systems within a real community interact and affect recovery efforts. There are currently no models that consider all aspects of how a natural hazard affects a community or that measure its resilience quantitatively.

The Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning is unique in merging the disciplines of Engineering, Social Sciences and Economics to model community resilience comprehensively. Systems that are essential for the recovery and vitality of a community - technological, financial, social and political support, healthcare delivery, education, and public administration - are being integrated in the model, creating a nexus between social and technological infrastructure that will narrow the gap between engineering and social science aspects of resilience planning and will facilitate risk communication among stakeholders and community resilience planners. The work products from the Center will provide a science-based approach to community resilience assessment and, for the first time, will support a business case for enhancing resilience at the community level.

Full validation of the system architecture in IN-CORE will be possible through extensive field studies focused on community resilience and recovery rather than simply infrastructure damage and failure studies. IN-CORE will be able to answer detailed questions on the lingering effects of natural hazards on communities; population dislocation, health and the well being of the residents, impacts across the economic spectrum as well as the fiscal impacts, thereby assessing community resilience and recovery via a suite of resilience metrics.


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Disaster Research Center (DRC)
University of Delaware

Newark
USA

Outline
The Disaster Research Center is committed to advancing the state of the art and the scientifically guided practice in disaster research; educating the next generation of disaster science scholars and informed practitioners in the fields of disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery; and creating, gathering, and disseminating disaster knowledge in a dynamic and responsive way.

Vision of DRC

To be the leader in advancing disaster knowledge, through multi-disciplinary research, that contributes to solving complex social problems related to disasters.

History

The Disaster Research Center was established in 1963 and now, fifty years later, DRC is celebrating its continued success in research, training and service to the disaster community. DRC was established at The Ohio State University in 1963 by Professors E.L. Quarantelli, Russell Dynes and J. Eugene Haas and moved to its current location at the University of Delaware in 1985. The Center was the first in the world devoted to the social scientific study of disasters.

Research Achievements and Challenges:

DRC is proud of the diverse demographic profile amongst its students, including those hailing from Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, South America, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East. Most recently the Center became quite active with the William A. Anderson Fund, a service organization named for gifted researcher and revered DRC alum William A. (Bill) Anderson. Bill had a distinguished career in academia, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation in advancing disaster research, especially interdisciplinary research. The goal of the Fund is to increase the number of historically underrepresented students in disaster science and practice. DRC faculty are actively involved in student mentoring, holding professional development workshops, and other activities in support of the Fund. The Center is excited that the William A. Anderson Fund has joined DRC, with the University of Delaware as the Flagship institution for the Fund's activities, which will also include a number of satellite universities around the country.


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Wind and Hurricane Impact Research Laboratory (WHIRL)
Florida Institute of Technology (FIT)

Florida
USA

Outline
The WHIRL is dedicated to the study of the effects and impact of wind storms, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, and other related meteorological hazards (e.g. flooding, and storm surges) on the natural environment and man-made structures.

The laboratory involves a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and business experts, who take advantage of a geographic location in the heart of Florida Space Coast, to serve the needs of industry, government, and the public in wind hazard mitigation.

Objectives

The three main objectives of the WHIRL are:

  • research on mitigation of losses to life, property, and the environment;
  • education of the public through dissemination of information, and organization of seminars and workshops;
  • promotion of multidisciplinary studies focused on wind engineering, and wind related socio-economic studies and analyses.

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Center for Hazard Mitigation and Community Resilience, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri
USA

Outline
Through transdisciplinary research and education, we are dedicated to mitigating the harm from hazards and building resilient civil infrastructure (e.g., buildings, bridges, roads, railways, and electric power transmission lines) and social infrastructure (e.g., extreme weather warning communication, risk awareness and funding for community resilience). Hazards include, but not limit to, extreme winds and storms (e.g. tornadoes, hurricanes, storm surge and downbursts), floods, earthquakes, extreme heat, wild fire, and man-made hazards.
  • Simulation of natural hazards and their actions on built environment (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes with storm surge, flooding and winter storm)
  • Hazard mitigation and community resilience by conducting collaborative research between Engineering and Social Science, Economy, Psychology and Humanities
  • Improvement of risk awareness of natural hazards and informed decision-making through Virtual Reality Animation and innovative messaging infrastructure
  • Computational Wind Engineering (CFD simulations)
  • Structural health monitoring and condition assessment (Linear/Nonlinear system identification and damage detection under multi-hazard environments)

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Center for Public Health Disaster Science , New York University (NYU)

New York
USA

Outline
The NYU Center for Public Health Disaster Science applies social science and public health theory and methods to the complex challenges posed to community and individual health and well-being by natural, man-made, biological, and technological hazards and disasters.

The Center's Investigators conduct original research on population preparedness, response, and recovery; disaster impacts along the life-course; systems approaches to disaster studies; risk communication and decision-making; and the study of resilience. The Center serves as a resource to affected and at-risk communities; to policy-makers and public officials; to disaster and public health scholars; to the media; and to the public health students and the larger academic community at New York University.

The current research portfolio of the Center includes NIH-funded work on long-term disaster recovery, NSF-funded work on the role of belief systems in vaccine-related decision-making, and CDC-funded work on developing performance measures of public health preparedness, as well as ongoing research on the impacts of COVID on the New York State health workforce.


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Center for Natural Hazards Resilience, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)

Chapel Hill, NC
USA

Outline
The mission of the Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence (CRC) is to conduct research and education to enhance the resilience of the nation's people, infrastructure, economies and the natural environment to the impacts of coastal hazards such as floods and hurricanes, including the effects of future trends.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads the CRC, made possible through a five-year, $20 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, Office of University Programs. The CRC is a consortium of universities, private companies, and government agencies focused on applied research, education and outreach addressing threats to coastal communities due to natural hazards.


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Global Resilience Institute, Northeastern University

Boston, MA
USA

Outline
The research and educational mission of the Global Resilience Institute (GRI) is to develop and deploy practical and innovative tools, applications, and skills that drive social and technical changes which strengthen the capacity of individuals, communities, systems and networks to adapt to an increasingly turbulent world. Our objective is to help advance preparedness at multiple levels to effectively respond to slowly emerging disruptions and sudden disasters, both human-made and naturally-occurring.

GRI accomplishes its mission by facilitating new interdisciplinary research collaborations; working in close partnership with industry, government, communities, and non-governmental organizations; and engaging in external outreach to inform, empower, and scale bottom-up efforts that contribute to individual and collective resilience. GRI in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Ernst-Mach-Institut, has founded the Global Resilience Research Network (GRRN), a membership network of leading universities, institutes, non-profit organizations, and companies engaged in resilience research that informs the development of novel tools and applications. By connecting resilience researchers with practitioners internationally, GRRN helps to ensure that global expertise is leveraged in order to meet the urgent need for devising interdisciplinary solutions that are practical and scalable.

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Advanced Radar Research Center
University of Oklahoma


Oklahoma
USA

Outline
Welcome to the Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma! The ARRC is now more than 10 years old, and in that time has grown from a small group of energetic faculty and students into the largest academic radar program in the nation with well over 100 members. We focus on interdisciplinary education, leveraging a nationally ranked meteorology program and aggressively growing engineering departments.

Our School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for example, has moved up 25 spots in national rankings in just the last year, largely due to a significant growth in radar and applied electromagnetics. The ARRC resides in the state-of-the-art Radar Innovations Laboratory - a 35,000-sqft working laboratory dedicated to innovations in radar technology and science. With the complete support of the university administration, the ARRC is poised to become the go to place for all things radar!


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Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)


New York
USA

Outline

The Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE) is a national and international leader in research, education, outreach, and technology transfer in the areas of infrastructure, transportation, and their links to the environment.


The Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE) is known generally for sustainable freight system and freight transportation planning research, as well as transportation planning, design and operations, modeling and simulation, disaster response logistics, traffic signal system control, and transportation-related behavioral research. The research can be organized into three focus areas: freight research, disaster response, and smart transportation systems.


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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)


New York
USA

Outline

With 7,900 students and more than 100,000 living alumni, Rensselaer is addressing the global challenges facing the 21st century--to change lives, to advance society, and to change the world.

Rensselaer is committed to providing an education that produces graduates known for their intellectual agility, multicultural sophistication, and global view.


At the same time, we continuously are reinventing Rensselaer, and strengthening our people, platforms, programs, and partnerships in order to anticipate the future and enable the brilliant men and women who learn and teach here.

The best way to get a feel for the campus culture, see our state-of-the-art facilities, and meet current students and faculty is to visit campus!


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Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE)
University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA
USA

Outline

The National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) was established in 2004 as the first university-based Center of Excellence (COE) funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Office of University Programs (OUP). CREATE is headquartered at the University of Southern California (USC) where it is jointly housed in the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Sol Price School of Public Policy.


It has research affiliates at several other institutions, both in the U.S. and abroad. The Center contributes university-based research to make the United States more secure by taking a longer-term view of scientific innovations and breakthroughs and by developing the future intellectual leaders in homeland security. CREATE has also been very successful in transitioning and disseminating the results of its research to operational units of DHS and other stakeholders.

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Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC)
University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA
USA

Outline

The Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC) was founded as a Science & Technology Center on February 1, 1991, with joint funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). SCEC graduated from the STC Program in 2002 and has since been funded as a stand-alone center under cooperative agreements with both agencies, and additional support from other agencies, private foundations, and public utilities.

The SCEC community comprises one of the largest research collaborations in geoscience, with more than 1000 active participants on SCEC projects, more than half which participate in SCEC's Annual Collaboration Meeting. SCEC is organized as a consortium of "core institutions", which commit sustained support, and a much larger set of "participating institutions", which join through requests initiated by scientists who wish to participate in SCEC.

SCEC's core research program is investigator-driven and open to anyone who is willing to submit a qualified project plan for peer review. The core resources are allocated through an annual planning process that involves input from the entire SCEC community, as well as counsel from an external Advisory Council and the sponsoring agencies. About two-thirds of the SCEC science budget goes to students and early-career scientists engaged in investigator-initiated research. The roster changes constantly as new people and institutions become involved. The Center's working groups, workshops, field activities, and annual meeting enable scientists to work together over sustained periods, building "deep collaborations" and strong interpersonal networks that promote intellectual exchange and amplify the support for students and early-career scientists. SCEC encourages colleagues with creative ideas about earthquakes to formulate them as hypotheses that can be tested collectively. Researchers with new hypotheses are quickly brought together with experts who have observational insights, modeling skills, and knowledge of statistical testing methods.



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Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC), Texas A&M University (TAMU)

Texas
USA

Outline

The Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC) studies hazards and how they affect the natural and built environments and the people who live there. With a special focus on hazard mitigation and recovery, we generate research at the forefront of hazard planning.

Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC) is an interdisciplinary research effort. Established in 1988, the HRRC was the first research center dedicated to vulnerability reduction and long-term recovery in the nation.

Today, we are one of only two United Nations (UN-OCHA) Collaborative Centers in the world. We serve OCHA as a research and consultant agency with particular emphasis on national disaster plans and their implications for future development.



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Wind Hazard and Infrastructure Performance Center, Texas Tech University

Texas
USA

Outline

WHIP Center will conduct research to support industries and government agencies that are interested in developing new solutions and products to reduce the impact of hurricane, tornado and severe wind events on buildings and infrastructure while educating the next generation of professionals.

The WHIP Center's mission is to pursue research of interest to industry and government agencies to enhance the resiliency of buildings and infrastructure to extreme windstorms such as hurricanes and tornadoes.



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Geologic Hazards Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey

Colorado
USA

Outline

The Geologic Hazards Science Center (GHSC), on the Colorado School of Mines campus, is home to the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), many scientists in the Earthquake Hazards Program and Landslide Hazards Program, as well as the Geomagnetism Program staff.

Created by an act of Congress in 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey has evolved over the decades, matching its talent and knowledge to the progress of science and technology. The USGS is the sole science agency for the Department of the Interior. It is sought out by thousands of partners and customers for its natural science expertise and its vast earth and biological data holdings.



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