Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, on Saturday, Jan 31 the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture is hosting a daylong public workshop, “Resilience in the 21st Century,” featuring presentations by some of the nation’s leading hazards researchers.
The workshop will be held 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. in Preston Geren Auditorium, located in Building B of the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus. The event is free and open to anyone interested in learning more about HRRC activities. In addition to lectures, the event will include a poster exhibit featuring student research and lunch.
“Twenty years ago the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center started as an idea,” said Sam Brody, the center’s acting director. “Today, we have eight core faculty, two research units, approximately $4.5 million in external funding, and are supporting over 25 students in our labs.”
Since its inception, the center’s research has contributed to new insights about resilience, or the capacity to avoid, absorb or recover from disaster or catastrophe, through its research of conditions before, during and after such events.
“When natural hazards were considered acts of God it was only natural to respond to hazard losses with reactive measures, but now that the human role in natural hazards is illuminated, resilience is one of the most important mechanisms available to proactively promote community well being before, during and after disaster strikes,” said Brody.
Invited speakers at the workshop will submit their papers for peer review to the International Journal of Mass Emergencies for a special resiliency and vulnerability issue commemorating the center’s anniversary.
The workshop will be split into four sessions:
9 a.m. — Land Use Resilience
10:45 a.m. — Resilience through Planning, Policy and Mitigation
1:30 p.m. — Resilience through Engaging Communities
3:15 p.m. — Resilience and Vulnerabilities
At 5 p.m., Dennis Wenger, the founding director of the HRRC, will wrap up the day’s lectures. Wenger and scheduled workshop speaker Phil Berke of the University of North Carolina, were faculty members in the college’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning when the center was founded in 1989.
During his nine-year tenure as director, Wenger expanded the center’s activities to include research on California’s Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes and the evacuation of the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing. He is now at the National Science Foundation, where he is directing its Infrastructure Systems Management and Hazard Response Program and its Information Technology and Infrastructures System Program.
Two of the session speakers will be visiting from the University of North Carolina — Berke, professor of city and regional planning and deputy director of UNC’s Institute for the Environment, and Ray Burby, professor emeritus at UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning.
Also speaking at the anniversary event are Steve French, professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech University, and Betty Morrow, professor emeritus at Florida International University, who has extensively researched people’s responses to hurricanes.
HRRC faculty fellows presenting their research at the workshop include Sherry Bame, Ming-Han Li, George Rogers, Jesse Saginor, Shannon Van Zandt and Yu Xiao.
Current HRRC research subjects include coastal vulnerability to natural hazards, socioeconomic impacts of earthquakes, and storm recovery planning in National Park Service coastal properties.
“I believe that no other hazard center in the nation can match the critical mass of gifted scholars, insightful researchers, and committed teachers that roam the halls of the HRRC,” said Wenger, the center's founder and one of the workshop’s speakers.
A PFD detailing current HRRC research projects is available online.
For more information about the HRRC’s 20th anniversary workshop, “Resilience in the 21st Century,” contact Clarissa Garcia at 979.845.7813.
The center’s home page on the Internet is at http://archone.tamu.edu/hrrc.
