2021 NIST Disaster Resilience Symposium

The Engineering Laboratory at NIST, Gaithersburg, will be hosting its fourth annual symposium as a virtual only event on July 20-21, 2021 featuring the Disaster Resilience Grant Research Program recipients from 2019.

Recipients will present their research and findings from their awards from topics related to Disaster and Failure Studies, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, Wind Impact Reduction, and Reduced Ignition of Building Components in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires Project.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Monica Sanders, Associate Professor, Sociology & Criminal Justice, University of Delaware

Title: Making the Case for Resilience: Why Law and Policy Must Be Informed By Science

Speaker bio: Monica Sanders is Senior Fellow at Tulane University's Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy, where she teaches a course on climate justice. She also has faculty affiliations with the Georgetown University Law Center, where she has a course on disaster law, and the Emergency and Disaster Management Program. Previously, she created and taught a course on disaster law and policy at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. Her research interests include technology and vulnerable groups and legal constructs for just recovery.

Prior to transitioning to academe, Professor Sanders served as the Senior Legal Advisor for International Response and Programs at the American Red Cross, focusing on international disaster response and humanitarian assistance principles. Previously, she was a Senior Committee Counsel for both the House of Representatives and Senate Committees on Homeland Security.

She sits on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's Topics in Applied Research Committee and serves on a number of advisory boards, including the Institute for Building Technology and Safety. Professor Sanders is also a frequent collaborator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on issues of equity and vulnerability with respect to disasters and climate change. Professor Sanders received her degrees from the University of Miami (B.S.), the Catholic University of America (JD), Harvard Law School Project on Negotiation (Cert.) and University College London (LL.M).

David Bonowitz

Title: Functional Recovery: What it Means to Design for Community Resilience

Abstract: The concept of Functional Recovery continues to develop as a new basis for earthquake-resistant design. Designing buildings and infrastructure for limited downtime - or an acceptably quick functional recovery - is not new, but it's getting new attention through state and federal legislation, and showing new feasibility through research, technology, and actual project designs. Most intriguing is the recognition that designing for functional recovery is a necessary tool for achieving community-wide earthquake resilience. And if progress is to be measured at the community level, functional recovery will also be a matter of public policy. The lecture will look at the roles researchers, engineers, and others can play in shaping this thinking into design practice with four sets of questions: definitional, technical, policy, and implementation.

Speaker bio: David Bonowitz is a structural engineer practicing in San Francisco. He was honored as the 2020 Distinguished Lecturer by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He is a Fellow Member of SEAONC and SEAOC, and past chair of the NCSEA Existing Buildings and Resilience committees. Bonowitz was an appointed member of the FEMA-NIST working group on Functional Recovery of the Built Environment and Critical Infrastructure. He is a co-author of "Functional Recovery: A Conceptual Framework," an EERI white paper, and lead author of "Resilience-based Design and the NEHRP Provisions," published in 2020 by FEMA and the National Institute of Building Sciences.