Rethinking housing resilience: Lessons from post-disaster research and a way forward

Time

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (GMT-7)

Webinar description

Safe and secure housing is vital for healthy, thriving communities due to its influence on health, education, income, and overall well-being. However, policy choices, market trends, and human behaviors often overlook the need for resilient housing. As a result, the housing inventory in the United States is shrinking, aging, and increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven hazards like hurricanes and floods. This urgent situation calls for a fundamental shift in housing policy.

In this presentation, the director of the Structural Engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network will share insights from years of post-disaster observations, exploring the resiliency of homes to climate hazards. Attendees will learn about the policy, regulatory, and market forces shaping housing resilience and how society can shift focus from disaster response to proactive risk mitigation amid compounding threats.

Speaker

Tracy Kijewski-Correa, University of Notre Dame

Tracy Kijewski-Correa is the William J. Pulte Director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. As a professor of Civil Engineering and Global Affairs, her research seeks to enhance the resilience and sustainability of hazard-exposed communities. She is the inaugural director of the Structural Extreme Event Reconnaissance (StEER) and recently served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s consensus study on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities.