Conveners: Christine Goulet (USC), Yousef Bozorgnia (UCLA), Marco Tedesco (Columbia University), and Ellen Rathje (UT Austin).
Dates: June 7-8 & 11, 2021
Location: Online via Zoom

SUMMARY: People across the country are facing  increased extreme, stressing events (“shocks”) such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and pandemics. Although specific shocks may be more regional in nature, the whole nation faces the possibility of extreme events disrupting normal societal functions. Yet, resilience and adaptation tools that can reduce the consequences of such shocks are still not implemented and their architecture is not yet fully developed. This situation is partially due to the lack of bridges between the different communities involved and the socio-cultural-economical barriers associated with the absence of interdisciplinary applied science on these issues.

The NSF Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel) program combines convergence research and innovative approaches to address such national-scale, high-impact societal challenges. The CoAcc program aims to support projects within defined Tracks that can have a direct impact within 3-5 years of implementation. Potential C-Accel Track topics are developed through workshops that gather broad community input.  Our C-Accel funded workshop topic is on Societal Shock Resilience. It will bring together a multi-hazard, multi-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary community to identify the interactions across a Societal Shock Resilience Framework (see image at right, and with caption here) that will most benefit from the convergence approach and lead to actionable projects that “connect the silos” of the 6 elements: shock, exposure, vulnerability, response, recovery, mitigation.

Featured Presenters listed here. 

Participants invited to register: we invite registrants that span expertises such as hazard assessment (e.g., geoscience, climate science); ecologic, biological, and environmental science; engineering disciplines (civil, mechanical, electrical); architecture; mathematics and statistics modeling; computer science and software engineering, data science; social sciences (communication, education, urban planning, public policy, disaster management, public health, emergency response, and network analysis); economics and financial stress modeling. Experts from these disciplines also span a wide range of sectors including academia, government at all levels, and the private sector (for- and not-for-profit). In addition, stakeholders and communities depend on various entities for their resilience, which in turn span several sectors and at a minimum involve multiple industries, the natural and built environments, energy and storage facilities, distributed infrastructure such as transportation and utilities, and communication systems. We are looking for stakeholders across these categories as well.

THE WORKSHOP OBJECTIVE is to refine the C-Accel topic by gathering and synthesizing input from a broad community of stakeholders, and inform NSF’s solicitation on a possible new Track. This will be achieved through the following workshop goals:

• G1. Define the problems and terminology. Establish clear definitions of hazard, risk and resilience that are applicable at the national scale and through disciplines and sectors to improve communication among the various stakeholders.
• G2. Develop collaborations and partnerships. Foster collaboration and “system think” across the wide range of participants involved in different aspects of the societal shock resilience framework.
• G3. Identify target needs and communities. Identify and prioritize specific problems and user communities that future C-Accel projects should address. 
• G4. Define convergence and partnership requirements. Define the requirements for cross-disciplines and trans-discipline convergence that involves the appropriate sectors and stakeholders for future C-Accel projects. 

Expected outcomes. The goal of the workshop is to bring people from most of the hazards and disciplines listed above to find what parts of the interaction across the societal shock resilience framework need convergence the most. It’s not about a specific hazard, it’s about how we get the moving parts connecting with each other to develop convergence and actionable projects. In other words, this workshop is about defining how to “connect the silos” of the six elements (shock, exposure, vulnerability, response, recovery, mitigation) that span multi- and trans-disciplinary interactions to deliver actionable projects. Outcomes of the workshop will likely include an updated framework figure that takes into account the findings from the interactions (defining the critical connections and convergence mechanisms), and will definitely define priorities for the track. For example, it could be that the track should prioritize projects that will develop tools to fast-track the engineering-to-policy implementation, or projects that expand education curricula around the framework, or projects that integrate spatially distributed hazards with specific fragilities of regional distributed infrastructure. These are only examples, and we expect the workshop will help define what is ripe for convergence and could provide tangible impacts within 3-to-5 years of the C-Accel program.

AGENDA (JUNE 7-8 & 11, 2021)

The workshop will include 1) large plenary sessions ; 2) parallel break-out sessions focused on current convergence challenges and opportunities; and 3) focus-group collaborative activities to synthesize the input. The workshop is organized across 3 days, each spanning the 9 AM to 1 PM Pacific (12 PM to 4  PM Eastern) time frame. June 7 and 8 will begin with plenary sessions featuring broad visionary talks and large group discussions followed by break-out sessions spanning the elements of the Societal Shock Framework. June 11 will consist of focus-group activities in virtual rooms that will be filled through an application process at registration time.

Presentation videos may be viewed on YouTube below. PLEASE NOTE: Videos are the author’s property. They may contain unpublished or preliminary information and should only be used while viewing the talk. Only the presentations for which SCEC has received permission to post publicly are included below.

MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2021
All times Pacific (UTC -7)

TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2021
All times Pacific (UTC -7)

FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2021 (Limited attendance, by invitation)
All times Pacific (UTC -7)

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Featured Presenters

	Rachel Adams is a research associate at the Natural Hazards Center and the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE initiative. Her research interests include building community resilience, reducing social vulnerability to disasters, and translating evidence-based practices in emergency preparedness and response. She earned her PhD in community health sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health and her Master of Public Health degree in epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of Southern California.
	Dr. Ilkay Altintas, a research scientist at the University of California San Diego, is the Chief Data Science Officer of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Founding Fellow of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, and the Founding Director of the WIFIRE Lab. The WIFIRE Lab focuses on AI methods for all-hazards knowledge CI and has achieved significant success in managing wildfires.
	Lindsey Anderson serves as Deputy Director, Operational Coordination Division in FEMA’s Field Operations Directorate where she oversees FEMA’s field leadership programs. Prior to this role, Ms. Anderson was the Director, Strategy and Policy Division in FEMA’s Office of Policy and Program Analysis. She has also served as Interim Director of the Center for Disaster Management at the University of Pittsburgh.
	Christopher Ansell is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on understanding how organizations, institutions and communities can engage effectively in democratic governance in the face of conflict, uncertainty, and complexity. He is the co-author of the recently published Public Governance as Co-creation: A Strategy for Revitalizing the Public Sector and Rejuvenating Democracy.
	Lucy Arendt, Ph.D. is a Professor of Management in the Donald J. Schneider School of Business and Economics at St. Norbert College. She received her Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her scholarship focuses on how leaders perceive and address risks associated with disasters and how organizations and communities engage in long-term recovery and resilience-building.
	Robin A. Barnes, MPA, is an economic recovery and resilience expert with 35 years’ experience helping communities, small businesses, and nonprofits recover from – and prepare for – natural, manmade, economic, and climate-based disasters. Also, she has worked closely with and within organizations on strategy, performance measurement & management, resource development, and nonprofit management.
	Michael Berkowitz is a Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. Previously he joined the Rockefeller Foundation in August 2013 to shape and oversee the creation of 100 Resilient Cities (100RC). He served as the 100RC President from 2013 to 2019.
	David Bonowitz is a structural engineer in San Francisco. He advises cities and government agencies on earthquake risk reduction and resilience. Bonowitz is EERI’s 2020 Distinguished Lecturer, past chair of the NCSEA Existing Buildings and Resilience committees, and an appointed member of the FEMA-NIST working group on Functional Recovery of the Built Environment and Critical Infrastructure.
	Brittany Brand, Ph.D., is the Director for the Boise State Hazard and Climate Resilience Institute (HCRI). The HCRI fosters interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration to build connected, thriving, resilient communities. We provide a platform to connect researchers, students, and community partners to collaboratively address community resilience research and practical needs, effectively translating research to practice.
	Cindy Bruyere is the Director of NCAR’s Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes (C3WE). Her current research activities include understanding and predicting the impact of climate variability and change on extreme weather events. She focuses explicitly on the impact these extreme events have on industry and how science can help industry become more resilient.
	Lara Campbell is a Program Director for the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program which she helped launch in 2019. Lara’s expertise is in managing large, collaborative, primarily international research efforts including in NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering and previously as Director of the nonprofit CUBRC Center for International Science and Technology Advancement. Her PhD is in chemistry.
	Stephanie Chang is a professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES). She has published extensively on the socio-economic impact of natural disasters, modeling disaster losses, urban risk dynamics, critical infrastructure systems and interdependencies, economic evaluation of disaster mitigations, and disaster recovery.
	Mary Comerio is an internationally recognized expert on housing, disaster resilience and recovery. She has been on the faculty at U. C. Berkeley for over 40 years. Her research includes seismic rehabilitation, post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, loss modeling and resilience-based design.  She is the author of Disaster Hits Home: New Policy for Urban Housing Recovery, and hundreds of other books, reports, and scientific papers.
	Ofodike A. Ezekoye is the WR Woolrich Professor of Engineering at University of Texas-Austin and Director of the UT Fire Research Group. His group investigates wildfire spread, community-scale fire data analysis, compartment fire evolution, fire forensics analysis, firefighter ventilation tactics, fireground acoustics, and lithium-ion battery hazards. His work has been recognized with awards from ASME, SFPE, NFPA, and NSF.
	Tom Gibbs is currently responsible for strategy and implementation of SW development programs for NVIDIA’s HPC Business Unit. The programs focus on solutions that utilize the convergence of advanced classical simulation methods with AI, experimental data acquisition, real-time control and most recently quantum computing systems. Most recently his focus has been on joint research targeted at HPC for Covid which resulted in the Gordon Bell for Covid Award at SC20.
	Jenniffer Marie Santos-Hernández is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Social Research at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. She currently serves as co-lead for the city of San Juan in the NSF Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (NSF UREx) and as the lead of the Helping Affected Communities Engage in Resilience (HACER) initiative.
	Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Community Engagement Coordinator for the Boise State Hazard and Climate Resilience Institute (HCRI). She focuses on how scientists communicate effectively with the public, specifically on topics related to natural disasters, hazards, and risk. Carson also develops new and interactive methods for translating technical-scientific content into user-friendly formats.
	Richard G. Little is a Visiting Research Scholar in disaster mitigation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Editor of Public Works Management & Policy. He was Director of the Keston Institute for Infrastructure at the University of Southern California (2004-2012) and Director of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council (1995-2004).
	Forrest Masters, Ph.D. studies tropical cyclone wind and wind-driven rain effects on the built environment through field reconnaissance in landfalling hurricanes, destructive testing, and boundary layer wind tunnel modeling. At the University of Florida, he is a Professor of Civil and Coastal Engineering and serves as Associate Dean for Research in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
	Amy McGovern, Ph.D. is a professor in the School of Computer Science and School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.  She is also the director of the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography.  Her research focuses on developing trustworthy AI/ML methods with a focus on severe weather.
	Scott Miles, Ph.D is an expert on disaster risk reduction, community resilience, disaster recovery, simulation modeling, and human centered design. He is a senior research scientist in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington. He is Director of the Disaster Science as Design (DisSci:gn) Lab.
	Judith Mitrani-Reiser, Ph.D. is the Associate Chief of the Materials and Structural Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She oversees the Disaster and Failure Studies Program, National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. She is the Vice President of EERI, on the Executive Committee of CROSS-US, and a member of ASCE.
	Robert Muir-Wood. Natural Sciences MA & Earth Sciences PhD from Cambridge University. Chief Research Officer, RMS since 2003. IPCC Lead Author 4th Assessment Report and Special Report on Extremes. Chair of the OECD High Level Advisory Board on Large Catastrophes. Visiting Professor: Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction UCL. Author of 2016 Book: ‘The Cure for Catastrophe: how we can stop manufacturing natural disasters’.
	Tina Nabatchi is the Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration and the Director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. An elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Nabatchi studies collaborative governance, public participation, and conflict resolution in public administration.
	Sissy Nikolaou, Ph.D. leads the Earthquake Engineering Group of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her group develops, advances, and deploys measurement science to reduce seismic risks to the built environment, and supports the National Construction Safety Team and National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Prior to joining NIST, she was a consulting engineer for 25 years with global projects involving critical facilities, lifelines, and high-rise buildings.
	Branda Nowell is a professor in the department of public administration at North Carolina State University specializing in the design and governance of public networks.  She is the director of the Firechasers research initiative (firechasers.ncsu.edu).  Since 2008, this team has worked in collaboration with federal, state, and local jurisdictions on research aimed at improving inter-agency coordination and communication during large scale wildfire events.
	Robert B. Olshansky is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning, UIUC. He has studied recovery planning after numerous major disasters around the world, including the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Haiti. Now based in California, his current research focuses on community relocation in response to natural hazards, involving dozens of cases in North America and Asia.
	Gavin Schmidt is a climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). He is the Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model. His technical interests include understanding past, present and future climate and the impacts of multiple drivers of climate change, including solar irradiance, atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, and greenhouse gases.
	Carrie Speranza is the Deputy Director for the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, where she manages internal operations of the organization. Carrie is also a member of FEMA’s National Advisory Council. She’s deployed for seven hurricane response efforts, and has worked as Executive Command Staff for multiple events: civil unrest, extreme weather, and over two dozen National Special Security Events.
	Shannon Van Zandt, Ph.D., AICP, is Professor and Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. Her research focused on housing recovery and social vulnerability to disasters, emphasizing the way that urban development patterns characterized by racial segregation and concentrated poverty expose vulnerable populations to increased risk and longer paths to recovery.
	David Wald is a Seismologist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). His responsibilities include real time information systems including “ShakeMap” and the citizen-science “Did You Feel it?” system.  His scientific interests include the earthquake rupture processes, ground motion analysis and site effects, and earthquake effects (landslides, liquefaction, shaking-based losses). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Earthquake Spectra.
	Mr. Walton has founded and managed private, public and non-profit enterprises. His ventures have primarily focused on developing networked, interactive systems for healthcare, public safety, defense, intelligence and entertainment. As chairman of the EIC, he worked with the Homeland Security Agency and other international standards bodies to promote the use of the Common Alerting Protocol for global emergency communications.
	Chauncia Willis is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management (I-DIEM). Ms. Willis is certified as an Emergency Manager, Professional Coach, and Cultural Diversity Professional with over 20 years of experience in disaster equity. She is the author of a new book called, “Stretching: The Race towards Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in America.”

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Organizers and Moderators

Executive Committee

	Christine Goulet, Ph.D. is the SCEC Executive Director for Applied Science at the University of Southern California. She serves as the science lead and technical integrator for large-scale collaborative projects in earthquake hazard and risk. Her research interests are in the field of geotechnical earthquake engineering and applied seismology in the context of performance-based design.
	Yousef Bozorgnia is a professor of the UCLA Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and Faculty Director of the Natural Hazards Risk and Resiliency Research Center (NHR3). Dr. Bozorgnia’s expertise includes multidisciplinary aspects of earthquake science and engineering. In 2019, he was awarded the Bruce Bolt Medal for his extensive contributions to seismic hazard analysis and earthquake engineering.
	Ellen M. Rathje, Ph.D. is the Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas.  Her main research interests include geotechnical hazards associated with earthquakes and other natural hazards, and the use of cyberinfrastructure to evaluate natural hazards.  She is the Principal Investigator for the NSF-funded DesignSafe-ci.org cyberinfrastructure for natural hazards.
	Marco Tedesco is a Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Adjunct Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Dr. Tedesco’s research focuses on the dynamics of seasonal snowpack, ice sheet surface properties, high latitude fieldwork, global climate change and its implications on the economy and real estate.

Planning Committee 

	Domniki Asimaki is a Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech. Her research focuses on the understanding and simulation of 3D site effects and soil-structure interaction. She has served on the ASCE GeoInstitute Board of Governors since 2018; and is an associate editor for the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, for Earthquake Spectra, and for the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering.
	Yehuda Ben-Zion is the Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and Professor of Earth Sciences at USC. His research is focused on physics of earthquakes and faults using theory, simulations and observations. He published over 275 papers and edited eight books. Ben-Zion is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in Geophysics.
	Mark Benthien is Director for Communication, Education and Outreach for the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California.  In this role he serves as Executive Director of the Earthquake Country Alliance, and Global Coordinator of Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills.  Mark received his B.S. in Geophysics from UCLA and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from USC.
	John Bwarie, Stratiscope’s CEO, has more than two decades experience engaging communities, leading conversations, and fostering resilience. John co-created the ShakeOut and Clean Air Day and has worked for the Los Angeles Mayor and City Council. He advises leaders in academia, transportation, elected office, and other high visibility individuals. John teaches university-level community engagement and leads strategic facilitation for government, nonprofit, and corporate entities.
	Jean Carlson, Ph.D. is a Professor of Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her research investigates robustness, tradeoffs, and feedback in complex, highly connected systems, and develops computational multiscale models to capture important small- scale interactions and predict large-scale behavior. Applications include dynamics of earthquake faults, wildfire propagation and disaster response, infectious disease, neuroscience, and collective decision making.
	Divya Chandrasekhar is an Associate Professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah with expertise in community recovery from disasters. Her research has examined post-disaster community participation and capacity building, networking and coordination among recovery institutions, and disaster recovery policy in South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the U.S.
	Louise K. Comfort is Professor and former Director, Center for Disaster Management, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. She is affiliated faculty with the Policy Lab, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, University of California, Berkeley. She studies the dynamics of decision making in response to urgent events: earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfire, COVID-19.
	Yifeng Cui, Ph.D. is a computational scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, with educational backgrounds in meteorology and hydrology. His research interests are in high performance computing and extreme-scale end-to-end simulations. Cui co-developed the ACM Gordon Bell winning earthquake modeling AWP-ODC code, and was the receipt of the NVIDIA Global Impact Award in 2015.
	Craig A. Davis, Ph.D., PE, GE is a professional consultant on geotechnical, earthquake, and lifeline infrastructure system resilience engineering. In his three-decade long career at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, he worked as the Chief Resilience Officer, Seismic Manager, and Geotechnical Engineering Manager. He has developed infrastructure resilience frameworks and programs which have been implemented into practice.
	Donovan Finn, PhD is Assistant Professor of Environmental Design, Policy and Planning in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. He is a member of the NCAR Early Career Faculty Innovators program studying the integration of climate science into local urban planning. His research focuses on community sustainability and resilience, long-term disaster recovery and environmental justice.
	Dr. Ganapati is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration and the Director of the Laboratory for Social Science Research, International Hurricane Research Center, Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University. She has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI of several National Science Foundation projects related to disaster recovery and resilience in the U.S., Nepal and Haiti.
	Sara Hamideh is an assistant professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences’ Sustainability Division at Stony Brook University. Her research interests are post-disaster housing recovery, community resilience planning and investments, public participation in recovery, and vulnerable populations in disasters. She is a Principal Investigator with the Center of Excellence for Community Resilience at Colorado State University funded by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
	Richard Loft, Ph.D. is the Director of the Technology Development Division in the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). In this capacity, he oversees CISL’s R&D efforts in areas such as technology tracking, algorithmic research, and the development of useful computational tools and services.
	Steven McCabe is a research structural engineer and is the Director of the National Earthquake Hazards Program (NEHRP), a statutory program initiated by Congress in 1977, consisting of FEMA, USGS, NSF and NIST, the lead agency. He works with the NEHRP agencies, other federal, state and public stakeholders and design practitioners to improve the earthquake performance of buildings and lifelines.
	Adam Rose, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Price School of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at USC. He was previously a faculty affiliate of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER). His major interests are modeling and measuring economic consequences of and resilience to disasters.
	Sharon Sandow is Director for Strategic Partnerships of the Communication, Education and Outreach team at SCEC. Previously, she served as Los Angeles City Council Chief of Staff for two City Councilmembers, and Regional Director of Government and Community Relations at the American Red Cross. Currently, she serves as Deputy Director of Earthquake Country Alliance.
	Charles Scawthorn is internationally recognized as an authority for the analysis and mitigation of natural and technological hazards and is a Principal of SPA Risk LLC and a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley.  He’s retired from Professor of Infrastructure Risk Management from Kyoto University (Japan) and has been Visiting Professor at Stanford, Beijing Normal and Waseda (Tokyo) Universities.
	Ellis Stanley is Managing Partner, Ellis Stanley Partners, LLC. Former General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Department. Graduate of UNC at Chapel Hill. the Executive Leadership Program from the Post Naval Graduate School and John F. Kennedy School of Government’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. Chairman Emeritus the Global Board of the International Association of Emergency Managers.
	Jonathan P. Stewart is a Professor in the Samueli Engineering School at UCLA. His expertise is in geotechnical earthquake engineering and engineering seismology. He is a member of the EERI Board of Directors, UC Seismic Advisory Board, Steering Committee for the USGS National Seismic Hazards Mapping Program, Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction (NIST), and the SCEC Planning Committee.
	Ertugrul Taciroglu is a professor and chair at the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at UCLA. His research activities reside in the field of regional natural hazard risk and resilience assessment, primarily from structural and geotechnical engineering perspectives. He utilizes computer vision and machine learning techniques to generate details asset model inventories and high-performance computing for granular damage and loss assessment.
	Patxi Uriz, Ph.D. is a Vulnerability Modeler at RMS, specializing in wildfire ember transport modeling and vulnerability of structures subjected to radiant heat, direct flame contact, embers, and modeling the urban conflagration  phenomena. Dr Uriz obtained his Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied earthquake resistant design of steel structures and has taught graduate courses at Stanford University.
	Joshua West, Ph.D. is a Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California he works on understanding erosional and hydrological processes at Earth’s surface including landslides and floods. Over the past decade, he has worked on catastrophic events and their impact on landscapes, such as the tens of thousands of landslides triggered by single large earthquakes and storms.
	Farzin Zareian, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of California – Irvine where his teaching and research interest is in Performance Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE). His research efforts have been focused on the development of new methodologies for enhancement of PBEE, implementation of PBEE for assessment of structures, and the development of tools for implementation of PBEE by engineering practice.

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