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Vanderbilt Climate Change Initiative

Risk & Resilience

In this age of emerging threats and uncertainties, communities and organizations alike are seeking the ability to maintain desired performance in response to expected/unexpected challenges over time. Vanderbilt researchers excel in finding in helping organizations with risk and resilience assessment, management and communication to foster informed and intelligent decision-making. Our ultimate goal is helping to find the “sweet spot” to meet stakeholder risk and resilience needs in a seamless fashion, resulting in an efficient, safe, secure and sustainable environment.

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Our Focus

Critical systems that support our social, economic and environmental well-being are subject to risks of disruptive events, resulting from natural and manmade hazards. These systems must be able to not only withstand such events, but also recover from them within a desired duration. This past year was the costliest year on record for extreme weather disaster impacts in the United States, with more than $300 billion of damage. These figures are expected to increase due to climate change, population growth, and continued infrastructure development in exposed areas.

Current and Recent Research in Risk and Resilience:

  • Innovative methods for using social media to improve disaster response.
  • Assessing the social, ecological and economic impacts of a Rockefeller 100 Resilient City flood-home “buy-back” program.
  • Development of an integrated community resilience assessment framework
  • Flood scenario impact assessment to evaluate/mitigate community resilience vulnerability.
  • Facilitating stakeholder engagement to support risk-informed decision-making.
  • Analysis of underrepresented and at-risk population exposure to disaster scenarios.
  • Employing economic analysis to assess and prioritize risk mitigation investment.
  • Formulation of a “library” of community and infrastructure resilience indicators
  • Provision of risk heat maps &, dashboards to improve stakeholder communication
  • Development of web-based tools to support enterprise risk management.