Members

Dr. Katsuichiro Goda

N-PI, Tasks 1-3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Goda is an Associate Professor in Earth Sciences and Statistical & Actuarial Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment at Western. His research focuses on catastrophic multi-hazard risk management from economic and societal viewpoints. His research interests are broad and multidisciplinary, spanning seismology, earthquake-tsunami engineering, financial risk analysis, and decision-making under uncertainty. He has extensive expertise in developing natural catastrophe models and applying them to insurance risk quantification and evaluating communities' social vulnerability. Goda brings his expertise in cascading and compounding earthquake-tsunami hazard and risk assessments, which is relevant to Tasks 1 and 2.

Western University

Dr. Reza Najafi

Co-PI, Tasks 1-2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Najafi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Western. Najafi’s research group develops and integrates the state-of-the-art statistical and process-based approaches to understand and predict the spatial and temporal variability of climate and hydrological hazards. This includes characterizing the interactions between hazards and infrastructure systems in space and time to assess the corresponding compounding and cascading effects. His research has been published in high-profile journals, including Nature Climate Change. Dr. Najafi brings his expertise in climate data analytics, concurrent weather and hydrological extremes, and associated risks, which is relevant to Tasks 1 and 2.

Western University

Dr. Haorui Wu

Co-Applicant 

Tasks 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Wu is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Resilience in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie. His community-based interdisciplinary research has explored disaster-driven redevelopment of human and non-human settlements through the lens of environmental and social justice in the global context of climate change and disaster. His innovative socio-ecological protection strategies aim to stimulate the transdisciplinary application of engineering, social, cultural, ecological, economic, and political dimensions into the empowerment of grassroots-led community development initiatives, advance resilience and sustainability at individual, family, and community levels, and promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in community development. Wu will lead Task 3 to co-design community-based participatory action workshops and to collect social data to identify community-specific requirements to support Tasks 1 and 2.

Dalhousie University

Ms. Hilary O’Reilly

Co-PI, Tasks 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Ms. O’Reilly is an emergency program coordinator at the District of Tofino, British Columbia. She brings a diverse skill set and strong background in crisis management and has hands on experience in search and rescue operations. With a degree in health education and counselling, she possesses a deep understanding of human behavior and psychological needs during emergency situations. In Tofino, she organizes annual community tsunami evacuation events for local families, Hikes to High Grounds, and runs community engagement and outreach events. She also actively participates in emergency training sessions and establish local networks that are particularly important for regional emergency situations. She will co-design workshop activities and co-develop pre-disaster preparedness-recovery plans for Tofino (Task 3).

District of Tofino

Dr. Raffaele De Risi

Co-PI, Tasks 2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. De Risi is a Senior Lecturer in Department of Civil Engineering at Bristol. He has internationally recognized expertise in developing probabilistic tools for managing risks caused by extreme loads on the built environment. He has worked on both hydrological and geological risks in developing countries, such as Nepal, Bhutan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, and Malawi. He was also a consultant for the World Bank for the design of green solutions to mitigate natural hazards in Africa. He is currently working on the assessment of the long-term tsunami risk assessment due to sea-level rise and on the short-term risk assessment when a warning is issued following an early-warning alarm. His main contribution to the CIRCLE project is characterizing people’s dynamic interactions with rapidly changing environments through agent-based modeling approaches in the context of hazard warning and evacuation (Task 2). 

Bristol University

Dr. Gianluca Pescaroli

Co-PI, Tasks 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Pescaroli is an Associate Professor at UCL Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction. His research investigates how to build/improve the ability to maintain operations during disruptive events, minimize their impacts, and increase the resilience of the public/private sectors. This includes learning to understand complex challenges, such as cascading risks, critical infrastructure failures, cross-sectoral interdependencies, and compound dynamics. His work is impact-oriented, disseminated in cross-disciplinary academic journals and helps create knowledge exchange initiatives that maximize the utility of his research for end-users. He will contribute to evacuation modeling by incorporating communities’ requirements (Task 2) and conducting resilience stress testing for the target communities (Task 3).

University College London (UCL)

Dr. Vivian Elena

Co-PI, Tasks 1-2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Elena is a Professor in the Faculty of Civil Engineering and is a Director of Center of Studies for Construction and Tropical Architecture at CUJAE. Her research is related to wind action on structures and infrastructure networks and to wind disaster prevention. She will conduct the wind hazard and risk modeling of Cuban communities (Tasks 1 and 2) and contribute to the CIRCLE project through her leadership and management of the CUJAE team. From the institutional perspective, Western’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department and CUJAE have established international collaboration and student exchanges, which are funded through the Queen Elizabeth II Scholarships program, in which Dr. Elena, Dr. Najafi, and Dr. Goda participate. 

Technological University of Havanna

Dr. Patricia Martín Rodríguez

Co-PI, Tasks 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Martín Rodriguez was the Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering at CUJAE for six years. Her expertise lies in structural dynamics of wind-affected structures. As a Young Associate at the Cuban Science Academy, she participates in several projects related to reducing the vulnerability of communities and climate change. She belongs to the Technical Advisory Committee at the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources. She will act as a facilitator working with the communities (Task 3) in relation to the technical aspects of the project (Tasks 1 and 2).

Technological University of Havanna

Dr. Mohammad Farid

Co-PI, Tasks 1-2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Farid is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Civil & Environmental Engineering and is a Head of Center for Coastal and Marine Development at ITB. His research interests are focused on water resources and coastal engineering, including risk analysis and disaster mitigation. He has been involved in various research projects related to flood and tsunami at national as well as international level. Dr. Farid leads a JICA-funded Building Sustainable System for Resilience and Innovation in Coastal Community (BRICC) project, in collaboration with Dr. Mori (Collaborator) from Kyoto University. He will contribute to Tasks 1 and 2 related to risk analysis and assessment using multi-hazard scenarios for several types of perils.

Bandung Institute of Technology

Dr. Adi Prasetyo

Co-Applicant, Tasks 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Prasetyo is a Head of Coastal Engineering Division under the Ministry of Public Works and Housing [PUPR]. He is an expert in hydraulics and coastal engineering. He has been involved in many projects in collaboration with academic institutions and governmental agencies to enhance the use of science, technology, and innovation for sustainable coastal and water resource management in Indonesia. His expertise includes assessing coastal hazards, conducting coastal modeling studies, and designing sustainable coastal protection structures. He enables access to existing building datasets (Task 2) and brings unique connections to working with local communities in Indonesia (Task 3).

Ministry of Public Works and Housing

Mr. Paul Kovacs

Task 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Mr. Kovacs from the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) is an economist and will collaborate with the CIRCLE team in developing the pre-disaster preparedness-recovery plans for Tofino (Task 3). ICLR is a Western’s research institute and is a world-class center of excellence for multidisciplinary disaster prevention research and communication. He is a Canada’s leading authority on insurance and climate change and has been a contributing author to numerous international and Canadian reports on reducing the risk of loss from earthquakes, flood, and severe wind. Dr. Goda and Dr. Najafi have worked closely with Mr. Kovacs on earthquake, flood, and hail hazards.

Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)

Dr. Alex J. Cannon

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Cannon is a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change, Canada. His research is devoted to climate scenario development, understanding of climate extremes, and environmental data science. His expertise provides credible information on past, present, and future climate states for Canadian communities to support climate change adaptation and mitigation actions. Cannon has collaborated with Dr. Najafi on creating Canadian climate model datasets and will contribute to the climate modeling for Tofino (Task 1).

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Dr. Nobuhito Mori

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Mori is a Professor and Vice-Director of Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University. Mori is a long-term collaborator of Dr. Goda and Dr. De Risi on tsunami hazard and risk assessments in Japan. He leads the JICA-funded BRICC project, together with Dr. Farid and Dr. Prasetyo. Dr. Mori will contribute to the climate and storm modeling for Indonesia and will provide expertise on the prevention of erosion processes of the Indonesian coast by implementing nature-based mitigation measures (Task 1).

Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) at Kyoto University

Dr. Wahyu Setyo Kuntoro

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Kuntoro is a Research Assistant at the Bandung Institute of Technology and investigates impacts of climate change and climate variability on compound flooding in coastal areas (Task 1).

Dr. Alamsyah Kurniawan

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Kurniawan is an academic researcher from Bandung Institute of Technology and an expert in coastal sediment transport. He also investigates human-driven factors, such as land use and land cover change (Task 1).

Dr. Mohammad Bagus Adityawan

Task 2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Adityawan is an academic researcher from Bandung Institute of Technology. His research interest is focused on coastal hazard and risk assessments related to infrastructure resilience, including early warning development for mitigation plan (Task 2).

Dr. Ikha Magdalena

Task 2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Magdalena is an academic researcher from Bandung Institute of Technology and conducts numerical and mathematical modeling to simulate effect of green infrastructure on wave attenuation in coastal areas (Task 2).

Mr. Suryawan Nadi

Task 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Mr. Nadi is a program coordinator of IDEP Selaras Alam Foundation, which is a non-governmental organization in Bali, Indonesia. The IDEP Selaras Alam Foundation promotes the strengthening of community resilience, the sovereignty of local natural resources, and the increasing of community capacity. Mr. Nadi is a main contact person for Gianyar on Bali Island, which is the primary collaborating community in Indonesia (Task 3).

Dr. Luis Córdova

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Cordoba is a Professor at Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana and an expert in coastal and maritime engineering and environmental engineering and investigates the effects on the coastal environment of extreme hydrometeorological events through the application of physical and numerical modeling (Task 1).

Dr. Emilio Escartín

Task 1

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Escartin is a Professor at Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana and a specialist in geophysics and seismology (Task 1).

Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana

Dr. Ingrid Fernández

Task 2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Fernandez is an Assistant Professor at Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana and her research area is statistical analysis of extreme winds and risk and vulnerability assessments of civil infrastructures (Task 2).

Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana

Dr. Dayra Gelabert

Task 2

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Gelabert is an Assistant Professor at Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana and an expert in sustainable architecture and habitat adaptation to climate changes of vulnerable communities (Task 2).

Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana

Dr. Claudia Caballero

Task 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Dr. Caballero is a Professor at the University of Havana and her research focuses on the psychosocial factors that enhance community development and community needs and facilitates decision-making processes at the community level in favor of individual and collective well-being (Task 3).

University of Havana

Ms. Acosta Lorenzo

Task 3

Bio/ Synopsis: Ms. Acosta Lorenzo is a principal specialist of the provincial delegation of Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA). She has been working with coastal communities in Cuba that are vulnerable to hurricanes and other hazards and will bring local community connections in Playa Cajio, which is the primary collaborating community in Cuba (Task 3).

Cuba Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA)