Gavin Smith

Area(s) of Expertise

My research interests lie at the interface between natural hazards risk reduction, disaster recovery and climate change adaptation. I am also interested in the role of land use planning as it relates to climate change adaptation, to include planning for uncertainty and how we better use the existing federal, state and local emergency management policies and programs already in place to reduce risk and inject adaptation measures into post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. Much of my research is applied in nature to include using knowledge to improve deep community engagement among historically marginalized populations. My current research focuses on the state of disaster resilient design education in United States colleges and universities and how we can improve it to include better educating students through interdisciplinary venues like scenario planning, policy visualization and design studios.