Disaster Science

UN Sustainable Development Goal 11.5 states, “By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations.” Doing so requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates elements of engineering, social sciences, and the geosciences. 

In REALM Lab, we work with risk scientists as well as humanitarian and systems engineers to develop approaches that

(1) Quantify hazard, exposure, and vulnerability on scales relevant to regional infrastructure networks (Daglish et al., 2025)

(2) Test existing approaches to risk mitigation such as avoidance (Bloom et al., 2023)

(3) Conduct analyses that document the impacts of historical events and possible solutions for future ones (Stahl et al., 2017; Stahl et al., 2024; McEwan et al., 2025)

Current REALM lab work in this space is focused on fault displacement hazard and its secondary effects of landslides and floods.