The Blessings of Disaster

Are we doomed? As individuals, certainly, eventually, inevitably. But as a species? As a civilization? Perhaps not. Targeting an audience from all disciplines, this presentation will illustrate how our civilization’s future successes and failures in dealing with societal threats can be predicted by observing how we currently cope with and react to natural and technological disasters. When it comes to rare extreme events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, technological accidents, terrorist attacks, pandemics, and even existential threats, it is in our nature to set ourselves up for disasters because the gamble may be worth it. But only maybe…  As a more knowledgeable public is more resilient public, it will be shown, often in counter-intuitive ways, how we can think in better ways about disasters, to strengthen and extend our existence.

Join us for this special webinar, with an international UB professor. Two seperate days and times are offered to meet the needs of most time zones.

About Michel Bruneau
Michel Bruneau is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo, a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Emeritus Director of an NSF-funded Earthquake Engineering Center that focused on enhancing the disaster resilience of communities. 

He has spent more than three decades developing engineering strategies to enhance the resilience of infrastructure. His extensive body of research has been instrumental to the inclusion, in national and international standards, of specifications for multiple innovative structural systems, leading to implementation in countless structures worldwide.  He has received more than 20 prestigious awards for this innovative work, including a lifetime achievement award.  Dr. Bruneau has conducted numerous reconnaissance visits to disaster-stricken areas, is a member of many professional and technical code-writing committees, and has served on many expert peer review panels. He is one of the most cited researchers in structural engineering and earthquake engineering. 

He has authored or co-authored over 550 technical publications, including more than 180 referred journal papers, 250 papers in conference proceedings. Notably, he is the lead author of the 900-pages textbook “Ductile Design of Steel Structures,” used worldwide by structural engineers, and is the lead author of the 2003 seminal paper that has formulated a concept and expression of disaster resilience that today is at the foundation of most research on this topic.