Team Highlights

Afeez Badmus and Elaina Sutley presenting at the Capitol
Sutley's student presenting her research
Sutley and her students

Spring 2026

  • Come find the Disaster HOPE Lab at upcoming conferences:
    • AEI/IRD Conference in San Antonio, March 18-20 2026
      • Designing for Whole-System Functional Recovery, chaired by Dr. Chia-Fu Liu.
      • Best Practices for community resilience data collection, chaired by Dr. Elaina Sutley.
      • Rumana Sharmin, Dr. Madison Graham, Dr. Yongwang Ren, and Dr. Justin Hutchison speak about their work on the ARISE project, moderated by Dr. Elaina Sutley.
    • NHERI Computational Symposium, Berkeley, May 28-29, 2026
      • Plenary* by Dr. Chia-Fu Liu, “From Census Blocks to Buildings: Downscaling Workforce Data for Natural Hazard Impact Modeling.”
      • Afeez Badmus, “Advancing a new paradigm for prioritizing residential buildings in community resilience using testbed simulations.”
      • Saba Faghirnejad, “Assessing Public Tornado Shelter Access Using an Agent-Based Model of Household Sheltering Behavior.”
  • Elaina Sutley honored as Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute.
  • Sajjad Rashid published his first paper, Managed Retreat in the Face of Sea Level Rise: A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Climate Resilience, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105952
  • The first of Pedro Marquez’s research is published. Read more about how manufactured home anchorage systems performed during Hurricane Michael, DOI forthcoming.

Fall 2025

  • WiSH Project collaborator, Thang Dao led our team in a new article on “A General Hysteresis Model for Applications in Structural Dynamics. The paper was selected as the Editor’s Choice, DOI: 10.1061/JSENDH.STENG-14315
  • Dr. Sutley was named the 2025 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists national laureate in physical sciences and engineering.
  • Madison Graham led a newly published paper, Behavioral economic analysis of framing effects on residential safe room demand, DOI: 10.1061/NHREFO/NHENG-2461

Summer 2025

  • Marzi Allahyari participated in the NHERI SPARC workshop to learn more about how to integrate SimCenter and DesignSafe tools into her research on long-term community recovery.
  • Dr. Chia-Fu Liu presented “From Hazards to Recovery: A Network-Based Lens on Community Resilience”, Sajjad Rashid gave a poster presentation, “Analyzing Managed Retreat Needs and Constraints: Insights from Historical MR Programs and FEMA Datasets”, and Saba Faghirnejad gave a poster presentation “Tornado Sheltering Behavior and Access in Urban and Rural Communities”, at the 7th Global Summit of the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes.
  • Madison Graham presented “Safe Room Sheltering in Manufactured Housing Communities: A Behavioral Economic Analysis,” and Saba Faghirnejad was selected as a student volunteer at the Natural Hazards Workshop and Researchers Meeting.
  • Afeez Badmus presented “Evaluating the Lifecycle Economic and Safety Benefits of Tornado-Resistant Construction for Residential Buildings,” and Pedro Marquez presented “Performance of Manufactured Home Tie-Downs after Hurricane Michael” at the 15th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering.

Spring 2025

  • Pedro Marquez received the Outstanding Masters of Science Student Award in the School of Engineering and in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering for his research on advancing the wind performance of manufactured homes.
  • Afeez Badmus was honored with the opportunity to share his research on a lifecycle benefit cost analysis for designing residential buildings to withstand EF2 tornadoes at the State of Kansas Capitol Summit.
  • Rumana Sharmin presented “State of the Art on: Progress and Challenges Equity in Social and Physical Infrastructure” at the ARISE Symposium.
  • Afeez Badmus led a newly published paper, State-of-the-Art Review on Reducing Residential Buildings' Risk to Tornado Hazards, DOI: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1543800.

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