David Johnson
Please join me in congratulating David Johnson, assistant professor with joint appointments in political science and industrial engineering, for his participation on the Network Coordination Office (NCO) for the NSF Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) project. He is the NCO's leader for social science research and policy outreach.
The $4.1 million project is intended to coordinate a national initiative aimed at minimizing damage from natural hazards to physical civil infrastructure. The NHERI team is focused on earthquakes, windstorms and associated hazards, like coastal storm surge and inundation. The first step for the Purdue-based NCO is to lead the community and other NHERI awardees into developing NHERI’s formal research agenda and a five-year science plan.
The NCO team also will work with NHERI's experimental facilities to ensure the efficient testing of new technologies within a safe environment, to centrally coordinate testing schedules, and to facilitate shared technical knowledge and best practices. Other key NCO efforts are to lead NHERI education and outreach and develop strategic partnerships around the world to form a cohesive, global natural-hazards engineering research infrastructure.
David is the lead developer of the flood risk model used to assess the impacts of a wide range of flood protection systems for Louisiana’s $50-billion 2012 Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast; he is currently the co-principal investigator and technical lead of the Risk Assessment team for the state’s 2017 plan update. David’s work in this capacity encompasses the development of new statistical methods for estimating flood exceedance probabilities in protected areas like New Orleans, estimating the probability and consequences of levee failures, calculating the damage associated with storm events, and developing projections of economic growth in the region. He is also working to identify robust policies for non-structural mitigation measures like elevating or flood proofing homes. His other research has produced a model of greenhouse gas emissions from the production of biomass for the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and he has worked with California water agencies to build climate change and other uncertainties into their long-range planning.
Congratulations, Dr. Johnson!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts