Title

Building a more resilient future in the face of uncertain extremes

Bio

David Lallemant leads the Disaster Analytics for Society Lab (DASL) (https://disaster-analytics.com/) at Nanyang Technological University and the Earth Observatory of Singapore. His research focuses on probabilistic risk and resilience analysis of cities, particularly as it relates to growing risk driven by by climate change, rapid urbanization and changing vulnerability. He uses hazard modeling, engineering analysis, machine learning, and spatial statistics for application in large-scale natural disaster risk analysis. He also works on issues of gender and social-equity in disaster risk, including as lead fot the Informatics for Equitable Recovery project. David joined the NTU faculty from Stanford University, where he was a researcher and founder of the Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative (https://urbanresilience.stanford.edu/). He holds a PhD from Stanford University (2015), a MSc from UC Berkeley (2010) and a BSc from MIT (2007).

Abstract

Disasters affect millions of people every year, leading to loss of livelihood, forced migration, injury and fatilities. Increasing evidence suggests that trends in global risk are increasing, due to a combination of climate change, rapid urbanization, and ongoing or deepening economic and social vulnerabilities. Key to making informed policy decisions to promote resilient communities is the ability to understand the our changing riskscape. At the same time, while frequent hazards are often well-understood, and therefore can be addressed through standard risk analysis and management, one major concern relates to rare and extreme events. So-called `Black Swan’ events are particularly concerning, as these are massive in scale and come as a surprise specifically because they are not in our historical record. This talk will explore these two interconnected challenges–growing risk and extreme events–and share recent advances for understanding and tackling them.