Description:

The challenge of enhancing community resiliency to severe storms is not just in the realm of the meteorologists, emergency managers, and social scientists but with engineers and architects as well.  While we desire to enhance better response to severe weather warnings, the engineering community is interested in promoting more resilient shelters and buildings in general. Both approaches to improving resiliency experience challenges and roadblocks.  On the engineering side, a significant number of people live in vulnerable residences, either in poorly anchored manufactured or fixed homes. Many may not understand the best strategy in taking shelter in their homes or nearby. Most residents don’t understand and/or prioritize structural integrity in their home buying decision-making or when considering remodeling.  Until recently our respective scientific communities have not collaborated in discussing how to improve community resiliency in relation to building safety and storm sheltering. This includes hazard mitigation and preparedness decision making such as building better than code minimums and/or installing storm shelters, as well as real-time decision making on protective actions to take during the storm, such as evacuation vs sheltering. This proposed session will help to open lines of communication between engineers, meteorologists, social scientists and others through a panel discussion to address these challenges and potential strategies to address them.