Urban RISK Lab Lunchtime Lectures: Vyjayanthi V. Rao

Oct 31., 2014

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Vyjayanthi V. Rao is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at New School for Social Research, New York. Previously she held positions at Yale University and at the University of Chicago where she received her Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. For three years she served as a co-director of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research), an innovative urban think-tank based in Mumbai. She works on cities after globalization, specifically on the intersections of urban planning, design art, violence, and speculation in the articulation of the contemporary global city.

Urban RISK Lab Lunchtime Lectures: Matthew Jelacic

Oct 29., 2014

Matthew Jelacic is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Design and an Adjunct Faculty member of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities at the University of Colorado. His research includes improving the design of shelter and planning for displacement caused by natural disasters, climate change and other conflicts. Prof. Jelacic received his architecture degrees at Pratt Institute, where he received the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, was a Harvard Loeb Fellow in 2003-4, studied international human rights law at Oxford University in 2008 and was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Scholar in Residence in 2009. From 1991-2001 he worked in the atelier of Louise Bourgeois and in 2004 he became a licensed contractor.

Hacking Social Media to Survive Climate Change: A GeoSocial Intelligence Approach

Sept 17., 2014

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MIT Urban Risk Lab hosts Etienne Turpin and Tomas Holderness from PetaJakarta.org

PetaJakarta.org is a research collaboration initiated by Dr. Etienne Turpin and Dr. Tomas Holderness of the SMART Infrastructure Facility. The project brings the scientific expertise of the SMART OSGeo Lab and the SMART GeoSocial Intelligence Research Group together with the Jakarta Emergency Management Agency and the United Nations Pulse Lab Jakarta for applied research and integrated testing of social media for infrastructure co-management. The project is supported financially by the University of Wollongong Global Challenges Initiative and the Australian National Data Service; it has received additional support through a Twitter #DataGrant, awarded through the Twitter OSS Engineering Division.

Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day at the White House

August, 2014

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Prof. Miho Mazereeuw was one of the guests at the White House to participate in the Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day. 

The workshop sessions were aimed at identifying challenges where open data, social media, predictive analytics, sharing economy platforms, standards, and user-centered design can be applied to improve disaster preparedness, and disaster response and recovery efforts.