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Research Areas

In order to meaningfully engage the realities of social-ecological-system changes, new policies and institutions must be developed to accommodate uncertainty and anticipate non-linear alterations of boundary conditions. The concept of “resilience” is increasingly invoked to examine new frontiers on how societies represented by their people, resources and infrastructure can adapt to both “changes” and truly “surprising changes.” Resilience-based thinking acknowledges nonlinear change and provides a way of thinking about how to foster the social-ecological-system components and dynamics that we value and want to protect. The UNM Resilience Institute will engage in research and educational activities to understand the social, ecological, psychological, economic, legal and scientific principles necessary to characterize, quantify, pattern and hopefully engineer our communities’ ability to adapt to surprising changes.

The proposed center will integrate four major resilience themes: Engineering, Computing, Social and Economic Sciences. Under these integrated themes, we will develop research projects that focus to investigating the following key areas of resilience:


hurricane

Natural
Disasters

power plant

Power
Plants

data mining

Data
Mining

laws

Laws

cyber systems

Cyber
Systems

ground transportation

Ground
Transport

watershed restoration

Watershed
Restoration

wildfires

Wildfires


Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters

Resilience assessment of infrastructure under earthquakes, wildfire, floods and/or hurricanes.

Power Plants

Power Plants

Understanding resilience of interdependent infrastructure systems (e.g. power plants, dams).



Data Mining

Data Mining

Data mining and smart reasoning from big and incomplete data during disasters.

Laws

Laws

Investigating disaster laws and social characteristics of resilient communities.



Cyber Systems

Cyber Systems

Improving infrastructure resilience using remote sensing and cyber-physical systems.

Transport Systems

Transportation

Resilient transportation systems.



Watershed Restoration

Watershed Restoration

Socio-ecological resilience for watershed restoration.

Wildfires

Wildfires

Wildfire simulation, impacts and economics in arid environments.