ABSTRACT

The challenge of minimizing the global impacts of natural hazards is becoming increasingly complex. Disaster risk is escalating due to rapid urban expansion into high-hazard areas, coupled with planning and construction practices that fail to account for local hazards. The rising frequency and intensity of extreme climate events are further amplifying these challenges, expanding the geographic extent of at-risk areas, and increasing unpredictability. The dynamic, evolving nature of climate-related disasters and their interconnectedness with other perils adds an additional layer of complexity, making proactive risk reduction more urgent than ever. At the same time, lower-income communities continue to bear the most severe consequences of disasters. The vast majority of disaster-related fatalities occur in emerging economies, where natural hazard events are a major driver of extreme poverty. Despite clear evidence that proactive risk mitigation is cost-effective and life-saving, global attention and funding remain disproportionately focused on post-disaster response rather than pre-disaster action.

In this lecture, I will share strategies for catalyzing proactive disaster risk reduction based on lessons learned throughout my career. These include (1) designing initiatives that acknowledge that building resilience requires sustained efforts over many years, (2) collaborating with local professionals and leaders by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to drive risk reduction within their communities, and (3) strategically leveraging post-disaster attention to accelerate mitigation efforts. I will highlight how these and other approaches can help guide collective efforts toward addressing increasing disaster risk around the world. Drawing on case studies from GeoHazards International—a nonprofit dedicated to disaster resilience in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions—this talk will provide practical, on-the-ground insights to inform and strengthen future efforts in disaster risk reduction.

Bio:

Veronica Cedillos is President & CEO of GeoHazards International (GHI), an agile global nonprofit that aims to save lives by empowering at-risk communities worldwide to build resilience ahead of disasters and climate impacts. She is responsible for the strategic and financial management of the organization, including headquarters in California and field offices in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

Cedillos is a structural and earthquake engineer by training whose career has focused on reducing the impacts of natural hazards. She has extensive experience managing international, multi-disciplinary teams from government, academia, non-profit, and industry sectors. Cedillos has led major initiatives that advanced a range of disaster risk reduction strategies, including tsunami evacuation infrastructure, seismic evaluation and retrofit of buildings, multi-hazard risk mitigation, school natural hazard safety, guidelines for technical professionals, and capacity-building training programs. Her work on disaster resilience spans the globe, with significant projects in Indonesia, Armenia, Haiti, Kyrgyz Republic, Peru, and the United States. As part of this work, she lived for extended periods in Indonesia, India, Haiti, and Peru, gaining firsthand, on-the-ground experience.

In recognition of her work, Cedillos was awarded the 2011 Shah Family Innovation Prize by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and was named an EERI Housner Fellow in 2017. She has been a major contributor to several technical reports that guide practicing engineers to design buildings to withstand natural hazards. She is a registered Professional Engineer in California and holds an M.S. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.