Appendix F
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
LEONARD A. SHABMAN, Chair, joined Resources for the Future in 2002 as a resident scholar after 3 decades on the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His research and communications efforts focus on programs and responsibilities for flood and coastal storm risk management, design of payment for ecosystem services programs, and development of evaluation protocols for ecosystem restoration and management projects, especially in the Everglades, coastal Louisiana and Chesapeake Bay. Among the specific topics related to those themes are applied research on permitting under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, creating market-based incentives for water quality management and provision of ecosystem services, and design of collaborative water management institutions. He served for 8 years on the National Research Council Water Science and Technology Board, has chaired or been a member of several NRC committees, and has been recognized as an Associate of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Shabman holds a Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University.
SUDIPTO BANERJEE is professor and chair of Biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research, dissertation advising and mentoring activities focus on statistical modeling and analysis of geographically referenced datasets, Bayesian statistics, the interface between statistics and geographical information systems, and statistical computing. He received a National Institutes of Health challenge grant in 2009. In the same year he was honored with the Abdel El Sharaawi Award of the International Environmetrics Society, and in 2011 received the Mortimer Spiegelman
Award of the American Association of Public Health. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Dr. Banerjee received his B.S. degree from Presidency College, an M.S. degree in statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute (both in Calcutta), and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from the University of Connecticut.
JOHN J. BOLAND is an engineer and economist and is professor emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering of Johns Hopkins University. His fields of research include water and energy resources, environmental economics, benefit-cost analysis, and public utility management. Dr. Boland has studied resource problems in more than 20 countries, has published more than 200 papers and reports, and is a coauthor of two books on water demand management and three more on environmental management. He has served on several NRC committees and is a founding member and past chair of the Water Science and Technology Board. Dr. Boland received his Ph.D. degree in environmental economics from Johns Hopkins University.
PATRICK L. BROCKETT is the Director of the Risk Management and Insurance Program and the Gus S. Wortham Memorial Chair in Risk Management and Insurance of the University of Texas at Austin. He conducts research in risk management and insurance, financial risk, actuarial science, decision analysis, management science and operations management and research, statistical analysis, and business applications. Dr. Brockett is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the Institute for Risk Management, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006, he received the American Risk and Insurance Association Outstanding Achievement Award for furthering the science of risk management through promotion of education, research, and communication during his tenure as editor of the Journal of Risk and Insurance. He is the editor of the North American Actuarial Journal. Dr. Brockett received his B.S. degree in mathematics from California State University-Long Beach, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of California, Irvine.
RAYMOND J. BURBY is professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and has received the biannual Distinguished Educator Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of 14 books and more than 150 publications on hazard mitigation, environmental management,
and land use planning and management. Dr. Burby served as coeditor of the Journal of the American Planning Association from 1983–1988 and was an associate editor of the Natural Hazards Review. He has served on NRC committees on pipeline safety, dam and levee safety, and lessons from Hurricane Katrina. His research interests include federal and state hazard mitigation planning mandates, integration of hazard mitigation plans with local comprehensive plans, and improvements in code enforcement to create disaster resilient communities. Dr. Burby holds an A.B. degree in government from George Washington University and M.R.P. and Ph.D. degrees in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
SCOTT A. EDELMAN is the director of the AECOM Water Resources team for North America. He has 32 years of experience devoted to flood insurance studies and floodplain mapping. Mr. Edelman has overseen AECOM’s floodplain mapping and mitigation work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and many state and local partners, including Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Maryland, and California. He was a contributor to such FEMA projects as the initial Multi-Year Flood Hazard Identification Plan, developing initial concepts for the Mapping Information Platform, and contributing to Guidelines and Specifications. He has managed riverine and coastal flood insurance studies for the last 23 years, including more than 15,000 digital Flood Insurance Rate Map panels, which represents approximately 10-15% of the floodplain maps in the nation. Mr. Edelman is a licensed professional engineer in five states. He served on the NRC Committee on Floodplain Mapping Technologies. He received his B.S. degree in civil engineering from Pennsylvania State University.
W. MICHAEL HANEMANN, NAS, is a professor of economics and holds the Wrigley Chair in Sustainability at the School of Sustainability of Arizona State University. He is also a professor in the graduate school and Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of California, Berkeley. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011, Dr. Hanemann is an environmental economist who works in nonmarket valuation, water economics and policy, and climate change. A focus of his current research on water is the distinctive physical and institutional features of water, the evolution of water rights and institutions in the American West, legacy effects with respect to obstacles to promoting better uses of water, balancing extractive vs in-stream uses of water, and adapting water rights to face the challenges of climate change. He is a lead author and coordinating lead author in Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Fifth Assessment Report. He received his Ph.D. degree in economics from Harvard University.
CAROLYN KOUSKY is a fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of natural disasters and disaster insurance markets. Her research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty, natural resource management, and individual and societal responses to natural disaster risk. She has evaluated the demand for natural disaster insurance, the functioning of the National Flood Insurance Program, policy responses to potential changes in extreme events with climate change, and how individuals learn about risk. She is the recipient of the 2013 Tartufari International Prize of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. She holds a B.S. degree in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a Ph.D. degree in Public Policy from Harvard University.
HOWARD C. KUNREUTHER is the James G. Dinan Professor of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and codirector of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He has a long-standing interest in how society can better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technologic and natural hazards. Dr. Kunreuther is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, having received the society’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001. He recently served on the NRC committee on Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters. He is a coordinating lead author of the upcoming report, Integrated Risk and Uncertainty Assessment of Climate Change Response Policies, to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His most recent book is Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry (with M. Pauly and S. McMorrow, 2013). Dr. Kunreuther received his Ph.D. degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
SHIRLEY LASKA is a professor emerita of sociology and was founding director of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology of the University of New Orleans. She has been conducting research on the social–environmental interface of natural and technological hazards, and disaster response, for 25 years. Her work includes studies of residential flood mitigation, hurricane response, coastal land loss effects, coastal fisheries, community risk assessment and risk management for coastal hazards, and evacuation of the vulnerable. Since Hurricane Katrina her work has focused on lessons learned from the event, especially in the realm of community recovery and hazard resiliency. Dr. Laska is the 2008 recipient of
the American Sociological Association’s Public Understanding of Sociology Award for her collaboration with physical scientists and presentations on Katrina and Rita impacts. She was a member of the NRC Committee on Integrating Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience. She received her Ph.D. degree in sociology from Tulane University.
DAVID R. MAIDMENT is the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since 1981. His research focuses on surface water hydrology, particularly in the application of geographic information systems to hydrology, and floodplain mapping. He has chaired or been a member of ten NRC Committees, including the Committees on FEMA Flood Maps and FEMA Floodplain Mapping Technologies. Dr. Maidment has received awards for outstanding contributions to hydrology from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Water Resources Association, and the American Institute of Hydrology. He received his Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
DAVID I. MAURSTAD is a director and senior vice-president with Optimal Solutions and Technologies, Inc., Washington, DC, which provides management consulting, integrated information technology, engineering services, and business process outsourcing. He previously served as director of water policy and planning for a nationally recognized engineering firm that specialized in flood mapping and floodplain management. He has more than 30 years of experience with the private insurance industry and federal, state, and local government. In June 2004, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to lead some of the nation’s prominent multi-hazard risk reduction programs. In that role, he was the federal insurance administrator charged with management of FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. He previously served as director of FEMA Region VIII from 2001 to 2004 coordinating federal, state, tribal, and local management of emergencies through planning, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. Mr. Maurstad is a former lieutenant governor and state senator of Nebraska and served as mayor of Beatrice, Nebraska. He received his B.S. degree in business administration and his M.B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska.
ALLEN L. SCHIRM is the director of methods and a senior fellow of Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, DC. His principal research interests include small-area estimation, census methods, and sample and evaluation design, with application to studies of child well-being and welfare, food and nutrition, and education policy. For the NRC Committee on National Statistics, he chaired the Panel on Estimating Children Eligible for School
Nutrition Programs Using the American Community Survey and was a member of the Panel on the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments, the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods, the Panel on Formula Allocations, and the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a former chair of its Social Statistics Section. Dr. Schirm holds an A.B. degree in statistics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
