Profile

Dr. Emrich is the Boardman Endowed Professor of Environmental Science and Public Administration within University of Central Florida’s School of Public Administration and Interim Director of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research where he works toward equitable and just solutions for myriad coastal challenges through science-based decision making supported by transdisciplinary research. His research/practical service includes applying geospatial technologies to emergency management planning and practice, long-term disaster recovery analysis, and the intersection of social vulnerability and community resilience in the face of catastrophe. His background and previous work with FEMA in geospatial support for response and long-term recovery to the states of Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi has developed into a research agenda focused on how differential exposure and recovery manifest across from disaster-stricken areas. Most recently, Dr. Emrich has supported long-term recovery programs in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia by developing CDBG-DR required impact and unmet needs assessments focused on the most impacted and distressed (socially vulnerable) places. Dr. Emrich is actively working at pinpointing challenges to equity in disaster recovery and mitigation where he has most recently assisted in building empirically based and result-oriented impacts assessments to inform recovery programs in several states and US territories. He has remained at the vanguard of theory, data, metrics, methods, applications, and spatial analytical model development for understanding in the field of hazard vulnerability science and the often very in-equitable and disproportionate pattern of disaster loss and recovery across communities.

• Hazards Geography
• Social Vulnerability
• Disaster Recovery & Resilience
• Emergency Management Decision Support
• Geospatial Information Science