Abstract: Critical infrastructures essential to public health, safety, and well-being are inherently vulnerable to unanticipated disruptions that can impact businesses, technical operations, supply chains, and daily life across local, regional, and global scales. The cascading effect of complex system breakdowns reflects the interdependence among systems and adds to the complexity of effective resilient response, which often requires interaction across multiple operating domains in public, private, and commercial sectors. With a focus on applications to critical infrastructures, this presentation will introduce resilience engineering concepts and frameworks relevant to unanticipated social, ecological, and technological system disruptions or surprises.

Dr. John E. Thomas, Scholar in Residence University of Colorado

Speaker: Dr. John E. Thomas is a Scholar in Residence with the Engineering Management Program in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder. John is passionate about the promise of sustainable and resilient life experience for future generations. His research interests explore the boundaries of engineering and social science to understand the dynamic relationships between human resilience, psychological development, and the resilience of complex social, ecological, and technological systems like critical infrastructure supporting community well-being. Dr. Thomas holds BS & MS degrees in Electrical Engineering, a MBA, and a Ph.D. in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering.

Door Prize: 

All registrants will be provided a number - which will be entered into a random number generator in order to select the winner.

Resilience of Critical Infrastructure Systems

Emerging Developments and Future Challenges

by Wu, Lu, and Noori

Cost: Free.

Agenda:

• 6:00 – 6:45 pm SE Table talk

• 6:45 – 7:00 pm Chapter Business Meeting

• 7:00 – 8:00 pm LECTURE