Gavin Smith
Gavin Smith is the executive director of the Center for the Study of Natural Hazards and Disasters and the Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence—Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management.
Smith is an associate research professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Areas of interest include hazard mitigation, disaster recovery, and the translation of research to practice. Smith is currently writing “A Review of the United States Disaster Assistance Framework: Planning for Recovery.”
Following Hurricane Katrina, Smith worked in the Mississippi Office of the Governor, serving as the director of the Office of Recovery and Renewal. In this role, he and his staff focused on four primary tasks: the identification of federal, corporate, nonprofit, and foundation financial assistance; the provision of education, outreach, and training to local governments and state agencies; providing counsel to the governor, his staff, and state agency officials regarding disaster recovery policy issues, and the implementation of the Governor’s Commission Report: After Katrina: Building Back Better than Ever.
In this role he testified before Congress twice, providing recommended policy changes to improve the delivery of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction activities. He also developed the concept and wrote policy guidance associated with the $400 million Alternative Housing Pilot Program, an initiative intended to test the construction and deployment of improved emergency housing alternatives following Hurricane Katrina.
Workshop Abstracts
Coastal Resilience Starts With Planning
With Philip Berke and Ward Lyles