Laurie Johnson
Laurie Johnson is principal of Laurie Johnson Consulting and a senior science advisor to Lexington and Chartis Insurance companies. She has more than 20 years of professional experience in urban planning, risk management, and disaster recovery management, and has studied most of the world's recent urban disasters, including earthquakes in Chile, Sichuan, China, Kobe, Japan, and Northridge, California; Hurricane Katrina; the 2004 Florida storms; and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2006, Johnson was lead author of the recovery plan for the City of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and coauthored the book, "Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans".
Johnson completed her doctorate at Kyoto University in March 2009. Her dissertation focused on developing a management framework for local disaster recovery. She also has a master's in urban planning and a bachelor's in geophysics, both from Texas A&M University. She is on the board of directors of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and a member of SPUR's Disaster Planning and Climate Change Adaptation task forces. Johnson also serves on the Public Entity Risk Institute board of directors and the steering committee of Geoengineering for Extreme Events Reconnaissance. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, the American Planning Association and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
