Robert Olshansky
Robert Olshansky is a professor and acting head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has taught for 22 years. His teaching and research cover land use and environmental planning, with an emphasis on planning for natural hazards. He has published extensively on post-disaster recovery planning, planning and policy for earthquake risks, hillside planning and landslide policy, and environmental impact assessment.
Olshansky has studied recovery planning and management after several major disasters. For more than a decade, he and colleagues researched the recovery process following the Kobe, Japan, earthquake of 1995 and he spent the 2004-2005 academic year as a visiting professor at Kyoto University. His co-authored research report, Opportunity in Chaos: Rebuilding after the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe Earthquakes, is available online.
Olshansky's current work focuses on developing theory and researching the processes of recovery following catastrophic disasters. He researched and advised the post-Katrina planning process in New Orleans and his book, "Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans" (co-authored with Laurie Johnson), was published in April 2010. He and his students have been researching disaster recovery in Sichuan Province, China; Tamil Nadu, India; Taiwan; Banda Aceh and Yogyakarta, Indonesia; and Niigata Prefecture, Japan. In March 2010, he participated in the Earthquake Engineering Research Insitute's post-earthquake reconnaissance trip following the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Olshansky is currently the lead investigator for a multi-university NSF-funded study of the process of rebuilding after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.
