Jonathan Sury

Jonathan Sury is project director for field operations and communications at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute. He has a master’s degree in public health in Environmental Health Sciences from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. He has a keen interest in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their use in disaster preparedness and recovery. He has over ten years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research with significant experience field research and study design, implementation, management, and data architecture and analysis. He has led NCDPs use of GIS to identify vulnerable populations in large-scale disasters using on-line maps.

Presently, he contributes to a variety of disaster-related research, including community coalition building, research, and project communications for the Resilient Children/Resilient Communities Initiative in the US and Puerto Rico. He also has significant experience evaluating the unanticipated consequences of pandemic flu, determining racially and ethnically appropriate emergency messaging, analyzing the long-term disaster resiliency and recovery issues in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. His graduate thesis examined the measurement and mapping of social vulnerability and the role of place and space in disaster recovery.