Scott B. Miles

Scott Miles is an expert on disaster risk reduction, decision sciences, urban planning, and lifeline infrastructure. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University, as well as the direct of the Resilience Institute. He has been instrumental in establishing WWU’s disaster risk reduction undergraduate program. He possesses a unique set of skills and experiences across the fields of civil engineering, geomorphology, geographic information systems, and urban geography. As a social scientist with an engineering background, Miles has a strong foundation in both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. Miles has received grant funding and other awards from the National Science Foundation, Natural Hazards Center, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Washington State Emergency Management Division, and Washington State Department of Ecology, among other sources. Miles received his Ph.D. in geography from University of Washington, where he studied the synergy between urban geography, community disaster resilience, and participatory methods. He received a post-graduate diploma from the University of Edinburgh in GIS, with a focus on environmental modeling. His MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering is from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he focused on geotechnical earthquake engineering and numerical methods. An undergraduate degree in the same field was received from Washington State University. Prior to joining WWU, Miles was a member of the U.S. Geological Survey Western Region Earthquake Hazards Team for six years, as well as a university instructor, research associate, and private consultant.