Tiffany Cousins is a is a planning, governance, and globalization PhD student at Virginia Tech. She is a geographic information system and natural hazards researcher with academic and professional experience in geophysics, geography, and urban planning (environmental hazard management). A native of New York City with West Indian heritage, Cousins’ research uses crowdsourced data for pluvial flood mapping and modeling. Her career vision is to explore the application of GIS in disaster resilience and risk management.

Joseph Karanja is a PhD student at Arizona State University. Karanja’s research interests focus on heat vulnerability, entailing the understanding of socioeconomic and biophysical drivers of heat vulnerability across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and the examination of associated heat-health outcomes. Additionally, Karanja investigates how different spatial analysis methods influence the determination of vulnerable populations and locations and their implications in policymaking. His research intersects key themes such as urban climate, biometeorology, scale, spatial statistics, and vulnerability science.

Patty Hernandez is co-founder and executive director of Headwaters Economics. She has played a formative role in building the highly productive team, positive culture, and impactful work for which Headwaters Economics is known. Hernandez has 20 years of experience in economic development research, community assistance, technology solutions, and nonprofit leadership. She has led Headwaters Economics’ development of highly regarded interactive data tools—such as Neighborhoods at Risk and Wildfire Risk to Communities—that help communities adapt to climate change. With an abiding interest in community development and equity, Hernandez has worked with a wide network of partners to identify and analyze relevant data for community planning and natural hazards, and to make the data easily accessible.