Robert B. Olshansky Dr. Olshansky is Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has taught for 20 years. He has master’s and doctoral degrees in city and environmental planning from the University of California at Berkeley. 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, and environmental impact assessment. His publications include 2 monographs on seismic safety for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a monograph on hillside planning for the American Planning Association. He has studied recovery after several major earthquakes, most notably the Kobe, Japan, earthquake of 1995, and he spent the 2004-2005 academic year studying this topic as a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, Disaster Prevention Research Institute. His current work focuses primarily on developing theory and researching the processes of recovery following catastrophic disasters. Since September 2005—with funding from the National Science Foundation, Public Entity Risk Institute, and Lincoln Institute—he has been researching and advising the post-Katrina planning process in New Orleans, and he is co-authoring a book on this topic, Clear as Mud, to be published by APA Press in early 2010. He and his students have also been researching disaster recovery in Sichuan Province, China; Tamilnadu, India; Banda Aceh, Indonesia; and Niigata Prefecture, Japan.
Previous • Next Speaker Bio
| 
