Silva and Suarez Discuss Disasters with Summer Fellows

Enrique Silva, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the City Planning and Urban Affairs Program at Boston University and Pablo Suarez, Associate Director of Programs for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, and an advisor for Oxfam America’s Private Sector Team spoke to the Pardee Graduate Summer Fellows during an informal lunch at Pardee House on June 15. Silva is a Pardee Faculty Fellow and Suarez is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Pardee Center.

Both Silva and Suarez spoke about their work related to natural disasters. Silva discussed his work related to planning for disasters in urban areas, and how governance and other social and economic systems can impact preparedness for and responses to natural disasters.

Suarez spoke briefly about his work with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre in which he uses video and games to educate farmers and villagers in rural Africa and Bangladesh about how to prepare for more extreme climate events triggered by the changing climate. He also led the Summer Graduate Fellows in a game in which they had to choose whether or not to take action to prepare for a flood or draught depending on the weather forecasts that provided the probability of such events occurring.

This event was part of a series of informal lunch meetings with the Pardee Graduate Summer Fellows and faculty members sponsored by the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.