I am striving to prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters

University of Kansas faculty are striving to advance knowledge, interpret our world, solve problems, spark innovation, create beauty and catalyze imagination through their research, scholarship and creative activity. Through the “I Am Striving” series, we’ll learn more about what inspires KU researchers, as well as the goals and impact of their work. 

Q&A with Elaina Sutley, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and associate dean of diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging 

<Explain your research as you would explain it to someone outside your field, such as your grandparents. 

I study disasters like floods, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. I integrate engineering and social science disciplines to understand what happens during disasters— to buildings, to infrastructure systems, to businesses and organizations to households, and to social networks— and understanding how these things change across the disaster lifecycle. What happens immediately, during the disaster, right after and through long-term recovery.

What does your research look like? What methods do you use? 

My research uses experimental, field-based and computational methods and really tries to bring the three of those together. A lot of times, that’s our winning combination — integrating structural engineering with social science and data science methods as well. A lot of times the research is in a laboratory, so we might be doing full-scale testing on different subassemblies or components and connections, or even a full-scale building, exposing it and loading it with extreme loading. Other times, we might have scaled models, where we're trying to understand how extreme events affect those loads, then create forces on the structures. When we're able to couple that experimental research with the field-based research and numerical models of the structures, we can glean really good insights on how to better design structures to then withstand those loads and withstand those forces.

A lot of the field-based research that I do, though, is with people. We use surveys, interviews, focus groups to try to understand their lived experiences during and after disasters. And then we use that information, a lot of times just in and of itself, but then we couple that with numerical research or computational models to try to model social processes. What we get from interacting with people in the field we can use to inform the model or sometimes validate the model. One example I have is my research team developed a housing recovery model. It predicts how many times a household may have to move after a disaster if they're initially dislocated from their home, and how long it may take for them to secure permanent housing, considering their sociodemographics, the resources that they have access to, and their initial disaster experience.

What inspires your research? Why are you passionate about this work? 

When I was a graduate student at the University of Alabama, a superstorm of tornadoes came through Tuscaloosa and devastated parts of the city and had a tremendous impact on me. It was the first time that I learned … that the building codes did not have ways to consider tornadoes in the design of structures. They do now, and I got to be part of that group who wrote the provision; so that's exciting. It really opened my eyes to the differential impact that people experience with disasters and how long recovery can take for some — and how that can especially be true along racial and socioeconomic lines. Since then I've been inspired to really make sure that all of my research takes into account those differential experiences and is working to support people who are living at the margins.

How does your research directly impact your field, society, Kansas and the world? 

Translation and adoption of research is so important to me. I cannot let it just live in an academic journal article, for example. I'm on several national committees, several different boards. I integrate people's experiences into my research with community engaged research.

The piece I'm most proud of was being able to be a part of a small group of people who wrote provisions for tornado loads in Alabama that are currently in our building code now. The impact is that now guidance — and sometimes requirements — exists for how to design buildings to withstand tornadoes.

What is a recent study/example of work you’d like to share? 

There are so many different projects that I love, but I think the one that I have to share with you is theARISE project. ARISE stands for Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructure driven by Social Equity. I love it because it's interdisciplinary, because it's driven by social equity. It puts people at the margin in the focus of the work. And I love it because it's research for Kansans by Kansans. It's really special that KU is teamed up with Kansas State University, Wichita State University, and almost a dozen other colleges and universities across the state of Kansas on research, education and workforce development initiatives.

A central goal of the project is to be able to develop this decision support tool that communities can use to inform resource investments, resource distribution, that can then be used to support more equitable and resilient infrastructure. I've had the opportunity, and many people on the team have had the opportunity, to engage and talk with local government representatives, representatives from community advocacy organizations, and individuals across the state. I'm learning so much in terms of what equity and resilience means in Kansas, and I'm learning so much about Kansas in general.

What do you hope are some of the outcomes of your research and work? 

The best outcome of my research would be that my research is no longer needed. Until that time comes, I think that some of the outcomes that I strive for are for engineers, in particular, to recognize that engineering systems have to be designed with more than just mechanics in mind. That we have to consider the capacity of people and communities to deal with when we have failed engineering systems. I think that would be a tremendous outcome of my work. More tangibly, I hope to incorporate more of my research findings on building code provisions into more equitable mitigation and recovery policies to support better equity and better resilience for all.