Strengthening the Built Environment of Schools

Summary

Education infrastructure is particularly affected by disasters. In vulnerable communities such as Puerto Rico, these effects can be augmented due to the multi-hazard nature of the island (hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, climate change). This project aims to transform how society addresses school infrastructure safety by studying community co-production of infrastructure knowledge, conducting engineering and policy assessments, and investigating engineering mitigation and policy solutions. To do so, this project centers on community knowledge and action by first convening stakeholder groups to determine community perceptions of school vulnerabilities and safety. These community-identified perceptions drive the project's new locally driven engineering and scientific analyses, which are used to assess risks to school safety and to propose effective and cost-appropriate mitigation interventions. In parallel, the project is developing recommendations on opportunities for policy interventions aimed at strengthening school infrastructure. These efforts produce assessments of threats to school infrastructure, demonstrate community-specific solutions, and identify new opportunities for school infrastructure safety policies.

Funding

Research Questions

  • What are community perceptions of school infrastructure?
  • What scientific assessments can be conducted based on those perceptions?
  • What community-specific solutions can come out of this study?

 

 

Strengthening the Built Environment of Schools

Jeanette Felmlee-Gartner