2026 Chajes Distinguished Lecture
Lecture honors former CEE professor of structural engineering,Alexander Chajes
Content
Engineering Risk Analysis and Decision for Communities Facing Natural Hazards: A talk in Four++ Parts
Friday, February 27th, 2026
2:30 p.m.
Old Chapel, Great Hall
No cost and open to all
Speaker:
Ross B. Corotis, NAE
Denver Business Challenge Professor Emeritus
Dean Emeritus, University of Colorado at Boulder
Abstract:
The cost of natural disasters continues to rise around the world, in part because of population growth, urbanization and the pressures they place on land use, and in part because policy makers continue to undervalue natural hazard risk in long-term planning. Yet these hazards are critical to community sustainability, and fundamental to the concept of resilience. The shortcoming in reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure lies partly with engineers and risk professionals, who must be aware of public perceptions of risk and political process rationality, which present inherent incompatibilities. Engineers need to know which measures of risk are most meaningful or relevant to decision makers, and then be able to communicate those risks, and the costs and benefits of mitigation, in concise, credible and meaningful terms. This seminar will discuss four++ related aspects: (0) a little bit of historical perspective, (1) approximate reliability methods for community-wide resilience, (2) issues of risk perception, (3) practical rationality of elected officials, (4) an enhancement to the current ASCE Infrastructure Report Card, and (4+) the role for generalized information theory as an alternative to probability.