Information Exchange: People

Rae Zimmerman

Professor of Planning and Public Administration (ICIS Director and PI), New York University

Rae Zimmerman is Principal Investigator and Director of ICIS. She is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and formerly Director of the School's Urban Planning Program. In 1997, she was President of the Society for Risk Analysis, a 2,400 member international, interdisciplinary professional society of natural and social scientists and engineers from academia, industry and government. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Risk Analysis. Dr. Zimmerman's teaching and research interests are in environmental planning, management, and impact assessment with a special focus on environmental health risk assessment, environmental equity, and institutional aspects of global climate change; urban infrastructure and its measurement and performance in light of social objectives; and risk management and public perceptions of complex technologies. She has directed numerous multidisciplinary research grants in these areas. She is the PI of an NSF workshop on a research agenda in connection with the September 11th attacks as well as a study of infrastructure before, during, and after those attacks. Her earlier work in infrastructure includes a workshop on information technology and infrastructure; case studies on infrastructure performance; an infrastructure needs assessment for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee; a feasibility study of an offshore island complex; and an early outreach program for the statewide (NYS) transportation master plan. In the environmental field, she currently directs a U.S. EPA study of environmental issues in the South Bronx. Other U.S. EPA-funded research has covered farmers' attitudes toward agricultural practices protective of water quality, and demographic patterns near inactive hazardous waste sites. Professionally, she has worked closely with engineers, planners, and scientists for risk and environmental impact evaluations, regulatory support, and public outreach for large infrastructure facilities for water treatment, transportation, waste disposal, and other civil infrastructure. Current professional appointments include member of the NAS Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program Committee, U.S. EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, the Science Advisory Board Relative Risk Subcommittee, and the NYS Comparative Risk Committee, and she was previously a member of the National Research Council's Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. She has been a consultant to the U.S. EPA's Superfund program (Region II) on environmental equity and hazardous waste sites, water resources management, and environmental impact assessment. Education: B.A., Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley; M.S., City Planning, University of Pennsylvania; and Ph.D., Planning, Columbia University.

Contact Email: rae.zimmerman@nyu.edu  

Projects:

• Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE)
• Empirically Based Analysis of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems and Critical Infrastructures
• Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS)
• Public Infrastructure Support for Protective Emergency Services
• Risk Communication for Large Scale Emergency Response (LaSER)
• South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy Study
• Urban Infrastructure in a Time of Crisis: Lessons From September 11th

Publications:

• A Comparison of Ground-Level Air Quality Data with New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Monitoring Stations Data in South Bronx, New York
• A Comparison of Risk Communication Structures for Two Attack Scenarios
• A Spatial Analysis of Asthma Hospitalization Rates and Socioeconomic and Land Use Varibles in New York City
• Asthma Hospital Admissions and Ambient Air Pollutant Concentrations in New York City
• Beyond September 11th: An Account of Post-Disaster Research. Special Publication #39
• Bringing Information Technology to Infrastructure Final Report
• Bringing Information Technology to Infrastructure: A White Paper for a Research Agenda
• CREATE Electricity Case Main Report: Risk, Consequences, and Economic Accounting, Report 1
• CREATE Electricity Case: Economic Cost Estimation Factors for Economic Assessment of Terrorist Attacks, Report 2
• CREATE Electricity Case: Statistical Analysis of Electric Power Outages, Report 3
• Communicating Risk to Reduce Human Loss in Large Scale Disasters
• Connectivity and Consistency of Environmental Decision Tools for Community Planning
• Critical Infrastructure and Interdependency
• Decision-making and the vulnerability of interdependent critical infrastructure
• Diagnostic Tools to Estimate Consequences of Terrorism Effects Against Critical Infrastructure
• Digital Infrastructures
• ICIS Conference on the Coordinated Renewal of Civil Infrastructure Systems for Sustainable Human Environments (Conference Report)
• Infrastructure Support for Emergency Response: Preliminary Criteria and Indicators for Infrastructure Linkages to Emergency Services
• Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER) Project - Risk Communication, Project Summary
• Learning from Urban Disasters: Summary of a Workshop
• Lessons Learned from the WTC Disaster about Critical Utility Systems
• Likelihood of People Staying or Leaving in Disaster
• Managing Urban Sustainability: Connecting Infrastructure to Communities
• Mass Transit Infrastructure and Urban Health
• Measures of Risks of Failure of Oil and Gas Facilities for Energy Risk Management
• Modeling Spatial Concentration of Transportation Systems to Assess Vulnerability to Natural Hazard and Terrorist Threats
• Optimizing Resource Allocation for Transportation Infrastructure Protection
• Organization Based Incident Management: The Role of Volunteers on the University Campus During Catastrophic Events
• Performance measurement for managing infrastructure assets
• Planning Tools to Protect Border Area Infrastructure
• Public Infrastructure Service Flexibility for Response and Recovery in the September 11th, 2001 Attacks at the World Trade Center
• Public Infrastructure Support For Protective Emergency Services, Project Summary
• Risk Communication Focus Groups Report
• Risk Communication for Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER): Highlights of Preliminary Findings
• Risk Management and Risk Analysis-Based Decision Tools for Attacks on Electric Power
• Risks and Costs of a Terrorist Attack on the Electricity System
• Short and Intermediate Economic Impacts of a Terrorist-Initiated Loss of Electric Power: Case Study of New Jersey
• Social Implications of Infrastructure Network Interactions
• Social and Environmental Dimensions of Cutting-Edge Infrastructures
• South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy Study Phase I Report
• South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy Study Phase II and III Report
• Sustaining Urban Networks: The Social Diffusion of Large Technical Systems
• The New York City Region and the University
• The Next Step: Quantifying Infrastructure Interdependencies to Improve Security
• Trends for Oil and Gas Terrorist Attacks
• University Research in Transportation Security Planning
• Unraveling Geographic Interdependencies in Electric Power Infrastructure
• Vulnerabilities and Critical Infrastructure
• Vulnerabilities and Critical Infrastructure (presentation)
• Vulnerabilities in the Oil and Gas Sector
• Workshop on Integrated Research for Civil Infrastructure -- Final Report

Topics:

• ICIS Research

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