Ricardo ALVAREZ

BIOSKETCH

Ricardo A. Alvarez

www.mitigat.com

Educated in architecture, environmental design, urban planning and business administration Ricardo has dedicated most of his professional life to studying buildings damaged by natural hazards, and how to reduce such potential damage through building design, applied research and education.

Ricardo has engaged in damage assessments field work in the USA and other countries post hurricanes Gilbert, Andrew, Mitch, Opal, Ivan, Katrina, Wilma and many more, developing an empirical approach for characterizing impacts, and assessing the causality of damage to the built environment.

Ricardo has conducted research funded by the State of Florida Residential Construction Mitigation program, and directed 1400+ mitigation projects in the past 20 years, Ricardo taught “Vulnerability Assessment’ and “Hazard Mitigation’, graduate-level courses at FIU (1995-2010), and “Risk Management and Hazard Mitigation in the Private Sector” (2003 -2006) for the CMBA at FAU. He developed a Certificate in “Emergency Management and Hazard Mitigation” (1996 – 2000), for EM professionals, and a “Developing a Culture of Mitigation through Education” (2001-2005) K-12 program designated as a best practice by FEMA in 2004.

Ricardo is recognized internationally as an expert in vulnerability assessment, hazard mitigation, built environment adaptation to climate change, expert witness, subject expert, peer reviewer, keynote speaker, writer, interviewee, presenter or panelist on these topics. He sits in the Miami-Dade County Local Mitigation Strategy Steering Committee, and the Florida Hazard Mitigation Plan Advisory Team, he is a published author (ISBN 978-607-401-556-0) and a Research Affiliate for the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University.