With this recent earthquake in Chiang Rai, there is heightened concern regarding the community’s seismic resiliency.  Whether a community leader, building owner or resident of the city of Chiang Rai, all stakeholders have a vested interest in mitigating the seismic risk facing the community, the city and the country.…

I attended the tsunami-themed Pacem in Maribus Conference in Thailand where I was slated to be one of the keynote speakers. Thailand is especially interested in tsunamis after its Andaman Coast was ravaged by a particularly devastating one in 2004, killing more than 8,000 people on the southern coast. Pacem in Maribus is Latin for Peace in the Ocean.  The organization is an international forum on sustainable governance of the oceans with experts from countries all around the world. During my speech, I discussed Tsunami Disaster Risk Reduction lessons learned from the engineering field as well as government policy and…