Rae Zimmerman

Rae Zimmerman is a Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Planning and Public Administration at New York University''s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Since 1998, she has held the role of Director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS), a center, initially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for collaborative and interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach on infrastructure services. 

In 2011-2013 she directed Wagner’s Urban Planning Program for the fifth time. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, past president and Fellow of the international Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), and recipient of the SRA 2015 Outstanding Service Award.

Her teaching and research areas encompass environmental quality, environmental health risk management, and urban infrastructure in the context of the quality of life in cities. Some specific research and past teaching areas include social and environmental performance measures for the resiliency of urban infrastructure services in extreme events of both natural and human origins. Her work on these and other topics covers security and global climate change; complexities posed by interconnected infrastructures; the ability of institutions to cope with these stresses; public attitudes toward environmental protection; social and economic characteristics of communities facing environmental stresses; social justice; and risk communication in the context of unanticipated events. Courses she has developed and taught encompass how cities adapt to innovations in energy, transportation and water; environmental impact assessment; environmental planning; and emergency planning. Professor Zimmerman has directed over three dozen research projects as a principal investigator and she has been co-Principal Investigator or senior researcher for over a dozen others with federal funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (through three universities-NYU, the University of Southern California, and Dartmouth College), and various state and local agencies. Professor Zimmerman works closely with NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering on research and educational programs connected with infrastructure interdependencies and cyber threats to physical infrastructures.

She is the author of Transport, the Environment and Security (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012), authored Governmental Management of Chemical Risk (Lewis/CRC), co-produced Beyond September 11th (University of Colorado at Boulder), and co-edited Digital Infrastructures (Routledge) and Sustaining Urban Networks (Routledge). Additionally, her publications have appeared in numerous edited books as well as journals from many disciplines including planning, environmental and public administration journals, for example, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, Climatic Change, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Disaster Management, Energy Policy, the Fordham Urban Law Journal (forthcoming), the International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Journal of Applied Security Research, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, the Journal of Extreme Events, the Journal of Infrastructure Systems (forthcoming), the Journal of Risk Research, the Journal of Urban Health, the Journal of Urban Technology,  the Policy Studies Journal, Public Administration Review, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Risk Analysis, Socioeconomic Planning Sciences, and Water Resources Research. Current advisory committee appointments include the Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection (ABR10) of the Transportation Research Board, National Academies (chair of the Physical Security Subcommittee) appointment through 2020, and the NYC Panel on Climate Change. Previously she held numerous appointments to committees as member of the committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities of the National Academies and other committees of the U.S. EPA, the National Academies, the City of New York and the State of New York. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Risk Analysis; the Journal of Risk Research; the Journal of Urban Technology; and the _International Journal of Critical Infrastructure_s, and is a reviewer for over a dozen other journals. Education: B.A. in Chemistry from the University of California (Berkeley), a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in planning from Columbia University. URL: http://wagner.nyu.edu/zimmerman

CURRENT AND SELECTED RECENT GRANTS:

2015-2020 Senior faculty researcher (Principal Investigator for NYU), “Urban Resilience to Extreme Weather Related Events Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN),” National Science Foundation (1444755) through Arizona State University. http://wagner.nyu.edu/news/newsStory/prof-rae-zimmerman-chosen-particip…

January 1- June 30, 2017. Co-Principal Investigator, “Dynamic Resiliency Modeling and Planning for Interdependent Critical Infrastructures,” funded by Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI), U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. CIRI is part of the Homeland Security Center of Excellence at the U. of Illinois funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

2015-2018 Co-Principal Investigator, Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) Type 1: Reductionist and Integrative Approaches to Improve the Resiliency of Multi-Scale Interdependent Critical Infrastructure, funded by the National Science Foundation (1541164).

2014-2017 Co-Principal Investigator, “Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Processes and Systems (RIPS) Type I: A Meta-Network Systems Framework for Resilient Analysis and Design of Modern Interdependent Critical Infrastructures,” National Science Foundation (1441140).

2015-2017 Principal Investigator, “Public Transit and Mandatory Evacuations Prior to Extreme Weather Events in New York City,” U.S. Department of Transportation Region 2 Urban Transportation Research Center.

2014-2015 Principal Investigator, “Suburban Poverty, Public Transit, Economic Opportunities, and Social Mobility,” U.S. Department of Transportation, Region II Urban Transportation Research Center. Final report posted at: http://www.utrc2.org/sites/default/files/Final-Report-Surburban-Poverty…

2012-2014 Principal Investigator, “Promoting Transportation Flexibility in Extreme Events through Multi-Modal Connectivity,” U.S. Department of Transportation, Region II University Transportation Research Center.

2013-2014 Principal Investigator, “RAPID/Collaborative Research: Collection of Perishable Hurricane Sandy Data on Weather-Related Damage to Urban Power and Transit Infrastructure,” National Science Foundation (1316335), in collaboration with the U. of Washington (lead) and Louisiana State University.

2013-2015 Principal Investigator (NYU-Wagner) and researcher, New York State Resiliency Institute for Storms & Emergencies (NYS RISE), funded by New York State (NYU-Poly and Stony Brook University, leads). 

Areas of Expertise

City Management

Emergency Management

Environment

Inequality

Infrastructure

Management

Race, Class, Gender & Diversity

Transportation

Urban Policy