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Research Theme: Natural Hazards

Extreme weather events, tornadoes, earthquakes and other typically non-human-induced hazards

Sofia Dermisi

Sofia Dermisi holds a joint appointment between the Department of Real Estate and the Department of Urban Design and Planning. She is the Victor L. Lyon and Alvin J. Wolff Endowed Professor in Real Estate. She is also the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Group for Real Estate (IGRE), which focuses in cross-discipline collaboration in teaching and research. In her joint appointment role she focuses on maintaining a formal two-way connection between the two departments on courses, student interests and research. This role is especially important among the MUP students who pursue the Real Estate specialization or have interests in real estate courses, for which she serves as their advisor.

Dermisi has an interdisciplinary approach in her teaching and research as real estate is one of those fields someone can have significant flexibility in focusing on different uses (e.g. office, residential, retail etc.), scales (local, national, international etc.) and aspects (e.g. market analysis, development, investment etc.). Real estate is also typically linked with other fields such as social and economic, construction among many others, which help us understand and possibly predict in the short and long-run expansion and contraction patterns of the real estate markets. Her area of research has always focused on understanding the evolution of office markets and the effect of internal and external shocks in downtown areas. Office markets have evolved significantly through time and understanding how real estate markets react to deferent economic conditions helps predict future market shifts in a highly cyclical industry. The adoption of sustainable practices by office buildings is another aspect of her research especially in regards to existing buildings, when the capital investment tends to be more significant than a new construction. The last but not least aspect of her research focuses on the effect of disasters on office and hotel markets.

Dermisi has received various grants for her research and received multiple awards highlighting her contribution to the field. She also serves as the elected Program Chair of the American Real Estate Society conference in 2018 and the Vice President of the Society. She will be the President of the American Real Estate Society in 2019-2020, and only the second woman to be elevated by members in such a position, but the first non-US born.

Dermisi, holds a Diploma in Planning and Regional Development Engineering from the University of Thessaly-Greece (1998) and a Master and Doctorate in Design Studies (1999 and 2002 respectively) from Harvard University.

Dan Abramson

Dan Abramson approaches the discipline of planning through urban design, historic preservation and planning history, methods of socio-spatial analysis and public participation, and qualitative study of the politics and cultures of development decision-making. His experience in community-engaged planning, research, and design – mostly with immigrant, low-income, indigenous, or otherwise marginalized communities – ranges from Boston to the American and Canadian Pacific Northwest, and from Poland to China and Japan.

Currently Abramson focuses on community resilience and adaptive planning in disaster recovery and hazard mitigation, as well as periurban and rural responses to rapid urbanization. Students at all levels of undergraduate and graduate education join his work, through course projects, community-engaged studios as well as thesis and dissertation research. Projects in Asia have included six China Village Studios with academic partners from Chengdu and Taiwan; a six-month Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in recovery planning after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan; and a collaboration with Kobe University to use participatory GIS for urban neighborhood earthquake recovery. Projects in Washington integrate studios with FEMA- and NSF-funded research on new protocols for state agencies and communities to envision earthquake- and tsunami-resilient development.

Beside his appointment in Urban Design & Planning at UW, he is adjunct in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a member of the China Studies and Canadian Studies faculty. Before teaching at UW, he held a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Human Settlements, where he initiated the first Ford Foundation-funded urban community-based planning project in China, in Quanzhou, Fujian. His degrees include a B.A. in History from Harvard University; dual masters in Architecture and City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a doctorate in Urban Planning from Tsinghua University in Beijing. (He was the first American to earn a degree in urban planning from a Chinese university, and possibly the first American to earn any mainland Chinese graduate-level degree.) In 2005-2009, he served as Secretary on the founding Board of the International Association for China Planning (IACP) and remains an active member. He have also served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Planning Association and am currently an editorial board member for Planning Perspectives.