[CSEE Talk] talk: White House Climate Data Initiative, 3pm Tue 4/29, ITE456, UMBC

[Tim Finin]

           Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research
           Distinguished Computational Science Lecture Series

                The White House Climate Data Initiative
                          http://bit.ly/WHcdi

                              Eric Letvin
                 Director, Disaster and Failure Studies
                       National Security Council

              3:00pm Tuesday, 29 April 2014, ITE 456, UMBC

Delivering on the commitment in the President's Climate Action Plan,
the White House recently launched the Climate Data Initiative -- a
broad effort to leverage the Federal Government's extensive, freely-
available climate-relevant data resources to advance awareness of and
preparedness for climate change impacts. This effort will help give
communities across America the information and tools they need to plan
for current and future climate impacts. Data from NOAA, NASA, the
U.S. Geological Survey, the Department of Defense, and other Federal
agencies was recently launched on climate.data.gov.  Data and
innovation challenges issued by public, private, nonprofit, and other
organizations can help catalyze new, data-driven solutions that help
communities understand and build resilience to climate change. NOAA
and NASA recently announced an innovation challenge calling on
researchers and developers to create data-driven simulations to help
plan for the future and to educate the public about the vulnerability
of their own communities to sea level rise and flood events.


Mr. Eric Letvin PE, Esq, is the Director of Hazard Mitigation and Risk
Reduction Policy within the National Security Council in the Executive
Office of the President. He coordinates the development and effective
delivery of mitigation capabilities identified in the National
Preparedness Goal, such as threat and hazard identification, risk and
disaster resilience assessment, planning, and long-term vulnerability
reduction.

When at NIST, Mr. Letvin is the Disaster and Failure Studies Program
Director within NIST's Engineering Laboratory. Mr. Letvin provides
national coordination for conducting field data collection studies.
He is also responsible for creating and maintaining a repository
related to hazard events (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes,
windstorms, community-scale fires in the wildland-urban interface,
structural fires, storm surge, flood, tsunami) and human-made hazards
(accidental, criminal, or terrorist), the performance of the built
environment during hazard events, associated emergency response and
evacuation procedures.

Before coming to NIST, Mr. Letvin was Leader of Infrastructure
Research and Resiliency in the Homeland Security Group of URS. He has
participated in numerous post-disaster studies including the bombing
of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, and Hurricanes Opal, Ike and
Katrina. He has assessed over 200 buildings for risk from terrorist
threats and natural disasters.

Mr. Letvin holds a bachelor's and master's degree in environmental
engineering from Syracuse University and received his Juris Doctor
from the University of Maryland. He has taught many courses on risk
assessments and protection of infrastructure for FEMA/DHS and made
related presentations throughout the world over the last ten years.



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