About Us

Charles Scawthorn, SE, D.Eng.

Academic background: Professor, Kyoto University (ret); D.Eng., Kyoto University, Japan; M.S.C.E., Lehigh University, PA; Bach. Engineering, The Cooper Union, NY.

Charles Scawthorn has 35 years of experience assessing risk and developing integrated mitigation programs for natural and technological hazards worldwide. Clients include FEMA, OES, the World Bank, Global 1000 corporations and insurance companies.

From 1998 to 2003 he led technical development of the US national Flood Loss Estimation Model (HAZUS) for FEMA, and is widely recognized for the development of methods for rapid risk analysis of buildings (FEMA 154), seismic vulnerability assessment of US national infrastructure (FEMA 224), stochastic models of fires following earthquakes, models for optimizing urban land use with respect to natural hazards risk, general loss estimation models for earthquake, wind and flood, and seismically reinforcing low-strength masonry buildings.

Keith Porter, PE, PhD

Academic background: Research Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2007-present; GW Housner Senior Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology, 2000-2007; PhD, Stanford University 2000; MEng, UC Berkeley 1990; BS, UC Davis 1987

Dr Porter has 25 years of experience assessing earthquake and hurricane risk for insurers, commercial and institutional building owners, and local governments. His doctoral research prefigured and helped to lay the theoretical groundwork for PEER-style second-generation performance-based earthquake engineering methodology to assess probabilistic risk in terms of repair costs, casualties, and loss of use ("dollars, deaths, and downtime").

His master's research led to current procedures for the design of single-plate shear connectors with short slotted holes. He led the engineering risk assessments for the ShakeOut, ARkStorm, SAFRR Tsunami scenario, and HayWired scenarios. He helped to lead the Mitigation Saves 4:1 benefit-cost study of FEMA-funded natural-hazard mitigation commissioned by the US Congress. He helped lead the analyses of the costs and benefits of mitigation for soft-story woodframe housing that eventually led to San Francisco's mandatory soft-story retrofit ordinance of 2013. He helped to produce the first scholarly engineering model of demand surge. He is the author of 140 scholarly and professional publications on multihazard risk. Clients include FEMA, OES, USGS, SCEC, CEA, Global 1000 corporations and insurance companies.