Dr. Joseph Fiksel is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University and a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University. He is the author of Resilient by Design (Island Press, 2015) and has provided consulting services to companies, governments, and industry associations worldwide.
“The destruction of the Hawaiian town of Lahaina by the Maui wildfire is only the latest indication that our communities are unprepared for what some call a “polycrisis” – a rare convergence of multiple forces that results in a disaster. Lahaina residents have always lived in the shadow of an active volcano, but no one anticipated that a wildfire would be magnified by a freak windstorm, and that the town’s communication systems and water supply would fail to respond properly. ….”
