DRC in the Media

The University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center is home to renowned experts who share insights from their research to better understand breaking news, developing events, and the complex conditions that lead to disaster. Offering a broad range of disciplinary perspectives and expertise, they have been cited in such outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Discover what our experts have to say:

DRC in the Media

FEATURED DRC MEDIA PLACEMENTS

image

Evacuating is expensive. Recovery is long and hard.

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
 
FEATURED IN: Perci — Monday, September 18, 2023
 
OVERVIEW: “Jennifer Trivedi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology is Core Faculty at University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. She studies “the people . . . part of disasters. How people make decisions before, during and after a disaster and what influences those decisions – their personal histories and circumstances as well as larger social and cultural contexts they find themselves in.” She spoke with us recently. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.” …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

This N.J. town erected barriers to hold back the sea. A public fight erupted.

EXPERT: A.R. Siders
 
FEATURED IN: Washington Post — Friday, August 18, 2023
 
OVERVIEW: NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. — From atop the local lifeguard headquarters, Mayor Patrick Rosenello looks out over the shrinking shoreline of his . . . hometown.

To the north, past the kaleidoscope of umbrellas that dot the beach, he can see the massive bulkheads the city has installed to hold back the encroaching sea — the same ones at the heart of an ongoing fight with the state, which has sued North Wildwood and fined it more than $8.5 million for that and other work it says was unauthorized, misguided and destructive.
 
READ ARTICLE

image

A history of Hawaii’s sirens and the difference it could have made against Maui fires

EXPERT: Sarah Elizabeth DeYoung
 
FEATURED IN: National Public Radio (NPR) — Monday, August 14, 2023
 
OVERVIEW: DRC Core Faculty contributed to this recent article on the key factors that should be considered in warning systems in the context of the #MauiFires
 
READ ARTICLE


 

Journalists interested in interviewing our experts?
Call 1-302-NEWS or email us at mediarelations@udel.edu

DRC MEDIA PLACEMENTS: 230


image

How many people in PA got vaccinated and still got COVID-19? The state isn’t counting

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: The Philadelphia Inquirer — Friday, June 25, 2021
OVERVIEW: Philadelphia Inquirer, How many people in PA got vaccinated and still got COVID-19? The state isn’t counting, June 25, 2021 …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Highly contagious COVID Delta variant in NJ: What you need to know

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: northjersey.com — Friday, June 25, 2021
OVERVIEW: “Delta is not much of a risk for those who are fully vaccinated,” said Jennifer Horney, director of the epidemiology program at the University of Delaware. “However, if we consider only the unvaccinated population, they will certainly see an increase in infections and hospitalizations.”
 
READ ARTICLE

image

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: Philadelphia Inquirer — Thursday, June 24, 2021
OVERVIEW:
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Will state reach 70% vaccination benchmark?: As of Sunday, 68.9% have received at least one dose

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: The News Journal — Tuesday, June 22, 2021
OVERVIEW: “I think COVID will very much still be with us, and it will particularly be high risk for those who are unvaccinated,” said Dr. Jennifer Horney, founding director of the University of Delaware’s epidemiology program. Delawareans hospitalized with COVID-19 are overwhelmingly unvaccinated, according to Division of Public Health data. Through Friday, the agency reported 383 COVID-19 cases among the state’s more than 400,000 fully vaccinated individuals. Of those cases, 18 were hospitalized.
 
READ ARTICLE

image

How natural immunity plays a role

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: Healthline.com — Thursday, May 13, 2021
OVERVIEW: The inflection point will vary per state and even county depending on the level of natural immunity in the area, Gandhi said. In areas that were hit hard by COVID-19 and therefore have higher natural immunity levels, fewer people need to get vaccinated to reach an inflection point. In areas mostly spared by COVID-19, more people will need to get vaccinated to hit that infection point.

Also, there may have been many asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, says Jennifer Horney, PhD, a disaster epidemiologist and founding director of the University of Delaware’s epidemiology program. “We don’t know exactly what our total coverage is, it could be higher than we think,” she said.
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Suicide Rates May Rise After Natural Disasters

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: EOS Science News by AGU — Tuesday, January 26, 2021
OVERVIEW: Natural disasters can continue to cause pain long after homes have been rebuilt and businesses reopened. According to a recent U.S.-based study, rates of suicide increase somewhat during the first 3 years postdisaster. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Suicide Rates May Rise After Natural Disasters

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: Eos — Tuesday, January 26, 2021
OVERVIEW:
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Delaware officials on lookout as variant invades U.S.

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: Bay to Bay News — Monday, January 25, 2021
OVERVIEW:
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Advocacy groups call for including Type 1 diabetes among prioritized vaccine recipients

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: The Hill — Thursday, January 21, 2021
OVERVIEW: Jennifer Horney, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware, said a reason why Type 1 diabetes may not have been initially considered as an underlying condition is because of the other health effects of Type 2 that have garnered more attention from the medical community.
 
READ ARTICLE

image

EXPERT: Tricia Wachtendorf
FEATURED IN: Florida News Station: My News 13 — Wednesday, January 13, 2021
OVERVIEW: “You gain trust in drops and lose it in buckets,” – DRC director Tricia Wachtendorf on COIVD-19 missteps on communication and the challenges that lie ahead when another disaster strikes.
 
READ ARTICLE

DRC MEDIA PLACEMENTS: 230

image

Prediction of population behavior in hurricanes

EXPERT: Prosper Kosi Anyidoho
FEATURED IN: No longer available — Friday, April 1, 2022
OVERVIEW: My new publication on the “Prediction of population behavior in hurricanes”
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Regional county-level housing inventory predictions and the effects on hurricane risk

EXPERT: Caroline Williams
FEATURED IN: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences — Wednesday, March 30, 2022
OVERVIEW: Regional hurricane risk is often assessed assuming a static housing inventory, yet a region’s housing inventory changes continually. Failing to include changes in the built environment in hurricane risk modeling can substantially underestimate expected losses. This study uses publicly available data and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model to forecast the annual number of housing units for each of 1000 individual counties in the southeastern United States over the next 20 years. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Here’s how disaster declarations work—and why aid takes so long

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: Southerly — Friday, February 18, 2022
OVERVIEW: Last year, 58 major natural disasters hit the United States. Twenty-one of those disasters caused $1 billion or more in damage, making 2021 the third costliest year for natural disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year’s were also the deadliest since 2011. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

How Bitcoin Adoption Could Bring Major Prosperity to Puerto Rico

EXPERT: Christopher Tharp
FEATURED IN: Bitcoin Magazine — Sunday, January 30, 2022
OVERVIEW: By 2017, I was peripherally aware of the existence of Bitcoin as an idea, though it remained unknown to me as a global phenomenon. I had yet to learn about Bitcoin as the antifragile and sovereign monetary system able to compete globally at scale with the U.S. dollar — as the political economic worldview grounded in anarcho-capitalist, “cypherpunk” philosophies of power, value, individual autonomy and mutualist community sovereignty. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Initial Assessment Report

EXPERT: Eileen Young
FEATURED IN: FEMA — Thursday, December 23, 2021
OVERVIEW: FEMA’s IAR reviews the first several months of the COVID-19 response. I helped in this as a contractor on the survey team, reviewing early surveys done in the regions, working with my supervisor to develop and conduct the FEMA-wide survey, and taking point on all the survey analytics. I also wrote the data callout on PDF page 70 of the IAR, but mostly I did the survey stuff. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Hurricane Ida destroyed affordable rental units, hundreds of families still can’t find new ones

EXPERT: Jennifer Trivedi
FEATURED IN: The Philadelphia Inquirer — Thursday, December 9, 2021
OVERVIEW: “If you’re already in a precarious situation financially … that narrow slice of availability can get erased,” said Jennifer Trivedi, a faculty member at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

A Disastrous Book Collection: How a Tornado Inspired a Student’s Journey

EXPERT: Logan Gerber-Chavez
FEATURED IN: — Tuesday, November 16, 2021
OVERVIEW: First in a series of articles highlighting the winners of the third annual Seth Trotter Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the University of Delaware Library. Fourth-year doctoral student in the Disaster Science and Management Program at the University of Delaware, Logan Gerber-Chavez collection recounting stories of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, mining spills, climate change, toxic chemical exposure, pandemics and more. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

Newark rally calls for action on climate change

EXPERT: Sarah DeYoung
FEATURED IN: Newark Post Online — Monday, November 8, 2021
OVERVIEW: More than 100 demonstrators gathered in Newark’s Kells Park on Sunday during a rally calling for action on climate change. The rally was planned to coincide with the COP26 Climate Summit in Scotland, where world leaders have gathered to discuss ways to combat climate change. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

New study shows pandemic response has swamped workforce and crippled other services

EXPERT: Jennifer Horney
FEATURED IN: UDaily — Thursday, October 21, 2021
OVERVIEW: The cruel impact of COVID-19, the virus that emerged in late 2019 and has claimed 5 million lives to date, is chronicled in daily headlines. It has robbed us of loved ones, jobs, plans and so much more. The impact on those who treat the sick and dying has been the focus of much study and the exhaustion of health care workers pulling extra shifts and covering for inadequate staffing is well documented. …
 
READ ARTICLE

image

All Animals Must Be Safe and Sound During Disasters

EXPERT: Sarah DeYoung
FEATURED IN: Psychology Today — Friday, September 17, 2021
OVERVIEW: I recently read a riveting and most important book by Drs. Sarah DeYoung and Ashley Farmer titled All Creatures Safe and Sound: The Social Landscape of Pets in Disasters, in which the authors offer, “a comprehensive study of what goes wrong in our disaster response that shows how people can better manage pets in emergencies—from the household level to the large-scale, national level,” and conducted on-the-ground research at seven recent disasters in the United States. …
 
READ ARTICLE