CECREH research on disaster-recovery program delivery and computational housing-recovery modeling was presented at the 13th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, held July 13–17, 2026, in Portland, Oregon.
Findings from A Cross-Case Comparison of CDBG-DR Program Implementation after the 2017 Disasters in California, Florida, and Texas were shared through a poster and lightning presentation. The research was conducted by Amin Sobhani, Ben Christopher Mann, Rodrigo Costa, and Ali Nejat.
The study examined how California, Florida, and Texas translated federal disaster-recovery funding into housing programs after the 2017 disasters. Using state Action Plans, substantial amendments, and Quarterly Performance Reports, the researchers compared how program design, administrative capacity, and implementation timelines affected the delivery of long-term housing assistance.
The analysis highlights how program design, administrative capacity, and implementation timelines shape the delivery of long-term housing recovery assistance.
The conference also included CECREH research on RAAbIT, an agent-based model for post-disaster housing recovery simulation developed by Rodrigo Costa, Ali Nejat, and Sara Hamideh. Using data that can become available within weeks of a disaster, the model represents households, insurers, contractors, and system-level constraints to explore how rebuilding may unfold under different conditions.
Read the peer-reviewed RAAbIT paper in the Documentation Hub
Presenting both studies connected CECREH’s work on recovery-program implementation with computational approaches that can support planning and policy analysis across different disaster contexts.