Kaifa Lu is a postdoctoral research associate at Texas Tech University’s Center of Excellence in Capacity-building for REsilient Housing (CECREH), where his research interests focus on high-resolution climate modeling, social vulnerability, hazard exposure, disaster recovery, capacity building, and housing & community resilience. His ongoing work develops dashboards that facilitate the visualization and comparison of disaster recovery funding across different disaster types, governmental agencies, and programs, as well as the geovisualization of housing exposure and vulnerability under future climate scenarios. He is also working on CECREH’s projects: (1) 1B – Projecting Future Hazard Risk Exposure for Vulnerable Texas Communities Using High-Resolution Hazard Models and Social Vulnerability Indices; and (2) 3B – Improving State Action Plans through the Integration of Housing, Climate, and Geospatial Data.

His research also integrates urban analytics, transportation systems, and spatial data science to address the emerging challenges of mobility, accessibility, and resilience in cities. He holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida, dual master’s degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering (University of Florida) and Transportation Engineering (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), and a bachelor’s degree in Transportation Engineering (Central South University). He has led and contributed to ten funded projects (e.g., FDOT, NSF, HUD) that bridge planning, engineering, housing, and artificial intelligence to inform data-driven policy and design.