Planning for Resiliency: How the University of Chicago Is Supporting Disaster Response, Emergency Preparedness, and Critical Research
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 11am PT / 2pm ET
The increasing frequency of natural disasters and severe weather events is a growing concern for universities. Their impacts can disrupt operations, threaten infrastructure, and put students, faculty, and staff at risk.
Higher education institutions must be able to effectively withstand and recover from adverse incidents to maintain operational continuity and ensure access to services. Resiliency modeling can help organizations identify system dependencies that lead to cascading failures, calculate the risks posed by the threat environment, and assess the impact of possible mitigation measures.
Like many cities across the U.S., future climate projections for Chicago show an increasing risk of extreme heat and flooding, both of which often lead to secondary challenges from aging infrastructure, such as power and water utility outages. Recognizing the challenge of balancing campus growth against the need for enhanced resilience, the University of Chicago partnered with Affiliated Engineers (AEI) to produce a Utility Master Plan to support the Chicago campus’s disaster response, emergency preparedness, and critical research activities.
As part of the plan, the team developed an infrastructure resilience model to quantify risk in terms of probability, severity, and recoverability. The model incorporates recoverability as a key factor, evaluating the speed, cost, and effectiveness of restoring critical systems following an event, a consideration typically absent from traditional Utility Master Plans. By integrating risk reduction as a measurable metric in decision-making, this model ensured that business continuity and operational resilience were central to the planning process.
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About the presenters:
Joss Hurford PE, LEED AP BD+C, Building Performance Consultant, Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
Brian Bozell PE, LEED AP, Senior Director, Energy Programs, Energy Services and Sustainability, Facilities Services, The University of Chicago
Date: 11/13/25
Time: 11:00am PT