His academic interests focus on how infrastructure, environmental outcomes and neighborhood forces interact to affect people’s everyday lives and their lives during times of extreme events. He has an environmental justice research agenda and his main areas of specialization include infrastructure planning and management, environmental planning, and hazard and disaster mitigation. He draws upon equity planning, social vulnerability and environmental justice theory to ensure that low-income and communities of color are planned and accounted for in light of natural hazards and investigates how the inventory, condition, and distribution of public infrastructures can modify hazard exposures and resulting disaster impacts.