Mikhail Chester (Arizona State University)

Join NCTSPM for this Transportation Speaker Series event, featuring Dr. Mikhail Chester, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University . Dr. Chester will be speaking on the topic of "Transportation in the Southwest: Heat and Flooding in a Climate Impacted Future".

ABSTRACT: The Southwest represents some of the youngest and fastest growing cities in the US, with expanding public transit networks and some of the most severe forecasts for climate change. With growing populations and investments in transit, there is pressing need to plan and operate transportation systems that can maintain services during extreme events and protect passengers. To address these challenges, transportation agencies must recognize that design and operation guidelines are often associated with historical conditions, raising questions about vulnerability in a non-stationary future. A suite of projects will be presented showing the challenges and opportunities for transportation systems in a future with more frequent and intense heat and flooding. The projects will highlight how current design practices produce infrastructure vulnerabilities, climate change requires new models for planning and operating transportation systems, and transportation systems can be positioned to reduce rider’s vulnerability.

BIO: Mikhail Chester is an Assistant Professor in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University where he runs a research laboratory focused on studying the resilience to climate change and sustainability of urban infrastructure systems. His work spans a number of infrastructure systems with an emphasis on transportation. Using stochastic models to characterize infrastructure component performance and failure, failure trees, and simulations, Chester and his students characterize the performance of infrastructure systems under extreme heat and flooding. Chester is the co-leader of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network, a consortium of 10 cities across North and South America working together to develop adaptation strategies for urban infrastructure from extreme events. He maintains a body of research focused on life cycle assessment of transportation systems.  

Chester is an Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part D, ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, and the Journal of Industrial Ecology. Prior to ASU he was a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies. He received a Ph.D. (2008) from UC Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He received a M.S. (2003) from Carnegie Mellon University. He received a dual degree B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy in 2002 from Carnegie Mellon University.