Join us for the latest in KCEM’s Professionals Webinar Series, continuing our theme of community-based preparedness and emergency management. In this webinar, we explore the role of storytelling as a tool for communicating hazard risk and strengthening community resilience. We know that effective emergency management relies on a whole-community approach, and while data and analysis are used to better understand hazards and disaster impacts, storytelling provides another powerful way to communicate risk – connecting information with lived experience.

Our guest speaker is Bob Freitag a Senior Instructor and Director of the Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research at the University of Washington Institute for Hazards Mitigation; He is the past Executive Director of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup and past member of the Association of State Floodplain Managers’ Board of Directors.  Bob is also a Certified Floodplain Manager. He has published many articles and written courses for FEMA and others concerning hazards mitigation and floodplain management and was lead author of “Floodplain Management: a new approach for a new era” (Island Press 2009). Before coming to the University, he had a 25-year career with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) serving as Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO); Public Assistance, Mitigation and Education Officer.

His latest book Resilient Shores: Adapting to Climate Change through Storytelling is framed as a Sherlock Holmes mystery, though not of who “done it,” but how a community solved the puzzle of adapting to a changing climate. The book encourages readers to confront crises by creating, telling, and retelling aspirational stories.