Georgia Institute of Technology School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Can you hide a building from a stress wave, like an earthquake or even some kind of blast or explosion? If that kind of “cloaking” were possible, it could shape how we design critical structures like nuclear power plants. Arash Yavari has started a new four-year, half-million dollar federally funded project to lay the mathematical foundations for that kind of technology and explore if it’s theoretically possible while still respecting the laws of physics.

The rain and flooding from Hurricane Matthew threatens to wash away the makeshift communities that have sprouted on Haiti’s hillsides, making life worse for a country still recovering from a devastating earthquake six years ago. Associate Professor Hermann Fritz told the public radio program Marketplace the shacks people live in on those hills are vulnerable to flooding and landslides.

Ahead of a Washington D.C. roundtable August 5 on disaster preparedness, Reginald DesRoches and Wayne Clough talked to the Georgia Tech News Center about the challenges for many of the country's communities. The conversation comes just a few weeks before the 10-year anniversary of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans and ravaged the Gulf Coast.