Keith Porter

Dr. Porter is chief engineer of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and adjunct research professor at Western University in London, Ontario. He helps governments and organizations improve disaster resilience. He led the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves studies for the National Institute of Building Sciences, finding that disaster mitigation avoids up to $13 in loss per $1 of cost. He led engineering research on four groundbreaking USGS planning scenarios: ShakeOut, ARkStorm, Tsunami, and HayWired. Thanks to ShakeOut, 1% of the world’s population annually prepares for earthquakes. His doctoral research helped lead to FEMA’s revolutionary performance-based seismic design guideline FEMA P-58. Notable clients and sponsors include the National Research Council of Canada, California Earthquake Authority, and Southern California Edison. He is a licensed professional engineer and fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute and of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He holds civil and structural engineering degrees from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Stanford University.