Contact
Professor, Construction Engineering
Department of Civil, Environmental, & Construction Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering
Texas Tech University
Ali is a Professor of Construction Engineering at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on modelling the dynamics of post-disaster housing and household recovery and exploring internal and external factors contributing to them.
Ali's work includes developing an agent-based model of collective housing recovery that was recognized with a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2015 and multiple other research studies on post-disaster relocation.
He is the Principal Investigator of the Center of Excellence in Climate Resilient Equitable Housing (CECREH) which received $3.2M USD from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This research center aims to evaluate how specific communities have experienced recurrent and unequal exposure to extreme historical climate events. The Center's research focuses on:
- Assessing the risk of climate change to under-served communities
- Building capacity
- Exploring resilient plans and policies for climate risks
These studies, apart from their predictive capabilities, offer valuable insights into individuals' predispositions toward relocation. This aspect assumes particular significance in the context of managed retreat, where understanding relocation inclinations becomes a key area of concern.
Select Publications
- Nejat, A., Solitare, L., Pettitt, E., & Mohsenian-Rad, H. (2022). Equitable community resilience: The case of winter storm Uri in Texas. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 77.
- Cong, Z., Nejat, A., Liang, D., Pei, Y., & Javid, R.J. (2017). Individual relocation decisions after tornadoes: A multi-level analysis. Disasters 42 (2).
- Nejat, A., & Ghosh, S. (2016). LASSO model of postdisaster housing recovery: Case study of Hurricane Sandy. Natural Hazards Review 17 (3).
- Nejat, A., Cong, Z., & Liang, D. (2016). Family structures, relationships, and housing recovery decisions after Hurricane Sandy. Buildings 6 (2).
- Nejat, A., & Damnjanovic, I. (2012). Agent-based modeling of behavioral housing recovery following disasters. Computer-aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 27 (10).