Hiba Baroud

Media Appearances

• Nigeria was already facing a food crisis – then flooding hit

  Hiba Baroud, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, said: “[Food insecurity] is already an existing problem and so having the floodwater submerge all this farmland will lead to a major loss of food production for this season and also for future seasons.

  October 25th, 2022

• Nigeria's flooding spreads to the Delta, upending lives and livelihoods

  "Climate change is playing a big role in this," said Hiba Baroud, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. "But the other component is...the vulnerability of the infrastructure. This is how we end up in a disaster like this one."

  October 20th, 2022

• Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian

  Yet future resilience will very likely require a combination of both hard and soft shoreline defenses, said Hiba Baroud, who teaches civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.

  October 3rd, 2022

• Severe weather events here to stay in Tennessee thanks to climate change

  Vanderbilt University Civil Engineer Assistant Professor Hiba Baroud invested much of her career as a civil engineer trying to prepare cities for changes ahead. "We are interested in understanding how infrastructure and people react and respond, behave during disasters. And these disasters happen as a result of a hazard which is the natural hazard, in that case, that is the weather, but also, it's when that natural hazard intersects with our vulnerability as people or the vulnerability of infrastructure when it's not well maintained. [The] intersection of these two can lead to a disaster," she explained.

  January 19th, 2022

• How Government Decisions Left Tennessee Exposed to Deadly Flooding

  “These extreme weather events will become more intense and more frequent,” said Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who specializes in resilience. “We need to be more proactive, and think about ways to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of these events.”

  August 26th, 2021

• In aftermath of devastating floods, Germans wonder what more could have been done

  Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, said that early-warning systems and evacuation plans are “crucial” to saving lives during extreme weather events, especially storms and floods, but they need to constantly evolve.

  July 20th, 2021

• More dams will collapse as aging infrastructure can’t keep up with climate change

  “A lot of the country’s infrastructure systems were built during a time when these kind of weather events were considered rare and didn’t present a significant threat,” said Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.

  May 21st, 2020

• ‘Everything is gone’: Japan left reeling from worst storm in decades

  “Economic impact in disasters can quickly cascade through different sectors of the economy,” says Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. “Production can be affected either by direct impact from the disaster or through interdependent effects resulting from disruptions in the supply chain. “Local and national authorities need to account for all these aspects in assessing the damage to identify the best recovery strategy for the city.”

  October 19th, 2019

• Japan Questions Flooding Defenses After Severe Weekend Typhoon

  “Warmer ocean temperatures and higher sea level are expected to intensify the impact of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons,” said Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. She said, however, that researchers don’t know yet whether the number of hurricanes is increasing.

  October 15th, 2019

• Florida bridge that collapsed was touted as 'engineering feat come to life'

  Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, does not have specific knowledge of the bridge that collapsed in Miami but told ABC News that there are "a number of reasons why a bridge might fail." "At this point, we would have to have a plan to go back and look at the design parameters that were used to design this bridge," Baroud told ABC News.

  March 15th, 2018