By Carrie Gates
In the face of climate change, a global pandemic, social inequity and unforeseen conflict, more and more areas of the world are confronting large-scale emergencies and natural disasters — often of a kind or at a magnitude they’ve never seen before.
Clinton Carlson, an associate professor of visual communication design at the University of Notre Dame, is exploring how design can help communities better prepare and respond when disaster strikes.
“I think it’s safe to say that going forward, we will all face different emergencies than we’ve ever faced before in our communities — and we can’t know what those disasters will look like,” Carlson said. “With climate change and other factors really disrupting our expectations of what can happen in an environment, it is really important that we not only improve our response to the emergencies that exist today, but also prepare for new challenges.”