Seminar Series
Keith Porter: Helping Homeowners Invest in Resilience
September 22, 2025, 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
We know many practical, cost-effective ways to retrofit existing homes to resist earthquakes and other disasters. But few people invest, perhaps because the homeowner pays while others benefit. Dr. Keith Porter (Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction) will present a possible aid to closing the resilience investment gap: multilateral incentivization. That means multiple coordinated incentives from co-beneficiaries to help the homeowner pay for retrofit. It might even be highly profitable for a homeowner to invest in resilience. Join Dr. Porter on Monday, September 22, as he explains the potential benefits of multilateral incentivization and discusses the pilot test of the concept being developed in Calgary and Edmonton.
About Keith Porter
Dr. Keith Porter serves as chief engineer of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, an institute of Western University. He is a structural engineer specializing in the engineering economics of disaster risk reduction. A California native, he now lives in London, Ontario and hopes one day for Canadian citizenship.