Urbano Fra Paleo Ph.D
University of Santiago de Compostela, Lugo, Spain
Email
Website
Urbano is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Extremadura, currently on leave at the Land Laboratory (LaboraTe) of the University of Santiago de Compostela since 2007. He is Visiting Professor at the University for Peace (UPEACE), Costa Rica. He worked at the US Geological Survey in Denver (1995) and Hawai’i (1999), and was Research Associate at The Environment Institute of the University of Denver (1996). In 2005 he was Fellow of the American Geographical Society Library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Dr. Fra has performed fieldwork in the United States, Mexico and Morocco, and taught at the University of Köln, Germany (2003), University of Marburg, Germany, (2002), University of Iceland, Iceland (2001) and Fachhochschule Neubrandenburg, Germany (1997).
His research interests lie in risk governance, particularly the development of criteria and methods to perform collaborative evaluation. His research is also focused on the analysis of mitigation and adaptation to risk from natural hazards. He is the editor of the book Building safer communities. Governance, spatial planning, and responses to natural hazards, published by IOS Press in 2009. His latest book, Riesgos naturales en Galicia El encuentro entre naturaleza y sociedad, published by the University of Santiago de Compostela Press in 2010, reviews natural hazards and human interaction in northwestern Spain. He currently is editing the book Risk governance: The articulation of hazard, politics and ecology for Springer.
Research Interests/Expertise: risk governance; natural hazards; mitigation and adaptation; sustainability; evaluation
Selected Publications
Sudmeier-Rieux, K., Fra Paleo, U., Garschagen, M., Estrella, M., Renaud, F.G., Jaboyedoff, M. (2013). Opportunities, incentives and challenges to risk sensitive land use planning. Lessons from Nepal, Spain and Vietnam. Background Paper prepared for the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Management 2013. UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Fra Paleo, U. (Ed.) (2009). Building Safer Communities. Risk Governance, Spatial Planning and Responses to Natural Hazards. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Calvo-Iglesias, M.S., Fra-Paleo, U., & Diaz-Varela, R.A. (2009). Changes in farming system and population as drivers of land cover and landscape dynamics: The case of enclosed and semi-openfield systems in Northern Galicia (Spain). Landscape and Urban Planning, 90(3-4), pp. 168-177.