Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud was in South Florida last week with a team from MIT developing an online interactive educational multimedia platform to raise awareness around the impacts of climate change on urban development and design.

Masoud and Miho Mazaareuw, director of the Urban Risk Lab at MIT and associate professor in its Department of Architecture, have been working with a case study team, which includes the case study initiative manager Danya Sherman, creative director Jeff Soyk, case writer Laura Winig, and video producer and editor Paige Mazurek.

While in Florida, the team interviewed key county officials, developers, law and policy makers, engineers, planners and designers, and captured footage of the region's vulnerable urban fabric and dynamic landscape.

South Florida's growing population is putting huge development pressures on its already fragile environment. Severe infrastructural and environmental challenges brought upon by climate change are facing its municipalities.

"Our standards need to evolve to proactively embed new resiliency paradigms and metrics in the planning and design of any project," said Dr. Jennifer Jurado, Broward County's chief climate resilience officer and director of the Environmental Planning and Community Resilience Division. "We must fight water with water."

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