Protecting our city
By: J. David Chapman/October 6, 2016
Last week, I wrote about efforts by professionals in the real estate industry to protect the built environment from earthquakes. This week adds another concern and focus to architects, engineers, and builders in our industry.
The effect of terrorist activity, or threat and fear of terrorist activity, is having a huge effect on the profitability of users of the built environment worldwide. When the users of the buildings and public places we build and create are affected, property owners and developers must listen, learn, and make changes to accommodate those needs.
David McIlhatton is a visiting scholar at the University of Central Oklahoma. McIlhatton currently leads the Securing Societies Research Group at Coventry University, just outside of London, which focuses on protecting society and the economy from the threat, risk and harm of security challenges.
Growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and witnessing the devastating results of decades of terrorist activity has motivated him toward excelling in research related to understanding and mitigating issues concerning human security. He has spent three weeks in Oklahoma researching and presenting to local groups of law enforcement, real estate developers and risk management and insurance professionals.
McIlhatton had the opportunity to tour the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum last week. Kari Watkins, executive director; Lynne Porter, director of education; and Helen Stiefmiller, collections manager, provided an amazing tour giving McIlhatton a behind-the-scenes perspective of the museum and archives. Considering his area of expertise and research, he was familiar with the Murrah Federal Building bombing; however, he gained a whole new understanding of how our community recovered and the work the memorial and museum staff do on a daily basis to ensure that society never forgets what happened on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City.
McIlhatton will be back in at UCO in 2017 to continue research related to protecting the built environment from specific security issues and threats, particularly around real estate and risk management and insurance. The results of the research within Oklahoma will be tabulated and reported at the 2017 Commercial Real Estate Summit on March 30 at the University of Central Oklahoma. The results will then be added to research performed in other cities around the world to form a global research report.
J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).