UA_Engineer_25_FINAL_spreads (1) - Flipbook - Page 5
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or many Alabamians, April 27, 2011, is a day that is etched in their memory.
A day marked by widespread devastation as more than 60 tornadoes ripped
through the state of Alabama, violently disrupting communities and causing
unimaginable loss. One of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes of
the outbreak was an EF4 multi-vortex tornado that touched down in parts of
Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, claiming 64 lives and leaving an indelible mark on
the areas and individuals that were affected.
While the Tuscaloosa tornado and its
aftermath undoubtedly brought signi昀椀cant
and incomprehensible change to the city,
its occurrence served as an unlikely source
of motivation for some. It presented the
opportunity to focus on groundbreaking
storm-related research in hopes of ensuring
that communities across the globe are
better prepared for severe weather and
its oftentimes unavoidable impact.
FROM DESTRUCTION
TO DETERMINATION
The impact of the Tuscaloosa tornado was
deeply personal for Dr. Patrick “Shane”
Crawford, an assistant professor in the
civil, construction and environmental
engineering department. In 2011, he
was a junior at The University of Alabama
studying civil engineering. As he huddled
in the conference room at his student job in
the Provost’s Of昀椀ce on the day of the storm,
he was entirely unaware of just how much
the events that transpired would affect the
trajectory of his education and career. From
hours of sheltering and listening to wailing
weather sirens to surveying the debrisladen city and helping his grandmother
repair the damage to her home, Crawford
witnessed 昀椀rsthand the far-reaching effects
of the tornado and resolved to do something
about it. After earning his bachelor’s
degree, Crawford decided to further his
education. He pursued both his master’s and
Ph.D. at UA, focusing his graduate research
on the resilience of communities that face
natural hazards.
“I sought to look at not only reducing the
impact of the damage but also understanding
how the direct impact to physical
infrastructure affects social systems,
economic systems and communities,”
Crawford said. “I wanted to understand the
cascading effect these natural hazards have
on all of the interdependent systems within a
community and share that information with
the public so that local decision-makers
could understand how the hazard mitigation
policies they make affect the trajectory of
the community.”
Using the Tuscaloosa tornado as a case
study for his dissertation, Crawford closely
studied the city’s recovery and rebuilding
efforts. Shortly after 昀椀nishing his Ph.D.,
he completed a postdoctoral fellowship
with the National Institute of Standards
and Technology before transitioning into a
two-year role with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
“At FEMA, we were working to help get
tornado standards into model building codes
and to encourage states and jurisdictions
to adopt building codes in hazard-prone
areas that did not require them,” he said.
“Historically, engineers were never required
to design buildings for tornadoes, but in
recent years that has changed due to new
science provided by tornado researchers.”
Crawford’s research and work in the
昀椀eld ultimately led him back to UA in 2023,
when he accepted a position as an assistant
professor in the College of Engineering. In
this role, he has continued his work related
to building codes, analyzing structures in
countless cities after storms to determine if
they are meeting performance levels or if their
designs need to be updated. While the goal
is for cities to be prepared before a weather
event ever occurs, Crawford underscored the
importance of using every storm to inform
future decisions and safety protocols.
“You never want a disaster to happen,
but one of the things we always say is ‘we
never want to waste a disaster,’” Crawford
noted. “If there’s something we can learn
in the aftermath of a disaster to prevent
something similar from happening in the
future, that’s when we go out and conduct
the post-event data collection about the
performance of structures.”
In addition to championing cities
to adopt safer, updated codes, he also
conducts predictive research on storm
outcomes. Using state-of-the-art computer
FALL 2025 | CAPSTONE ENGINEER | 5
