Peacock, Walter Professor

Walter Gillis Peacock is professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2002. From August 2019 to August 2021 he served as the Program Director of the Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE) in the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Until the summer of 2019 he was Director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University (TAMU). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. He is internationally known for his research on disaster recovery, community resiliency, and social vulnerability. In 2009 he was awarded the Quarantelli Award for Social Science Disaster Theory, acknowledging significant theoretical work in disaster and hazards research. Between 2008 and 2012 he was the holder of the Rodney L. Dockery Endowed Professorship in Housing and the Homeless and in 2012 he was awarded the Sandy and Bryan Mitchell Master Builder Endowed Chair at Texas A&M. In 2014 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award in Research from Texas A&M, an award sponsored by the Association of Former Students. He has conducted research in Florida, Texas, California, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the former Yugoslavia, Italy, Turkey, and India. He has been PI or Co-PI on approximately 7 million dollars in external funding since joining TAMU with the majority of that funding coming from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). He has authored or co-authored 3 books and over a hundred journal articles, book chapters, research monographs, and professional papers. He has given briefings regarding household, housing, and community recovery following major natural disasters to local, state, and federal officials.