“Our goal is to help them ‘bounce forward’ and make things better.” “We don’t want to simply help a community ‘bounce back’ to prior conditions,” she said. She worked to help them understand that this was the best time to set long-term goals and prepare for the next major earthquake.
Nikolaou recalled talking to decision-makers after the 2016 Ecuador earthquake, who were under tremendous pressure to make something happen fast to return life to normal.
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“You can have the best tools and the best financing at your disposal, but that doesn’t mean you are creating a better environment for people if you don’t think about the full impact of your decisions.” “Engineers have a responsibility to think about what we are doing and how we can make things better for our generation, and for generations to come,” Nikolaou said. One way Nikolaou is bringing major changes to natural disaster recovery is by encouraging engineers to rethink the way they approach earthquake resiliency … and not just in areas prone to seismic activity. “It reminds me of the responsibility we have to create safer places for people to live as civil engineers.” “It is heartbreaking when I see damage caused by natural hazards that could have been prevented, often just by common sense and proper education of the public,” Nikolaou said. In her role as a principal multi-hazards and geotechnical engineer in the New York office of WSP USA, she is often called to the front lines when a natural disaster strikes, as she did after Hurricane Sandy and in numerous earthquakes, including involvement with local agencies and reconnaissance organizations such as the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and the Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance Association (GEER). “That’s the beauty and the challenge of what I do – finding solutions to protect populations and help them emerge stronger from natural forces that can strike without warning.” “I have always had a curiosity about things that are hard to predict, and few things are as uncertain as earthquakes,” Nikolaou said. Living through this loss and its impact on her loved ones left an indelible impression on Nikolaou, who was motivated to dedicate her life’s work to fighting extreme events through engineering. She witnessed the devastating effects of earthquakes at a young age, when a strong tremor leveled her family’s home in central Greece … a place filled with happy memories of carefree summer vacations.
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