MAE 298 SEMINAR: Co-Designing Mutual Aid Transportation for Disaster Resilience

Abstract: Communities today face mounting pressures of more frequent extreme weather events
like heat waves and wildfires, declining mental health, and increasing reliance on mutual aid. As
engineers, it is our duty to recognize that the infrastructure decisions we make today will shape
public health outcomes for decades. As such, these decisions must be made with communities,
not for them. This seminar demonstrates how to design resilient transportation systems through
community-based participatory research. By combining engineering expertise with direct
community input, this approach involves listening to residents’ lived experiences and translating
that knowledge into practical systems design. The goal here is to create and sustain community-based,
mutual aid transportation services that enhance accessibility and social connections under
any conditions, from everyday use to disaster response. This methodology is illustrated through
several California case studies, including transit hubs that double as disaster response centers,
shared mobility for rural caregivers, and hybrid healthcare access during wildfire displacement.
Attendees will gain guidance on how to collaborate effectively with communities to identify their
needs, transform community feedback into actionable design solutions, and expand engineering
success metrics to include human factors like wellbeing and social connection. This
interdisciplinary approach bridges infrastructure systems engineering, human-centered design
and socio-technical analysis to develop equitable, resilient transportation options that serve
priority populations effectively under both normal operations and extreme events.

Bio: Elisa Borowski is an assistant professor of transportation systems engineering in the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Irvine and a
proud member of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies and Black Thriving
Initiative. Professor Borowski’s research focuses on equitable resource access and resilience to
extreme events, with approaches including mixed methods and community-based participatory
research. Within the Transportation Research Board, Borowski is a member of the
Standing Committee on Implications of Transportation Choices and Access on Public Health.
She received her Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Northwestern University
with an emphasis in transportation systems analysis and planning, as well as a master of science
in civil engineering with a focus on structures and materials and a bachelor of arts in
anthropology with a second major in English from the University of New Mexico.