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Linda Waters, a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the winner of the department’s 2025 Best Doctoral Research Award.
Waters, whose advisor is Associate Professor Allison Reilly, won the award for her dissertation, Building Back Greener: Energy-efficiency Transitions in the Residential Building Stock Following Floods, which examines the potential benefits of making energy-efficient upgrades when homes are renovated or rebuilt following disasters.
Long-term benefits can result from such upgrades, but comparatively few homeowners currently take advantage of this window of opportunity, Waters found. Her study, which utilized probabilistic and other types of models, provides the first quantitative assessment of adopting a greener approach to residential rebuilding.
Responding to her selection, Waters expressed gratitude to her mentors, the department, and the UMD academic community.
“I am so honored and grateful to receive this award and for the opportunity to share this important work with others,” Waters said. “I would like to acknowledge and thank my advisor, Dr. Reilly; my committee; the research group; the faculty and staff of the university; and my fellowship sponsors, whose support and mentorship were critical in my training as a researcher and the creation of this work.”
Waters has received numerous accolades while pursuing her graduate work. In 2023, she was awarded an Innovation in Buildings (IBUILD) Graduate Research Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Earlier in her academic career at UMD, she won the Best Master's Research Award for her thesis, When Federal Disaster Aid Doesn't Suffice: An Analysis Considering Disaster Aid Relief Relative to Sustained Damage.
Below is an abstract of her award-winning Ph.D. dissertation.
Linda Waters
Building Back Greener: Energy-efficiency transitions in the residential building stock following floods.
Under climate change, global temperatures are increasing and extreme temperature events are becoming more frequent and severe. Subsequent demands for space conditioning are growing, which continue to drive up the energy consumption and emissions of the residential building stock. At the same time, the frequency and severity of natural disasters are also increasing with climate change. These disasters result in significant turnover within the residential building stock, although the majority of homeowners rebuild their homes to previous conditions. To date, no research has systematically nor quantitatively assessed the potential impacts of “greening” residential rebuilding after disasters, nor how local climate and evolving risks influence net benefits.
My research addresses this significant gap through three studies. First, we combine the building energy and disaster recovery spaces to develop a novel simulation model grounded in contemporary risk science. Our model combines physics-informed, building-level energy modeling, probabilistic flood modeling, and homeowner decision-making to evaluate outcomes for Harris County, Texas, under multiple reconstruction scenarios. Second, to evaluate the penetration and impact of post-disaster energy-efficiency modifications under climate change, we build upon this model to additionally incorporate rational decision makers, climate change-influenced precipitation and flood events, and climate change-influenced weather forecasting. Third, we investigate the impact of various potential post-disaster reconstruction policies, such as incentives and subsidies that encourage the implementation of energy-efficiency upgrades, within the model to better understand how federal and local policies may realistically improve post-disaster reconstruction outcomes.
Overall, we find that the post-disaster reconstruction window presents a critically underutilized opportunity to fundamentally transform energy consumption, emissions, and peak load outcomes within the residential building stock. These outcomes are particularly compelling under more severe climate futures and with greater homeowner engagement, yet this potential is rarely harnessed. Current policies often fail to capitalize on this window, resulting in a missed chance to build back better and more sustainably. To ensure lasting change, we find that proactive policies, particularly those aimed at lower-income households, that incentivize and mandate energy-efficient upgrades during post-disaster rebuilding are needed. Such policies are effective at increasing upgrade penetration, yielding meaningful reductions in energy consumption, emissions, and peak loads in the building stock, and are more cost-effective than other energy efficiency programs explored in the literature. By acknowledging and actively addressing this gap, policymakers can transform disaster recovery from a reactive process into a catalyst for long-term energy sustainability and climate resilience.
June 10, 2025
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