Join us for our Stone Living Lab Seminar featuring Dr. Marccus Hendricks for a talk on how cascading risks, such as stormwater runoff, create emergent hazards that extend beyond traditional flooding to impact public health, housing, and well-being.
For this Stone Living Lab Seminar, we’ll be joined by Dr. Marccus Hendricks, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Environmental Planning at the University of Maryland for a talk examining how “cascading and emergent water risks” arise at the intersection of aging infrastructure, environmental variability, and social inequality. Drawing on research from the SIRJ (pronounced surge) Lab, Dr. Marccus Hendricks introduces conceptual frameworks that situate stormwater systems within broader social, political, and environmental contexts.
He demonstrates how cascading risks, such as stormwater runoff, sewer overflows, and basement backups, create emergent hazards that extend beyond traditional flooding to impact public health, housing, and well-being. The talk additionally highlights sensing technologies and advanced GIS modeling to track water and infrastructure, monitor performance, and assess real-time conditions.
Marccus D. Hendricks is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies and (Environmental) Planning at the University of Maryland (UMD), where he directs the Stormwater Infrastructure Resilience and Justice (SIRJ) Lab and holds affiliations in engineering and public health. In 2023, he served as Senior Advisor for Climate and Community Resilience in the inaugural Office of Environmental Justice at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
A leading scholar of environmental justice, infrastructure resilience, and water risks, Dr. Hendricks examines how social processes and development patterns shape hazardous environments that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. His work has been featured by the Associated Press, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, and Scientific American, among others.
Dr. Hendricks is a 2026–2027 Harvard Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow, former U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board member, author on the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, and a 2021 Grist 50 “Fixer.” He holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Sciences and M.P.H. from Texas A&M University.