Michael T. Wilson is a policy researcher at RAND and a professor at the RAND School of Public Policy. He is a strategic planner who works with local, state, and federal governments to analyze risks to infrastructure and create frameworks to facilitate participatory decisionmaking. His recent efforts include optimization and visualization tools for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s 2023 and 2029 Master Plans, an Annual Risk Report and evaluability assessment of the Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, several analyses of the National Flood Insurance Program, and multiple installation resilience studies for the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Through tabletop exercises, advanced spatial analytic techniques, and interactive data visualizations, Wilson has also led foresight exercises for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, American Red Cross, and the International Joint Commission.
His prior professional experience at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates as a landscape architect included large-scale economic development and urban infrastructure projects in Toronto, ON; St. Louis, MO; and Austin, TX, and long-term planning in the New York-New Jersey region after Hurricane Sandy. He has independently published peer-reviewed research on emergency management, resilient building standards, and flood insurance. Previously, he was a summer fellow in the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, and he has held a mayoral appointment with the Boston Conservation Commission.
Wilson received his Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from MIT.
B.A. in environmental science & policy, Harvard University; MUP in urban planning, Harvard University; MLA in landscape architecture, Harvard University; Ph.D. in urban and regional planning, MIT
