UBC Applied Science

In the Media

The Narwhal
Managing extreme weather risk in B.C.

UBC SCARP Associate Professor Martino Tran is leading a group of researchers in an effort to help decision-makers in BC and beyond make more informed choices about housing and other infrastructure.

July 22, 2025
Journal Of Commerce
Is mass timber worth the risk? ‘It’s a birch of a problem’

Adam Rysanek, an associate professor at SALA debates that the risks of using mass timber – cost, supply chain, trades, maintenance – outweigh the benefits.

July 9, 2025
Journal Of Commerce
Will the City of Vancouver’s recent changes spur new housing construction?

UBC SALA professor Patrick Condon comments on the potential positive outcomes of the recently approved initiatives that will support development and help housing projects in Vancouver.

July 4, 2025
STOREYS
"An extraordinary power grab": BC pushes ahead with bills 15 & 13

Erick Villagomez, Part-Time Lecturer at UBC SCARP critiques the newest legislation on local planning and zoning bylaws in Britsh Columbia.

June 2, 2025
Journal Of Commerce
In Vancouver ‘the boom bloom is off the real estate rose’

UBC SALA Professor Patrick Condon explores Vancouver's housing crisis and connects it to the decline in investor confidence worldwide.

May 22, 2025
Vancouver Sun
Opinion: When local planning becomes provincial command

SCARP's Erick Villagomez cites SALA Professor Patrick Condon's research on housing and affordability in his thoughts about new provincial planning policies.

May 12, 2025
CTV News
BC prepares for natural disasters as national emergency alert system tested

Dr. Carlos Ventura, Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility, comments on updates that BC has made in preparation for a major earthquake.

May 8, 2025
The Hill Times
Engineers of the future need to be trained in disaster adaptation, mitigation, and recovery

Whether it’s climate change, natural disasters, global pandemics, energy-grid failures, or mass migration, Canada must become more disaster-proofed and disaster-prepared, says UBC Applied Science Dean James Olson.

May 7, 2025
Vancouver Sun
Why experts say federal election housing platforms are varying degrees of unrealistic

SCARP Professor Emeritus Penny Gurstein comments on the housing goals from Canada's main three parties in advance of the federal election.

April 25, 2025
Maclean's
How to fix Canada’s housing crisis

James Connolly, SCARP assistant professor, contributes to a list of twenty-five bold ways to make Canada affordable again.

April 2, 2025

UBC is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people (Musqueam; which means 'People of the River Grass') and Syilx Okanagan Nation. The land has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam and Syilx peoples, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history and traditions from one generation to the next.