In November, I attended the co-located Disasters Expo USA and Resilient City Expo at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston — two major events that brought together hundreds of professionals working at the intersection of disaster preparedness, emergency response, infrastructure planning, and urban resilience. Together, these expos created a dynamic national forum for collaboration, where engineers, policymakers, sustainability advocates, and innovators shared ideas on how to prepare communities for the challenges of a changing climate.

While many attendees gravitated toward the keynote sessions and fireside conversations, I spent most of my day on the exhibition floor, exploring the vendor booths and speaking with people behind the latest technologies and materials that are reshaping how cities respond to crises and rebuild stronger afterward. For me, the magic of this event was in seeing tangible, real-world applications — tools and ideas that move resilience beyond theory into practice.