Modern cities are becoming increasingly complex, interconnected, and densely populated. As a result, societies continue to face preventable deaths and injuries across transport systems, crowded places, disasters, and other urban environments despite major advances in engineering and technology. Many of these risks cannot be addressed through improvements to physical or digital infrastructure alone. They also require a better understanding of the human element: how people perceive risk, make decisions, and behave in complex environments. Associate Professor Haghani’s research addresses this challenge by generating the science, empirical evidence, engineering tools, and digital solutions needed to integrate the behavioural and engineering dimensions of urban safety.
Associate Professor Milad Haghani is an engineer with a keen interest in social science and a public safety researcher at the University of Melbourne. He studies social infrastructure just as much as he studies physical and digital infrastructure, recognising that safer cities depend as much on people as they do on technology and engineering. His work develops the science, mathematical tools, digital solutions, and empirical evidence needed to reduce preventable death and injury in transport systems, crowded places, disasters, and other risk-prone urban environments.
Milad is passionate about translating safety science into knowledge that people can understand and apply in everyday life. Through media, public engagement, professional training, and the international Crowd Safety Summit that he founded, he works to make complex science accessible to communities, practitioners, and policymakers. His research has informed policy, professional practice, and public debate in Australia and internationally. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers, including in Science and Nature, but hopes his greatest contribution will be ensuring that his work translates into better policies and practices that make communities safer.