Professor Laska's area of expertise is environmental sociology. She is director of the Center for Hazards, Assessment, Response and Technology (CHART). Professor Laska is also the past president of the Southern Sociological Society and the SWS-S. She received the 2000 ASA Environment and Technology Section achievement award.

As part of her work at CHART, Professor Laska is working in Louisiana to understand risk, increase safety, and facilitate recovery from this fall’s catastrophic events. One project involves working with FEMA’s program of Repetitive Flood Loss to provide data and assist local parishes in reducing flood risk to their homes and areas. The project has discovered that repeatedly-flooded structures are found in clusters and thus, the response must be spread across local areas, not by individual home. This research is part of the response to support the long-term recovery of the New Orleans area.

A second project, entitled Participatory Action Research and supported by the NSF, tests a method of enhancing the marginalized communities’ capacity to handle natural hazards. It involves collaboration among academics, practitioners, and residents to support improving the capacity and resiliency of at-risk communities. Working with the Native American community of Grand Bayou, Louisiana, CHART has applied sociological research to allow the marginalized community to negotiate with FEMA and other government agencies in order to take responsibility for its response to Katrina. This participatory approach has been proven to build community resiliency, Laska explained.

A third project involves the use of a traditional social science methodology – the survey and the data it generates – to plan for an evacuation. Partnering with parish emergency managers, Laska related how Susan Howell, director of the University New Orleans Survey Research Center, conducted surveys that allowed emergency managers to understand how residents evaluated risk, what plans residents make or did not make, and what aspects of the residents’ thinking ran contrary to what the scientists knew about safety and evacuation experiences. For example, most of the population believes they will remain safe by staying in their homes during a category three hurricane.