Dr. David Bristow studies how the component parts of our infrastructure systems and communities interact, how we can make them more resilient to shocks and stresses and how we can make them more sustainable. He works on systems planning and decision making in communities' engineering through advancement and integration of theory, methodology and practice in systems engineering and risk management via ecological, network, control system, optimization and thermodynamic approaches from first principles.

Specific research areas of interest include: recovery planning for resilience, climate change adaption and mitigation, and multi-objective decision making for resilience and sustainability.

Bristow holds a PhD in Engineering and a Master of Science from the University of Toronto, and the Professional Engineer (P.Eng) designation.