Sunny Wescott has been recognized by the United States Society on Dams (USSD) with the Public Safety, Security, and Emergency Management (PSSEM) Around Dams Recognition. This award highlights individuals, organizations, or projects making significant contributions to safety, security, and emergency preparedness related to dams, levees, and other water retention structures.
About the Award
The PSSEM award recognizes a range of achievements in the dam safety field, including:
- Developing innovative approaches to public safety, security, or emergency management for dam projects and levees.
- Leading or supporting PSSEM education initiatives within the dam industry.
- Actively contributing to industry committees, working groups, and collaborative efforts.
- Establishing new safety and security standards for industry adoption.
- Sharing lessons learned and best practices to prevent incidents.
- Promoting personnel training and awareness in PSSEM.
- Demonstrating excellence through case studies, model programs, and best practice examples.
The USSD’s awards program honors individuals and organizations whose work advances the safety, resilience, and operational excellence of the nation’s water infrastructure. Recipients are recognized during the USSD Annual Conference, a national gathering of engineers, safety officials, and policymakers.
Sunny Wescott is the Federal Emergency Response Official Chief Meteorologist for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), specializing in national extreme weather hazards and climatological studies with direct impacts on public and private sector critical infrastructure. As the only Chief Meteorologist across DHS, she pioneered a new approach to evaluating extreme weather implications for critical infrastructure across all sectors and regions, including international partnerships.
Wescott’s role integrates meteorological science into critical infrastructure risk management. She develops event-specific and localized extreme weather analyses, collaborates with stakeholders and infrastructure operators, and provides tools and products to improve resilience before, during, and after disasters. Her background includes serving as Lead Meteorologist in the U.S. Air Force, where she was recognized as a subject matter expert in drought, wildfires, tropical cyclones, winter storms, and other hazards.
(AI was used in part to facilitate this article.)
