Washington, D.C. — February 17, 2021 – Today, Disaster Tech and The Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware have been selected as Stage 1 awardees of the Civic Innovation Challenge, a national research and action competition in the smart and connected communities domain. Their project focuses on the development of an operational and next-generation decision support tool called, the Integrated Scenario-based Evacuation (ISE) framework. The project collaborators also include several emergency managers from North Carolina and Texas, and researchers from UNC Chapel Hill, Stony Brook University, Cornell University and the University of Oklahoma.
The ISE framework will dramatically advance emergency managers’ ability to manage hurricane evacuations effectively and efficiently. The team has been awarded $50,000 to support the refinement of their project and has the opportunity to compete for awards of up to $1 million to support project implementation. In addition to advancing emergency managers’ ability to manage hurricane evacuations effectively and efficiently, the ISE framework will also help emergency managers decide when and where to issue official evacuation orders as a hurricane approaches land, in a way that accounts for the dynamic and uncertain nature of the situation.
“We’re honored to be partnered with The Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware as well as Cornell, Stonybrook, North Carolina, and University of Oklahoma to develop the next-generation decision support platform for hurricane and evacuation decision-making,” said Sean Griffin, CEO and co-founder of Disaster Tech. “There has historically been a lack of science-based innovation in emergency management, and the ISE framework is one example of how Disaster Tech is committed to addressing this issue.”
The Civic Innovation Challenge supports ready-to-implement pilot projects that have the potential to produce scalable, sustainable, and transferable solutions to address community-identified challenges in the mobility and resilience domains. The competition is funded with $11 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Project teams comprise civic partners—such as local, state and tribal government officials, and non-profit and community leaders—working together with researchers.
At the end of Stage 1, NSF will select, through a merit-review process, a number of Stage 2 awardees who will each receive awards of up to $1 million to support project implementation. More information about the competition and the Stage 1 winners can be found at nsfcivicinnovation.org/stage-1-awardees/
About Disaster Tech
Disaster Tech, a veteran-owned public benefit company, offers data science and decision science technologies for situational awareness, operational coordination, and risk management before, during, and after disasters. Disaster Tech’s goal is to save lives, protect the environment, and build resilient communities by providing the most sophisticated, advanced analytics and distributed high-performance computing platform on the planet. Find more information at https://www.disastertech.com/
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