Participant Uses GIS to Map Lessons Learned in Emergency and Disaster Management
Chelsea DeCapua
When disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami strike, ensuring adequate response time and resources can be the greatest obstacles facing emergency responders on hand to provide aid to victims. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rochester Institute of Technology student Chelsea DeCapua is spending the summer researching ways to mitigate such obstacles through an internship provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Scholarship and Fellowship Program. The program, which is managed for DHS by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, is designed to support and encourage the next generation of scientists and engineers to pursue research related to the agency’s mission of improving homeland security.
DeCapua, who is majoring in information technology and pursuing a certificate in emergency and disaster management, is using advances in geographic information systems and geospatial technology to help develop a resource that will define best practices for disaster preparation, emergency response and recovery based on post Katrina relief efforts.
“Right now, we’re working on a larger project with Mississippi State University and it looks into Hurricane Katrina and what lessons we’re trying to learn from that and develop a national resource that will administer improvements for communication and things along those lines related to geospatial technology.”
Beyond simply mapping routes, landforms and waterways, geospatial technology is a prevalent tool used in emergency response and national preparedness. It can help reduce disaster response time by building an integrated infrastructure of power and water utilities, schools, hospitals, residential areas and other locations.
The end result allows emergency planners to make informed decisions about the resources available to response crews whose primary goal is to provide assistance to those impacted by natural and man-made disasters.
As a volunteer with an organization that traveled to Beaumont, Texas, to provide disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Rita, DeCapua witnessed how important creating an infrastructure can be to disaster and relief efforts. The experience showed her how information technology and disaster management go hand-in-hand.
“With the information technology background, that’s studying how information flows efficiently from point A to point B, so in emergency and disaster response information is needed, but there’s so much miscommunication that goes on that no one knows how to get it from one place to another.”
After DeCapua completes her research, the Vermont native will return to RIT for her final year, however her experience with the DHS program at ORNL has been one she will never forget.
“The facilities are amazing, like the computing facility that I’m in is great and my mentor has been awesome. I actually have a couple of people who are helping me through the project and they’ve pointed to resources and shown me where to look, but they’ve also given me enough flexibility to go off on my own and develop my own research.”
Since 2003, the DHS Scholarship and Fellowship Program has sponsored more than 450 undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in areas of science and engineering. DHS provides tuition and fees to scholars and fellows, in addition to access to career enhancing research opportunities with highly qualified scientific personnel within the homeland security research enterprise.