CIVIC-PG Track B Digital Twin-based Framework for Development of Schools as Smart & Connected Community Resilience Hubs

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

As the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report describes, climate change and the growing frequency and severity of disasters could soon outpace humanity's capacity to adapt. The severity of a disaster can be amplified by inadequate infrastructure investment, social marginalization, and a reduced capacity to adapt when a vulnerable community is impacted. Strengthening vulnerable communities’ resilience and capacity to adapt is, therefore, a key challenge for emergency managers and community leaders. In this NSF CIVIC-PG project, we develop a community-led framework for adapting a public school to become a pilot Community Resilience Hub (CRH) for a community in the city of Portland, OR. CRHs are trusted, community-led facilities to support citizens before, during, or after a disaster event. This research and demonstration project will improve community self-sufficiency reaching more community members in need before, during and after a disaster event (e.g., wildfire, earthquake, flood) while also establishing the value of developing a network of CRHs in conjunction with community and city leaders and first responders. The research will elucidate strategies and logic for development of a network of CRHs that can be replicated in other communities across the United States. The findings of this project will be disseminated through collaboration with a NIST-sponsored Global City Teams Challenge SuperCluster and will be instrumental to the future development of CRHs. This NSF CIVIC-PG project will take critical steps toward developing a transformative vision of how local CRHs can connect to form a Community Resilience Network (CRN) leveraging the CRH sociotechnical infrastructure framework and serving communities across a larger geographic area during a disaster event. We lack an in-depth understanding of the dynamic characteristics of disruptions and the emergency response needs that evolve during a multi-hazard disaster event. The project’s primary goal is to investigate how “digital twin” technology can facilitate establishment of community-led CRH sociotechnical infrastructure that integrates evolving community needs, resources, and conditions to facilitate emergency response, timely information-sharing, resilient connectivity, and resource distribution across a network of CRHs in response to disaster events. This will lay the foundation for establishment of a CRN that leverages updated city management and community-led strategies to expand CRH resource resilience capacity, distributed disaster response (across vulnerable communities and CRHs), and data-driven decision-making on disaster response. This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technology Office, and the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.