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State of Samaria

Marcus Agard (Economist)

Dzmitry Kasinets (Multimedia Developer)

Daniel Piqué (M.D.-Ph.D. Student)

Soham Mody (Urban Data Scientist)

You Song (Database Specialist)

Shine Li (Civil Engineering Student)

Luis Carbajal (Full Stack Developer)

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The Problem

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Barriers to Evacuation

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Language Barrier

Disabilities

Marginalization

People-specific factors impede efforts for evacuation.

Communication = essential

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Our Solution

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What we do for community leaders:

  • Required Annual Training�
  • Assignment to High-Need Areas�
  • Trust-based ranking�
  • Communications Interface

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The Diamond Approach TM

Organizing Agency

Community Leaders

CERT Infrastructure

Marginalized and/or language-restricted communities

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Response Timeline

Affected Area

0 hours

72 hours

Communal Response

State/City Response

Federal Response

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Why this matters

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Tried and Tested

  • “Once started and implemented, this effort will become like a ‘breeder reactor’, building upon itself and generating even more possibilities.” -- Quote from a Community Service Provider Network participant
  • "Social ties have an effect on the human behavior during disaster.” -- (Mawson, 2005)

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Impact of Social Cohesion

Fig. 1: Social cohesion resulted in less mortality during the 2011 Tsunami in Japan[3]

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Hurdles

Competitors

  • Maintenance of database is on us
  • Initially requires organizational buy-in
  • Lacks margin of error
  • Fragility of our ‘trustworthiness’ metric
  • Maximus’ translation services
  • Partners in Health’s community health workers

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Looking Forward

  • Version 2
    • Mobile apps w/ less reliance on wifi/mobile data
    • Measuring our effect on communities
  • Version X
    • Low-power communications between levels
    • The sky’s the limit!

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References

  • E. Baker, Hurricane Evacuation Behavior, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters Aug. 1991
  • M. Friberg, M. Hjelm Mass Evacuation - human behavior and crowd dynamics, Department of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Sweden
  • D. Aldrich, Social Capital in Disaster Mitigation and Recovery FEMA PrepTalks, January 2018

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Thanks for listening!

Questions?