Ngamassi Disaster Management Research

New data streams, like social media, have the potential to be a valuable source of information for better situational awareness during an emergency. A Prairie View A&M University research team, led by Dr. Louis Ngamassi, associate professor in PVAMU’s College of Business, is working with Northeastern University and Stanford University to research the use of how different data streams drive decision-making and disseminate information for communities before, during, and after a disaster.

As part of the project, the College of Business and the Office of Research, Innovation and Sponsored Programs hosted two presentations at PVAMU this semester. Dr. Daniel Aldrich from Northeastern University presented on the role of social capital (the size and quality of a person’s social network) for disaster resilience on February 14, 2019. On March 1, Dr. Chittayong (Jao) Surakitbanharn presented on the role of data for disasters.

“The broader efforts by the team’s attempt is to incorporate research findings into a larger context of quantifying the impacts of information, optimizing the flow of information for disaster management, and harnessing novel emergency information not only for disaster response but also for recovery and disaster preparedness,” said Ngamassi.

During the visit on February 14, Aldrich and Surakitbanharn met with a team of PVAMU researchers and Dr. Ali Fares, interim vice president for Research, Innovation and Sponsored Programs. They discussed the ongoing collaboration between the three institutions on the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Centers (ERC) proposal, Center for Data for Socio-Physical Extreme Event Resilience (Data-SPEER), as well as other potential future collaborations.Ngamassi Disaster Management Research