This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project--a Type II (A:B) partnership between the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), an NSF PFI graduate (0090569), and SUNY at Buffalo (UB), which hosted a NSF ERC (9701471)-- is focused on innovation in disaster management, with specific goals of developing disaster management tools based on remote sensing research and geospatial analysis technology. The three-tiered disaster management approach: disaster planning, disaster response, and disaster recovery is ripe for innovation through integrated knowledge and technology transfer efforts among university researchers, technology companies, and public sector responders. RIT brings extensive experience in basic and applied remote sensing research, a history of collaboration with local emergency response and emergency providers, and a special expertise in fire detection and fire behavior to the partnership. UB team members bring expertise in geospatial analysis of a variety of natural and man-made disasters, including fire and floods. Both universities have strong policy components. The integrated team will apply a systems engineering approach to define user needs in disaster management, perform targeted research and development of disaster management products, and form a sustainable infrastructure for knowledge and technology transfer.
The two primary academic institutional components, RIT and UB, will leverage their collective experience to create a laboratory and resource, the Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER), to broaden the participation of all types of entities along the spectrum of disaster management. The IPLER will facilitate economic development by establishing and maintaining a continuous dialogue between the developers and providers of technologies and the people who use them in disaster response. The diffusion of technologies will improve the prevention and mitigation of disasters in the United States and lead to innovative tools for response and recovery with societal benefit. Students at RIT and UB will be actively engaged in the targeted research and will be uniquely qualified to contribute to disaster management research, development, and response. The IPLER is designed to grow and will incorporate new members from the academic, public, and private sectors. The outcomes of the IPLER include potentially life-saving innovations and will be broadly disseminated
Partners at the inception of the project are Academic Institutions: Rochester Institute of Technology (lead institution), and SUNY at Buffalo; Private Sector Organizations: DigitalGlobe, ImageCat, Kucera International, and Pictometry International; Local, State and Federal Government Entities: Monroe County Office of Emergency Management; New York State Foundation for Science, Technology, and Innovation (NYSTAR), New York State Office of Homeland Security, and US Forest Service, Remote Sensing and Applications Center. .
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project between the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University at Buffalo (UB) focused on innovation in disaster management. The overarching goal of the Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER) was to develop disaster management tools based on remote sensing research and geospatial (GPS/GIS) analysis technology. The integrated team applied a systems engineering approach to define user needs in disaster management, perform targeted research and develop commercial disaster management products, and establish a sustainable infrastructure for technology transfer to aid commercial collaborators. IPLER facilitated economic development and commercialization by establishing and maintaining a dialogue between the developers and providers of technologies and the people who use them in disaster response. Finally, more than eight graduate students at RIT and UB were also actively engaged in the targeted research and will be uniquely qualified to contribute to the disaster management chain. We list specifics of the project outcomes next. From a purely dissemination or academic perspective, we published more than 30 conference abstracts or talks, journal papers, or invited contributions over the course of the project. However, such academics are of little use if they are not applicable to the industry and larger community around us. Perhaps the single most important contribution that this project made was that of responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster (January 12, 2010). RIT deployed its airborne sensing system, the Wildfire Airborne Assessment Program (WASP) sensor, during the recovery effort in close collaboration with industry project partners ImageCat Inc. and Kucera International. Although mission funding was provided by the World Bank, we can state without reservation that the NSF-sponsored IPLER project was instrumental in igniting this effort… the collaborative links and foundational research from the NSF project were key to our ability to launch an efficient response. We ended up collecting more than 2TB worth of airborne imagery, which was used to assess building damage due to the earthquake. The data are in the public domain and are actively being used for follow-up research to this day (Figure 1 shows a 3D rendering of the Haiti Palace, using light detection and ranging (lidar) and image data). However, the project also led to benefits for our commercial partners. Other than proving vital to the Haitian recovery effort, this project proved to be a commercial boon to our partners (ImageCat Inc. and Kucera International) as they cultivated new business opportunities in the disaster management market based on their demonstrated performance in Haiti and associated projects. The project team also worked diligently on the two foci of our original objectives, namely fire and flood response research. Even though the US Forest Service uses thermal imaging for mapping wildfires, the imaging systems are not always exploited to maximum utility. Based on previous NSF-funded work, we applied methods for detecting wildfires and for extracting fire line information from multispectral visible, near infrared, and thermal infrared images that were collected by the RIT WASP camera system as a demonstration of the technology. Images for demonstrating the approaches have been obtained during flights over prescribed burns in Kentucky and Florida. Original research results were transformed into robust operational algorithms by computer science students. Our collaborators at University at Buffalo were active in the domain of flood modeling and mapping. Over the past decades, local communities in the Cattaraugus Creek Watershed - an IPLER test site, including a reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians - experienced extreme flood events through torrential rainfall, increased runoff, ice jams, and woody debris in waterways. This created a unique opportunity for IPLER to test and explore technical issues related to remote sensing products and focus on increased community resilience against floods. We collected 3D lidar data for the watershed and applied these data towards improved hydrological modeling. Examples include ice-jam model and rainfall-runoff model applications, a HEC-RAS flood model application, and detection of streambed obstructions. One practical example is that from the Village of Gowanda, New York, which experienced a disastrous flood that destroyed properties, polluted the local water reservoir, and two civilians lost their lives. As a result of this disaster, the town's only hospital was destroyed and needed to be replaced. The goal of one relevant IPLER project was to conduct a GIS-based location analysis in order to determine the best placement for a new hospital that maximizes access to civilians and minimizes any future damage that could occur from flooding. In short, the Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response, funded by NSF, was very successful in not only achieving its academic objectives, but also in transferring knowledge and technology to our industry partners and participating in actual disaster response events. This enabled the project team to experience first-hand the needs of the disaster response community and develop relevant remote sensing products.
