Volgenau School of Engineering Annual Report 2020

Page 30

Center Seeks to Help Communities Rebuild When disaster, natural or man-made, hits a community, volunteers and community members often rush to rebuild what was lost. They search for family mementos in the rubble and try to regain a sense of peace and security.

“We want to do common good for the commonwealth,” says Tonya Neaves, director for the Centers on the Public Service in the Schar School and one of the faculty on the C-RASC Leadership Council. “Emergency management takes more than one viewpoint.”

Systems engineering and operations re­ search professor Kathryn Laskey is director of the new transdisciplinary Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC), which aims to help communities with this rebuilding process and with the preparations that can reduce the impact of disasters.

The C-RASC model follows a feedback loop of developing local solutions, producing the local capacity to build and maintain a resilient community, and then learning from those solutions, adjusting if needed, and carrying the lessons learned from one community to the next.

“Pressures from migration and climate change are accelerating, and it creates really difficult social situations that are going to cause difficult social challenges and political unrest,” says Laskey.

“The idea is to support resilience so that when something happens you can withstand the disruption, and not just bounce back, but bounce forward better,” says Laskey.

In collaboration with faculty from the Schar School of Policy and Government, College of Science, School of Business, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and the College of Health and Human Services, the new center aims to research the best practices to target and support locally led community groups that can help build resiliency in the community before, during, and after a crisis.

Director of the new Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities Kathryn Laskey says the trans­disciplinary team aims to help global communities rebuild on their own. Photo by Jim Kirby

Laskey says their focus on locally led groups helps ensure that the solutions they are building will work for the people in that location. “It doesn’t work to go into these communities in a paternalistic sort of way and tell people how to run their society.” And with a transdisciplinary approach, Laskey and the rest of the faculty involved hope that they can really make a difference in communities in Virginia, the United States, and the world.

26  VOLGENAU SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT 2020

Since the center began in fall 2019, they have started on numerous local and global projects. One project collaborates with Arba Minch University in Ethiopia and the company Global MapAid to outline maps for a sustainable irrigation system for farms throughout the country. “If the rain falls at the wrong time of the year, which it has been doing, then farmers go hungry,” says Laskey. “This system really helps with food security.” The center has also hired a new assistant director, Hannah Torres, and continues to reach out across the university for new partners across disciplines. “We continue to reach out and look for opportunities to do transdisciplinary research with a resilience focus,” says Laskey. “Mason’s vision is research of consequence, and if this center is successful, then this will make a difference in people’s lives,” says Laskey. —Ryley McGinnis


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Articles inside

Striving to Help Others during the Coronavirus Crisis

5min
pages 52-55

Tracking the Spread of COVID-19 in the Name of Charity

1min
page 56

Cyber Security Engineering Alumnus Leads Student to Cyber Solutions

2min
page 57

Student Organizations Step Up for Their Members

2min
pages 50-51

Keeping the Food Pipeline Going: COVID-19 on Farms

2min
pages 48-49

Supporting Hospital Response to COVID-19

2min
pages 46-47

Alumnus Switches Gears to Help Hand Sanitizer Shortage

2min
pages 44-45

Analyzing the Written Works of Davy Crockett

2min
pages 40-43

Smartwatch App Aids Young Adults with Disabilities

2min
pages 36-37

Professor Uses Tech to Tackle Social Problems

2min
pages 38-39

Professor’s Eyes Are on the Prize

2min
pages 34-35

Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships

2min
pages 32-33

Center Seeks to Help Communities Rebuild

2min
pages 30-31

Exploring the Cascading Effects of Arctic Ice Melt

2min
pages 28-29

Adapting to Remote Research

3min
pages 26-27

Computer Science Professor Named Faculty Member of the Year

2min
pages 20-21

Student Design Teams Reorganize and Redirect

2min
pages 14-15

Harnessing the Sun’s Power

2min
pages 16-17

Secrets to Success in Virtual Classes

3min
pages 8-9

Peer Mentors Mend Gaps in Virtual Learning

1min
pages 12-13

Building an Educational Foundation for Civil Engineers

2min
pages 18-19

Paving the Way for Virtual Instruction

2min
pages 10-11
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