School Organized Locally Assisted Community Emergency‐Management

School Organized Locally Assisted Community Emergency‐Management
Buckman School
Team Organizations	Georgia Tech OpenCommons Portland State University
Point of Contact	Jiri Skopek
Participating Municipalities	Portland OR
Sectors	Resilience
Status	Concept only Stage
Last Updated	November 22, 2024

Summary

Community Resilience Hubs (CRHs), are community‐serving facilities augmented to support residents and coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, or after a natural hazard event. This project is focused on developing a community‐led sociotechnical infrastructure framework for adapting a public school (Buckman Elementary School) to become a Pilot School CRH. 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 humanityʹs capacity to adapt. Due to incommensurate infrastructure investment, social marginalization, and a reduced capacity to adapt, the severity of a disaster is amplified when it impacts a vulnerable community (e.g., people of color, immigrants and refugees, the elderly or disabled, and lower‐income populations). In coping with the disproportionate exposure of local disenfranchised communities to the increasing frequency and costs of disasters, strengthening vulnerable communities’ resilience and capacity to adapt has become a primary objective of emergency managers and community leaders. Following a Community Hub model, some community resilience efforts seek to decentralize disaster management initiatives to capitalize on communities’ social connections, trust, and community‐informed needs. Community hubs are typically vibrant centers of local social activity and infrastructure that use a trusted physical space, such as a community center, recreation facility, local business, library, neighborhood house, school, or a local community park, as a focal point of convergence. Community Resilience Hubs (CRHs), are “community‐serving facilities augmented to support residents and coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, or after a natural hazard event…they leverage established, trusted, and community‐managed facilities that are used year‐round for community‐building activities.” CRHs create an opportunity to serve communities at the nexus of community resilience, emergency management, and social equity while also empowering communities to be autonomous, socially connected, and sustainable before, during, and after disruptive events. Our current understanding of the sociotechnical infrastructure for CRHs is, however, limited: there are gaps between centralized emergency management and first responders’ use of the Incident Command System, emerging technological and communication capacities (e.g., digital twins), and fragmented community needs and resources (e.g., energy, mobility, and connectivity). We also lack evidence on how several local CRHs can connect to form a Community Resilience Network (CRN) to best leverage the sociotechnical infrastructures and serve communities across a larger geographic area during a disaster event. More crucially, 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, which can be captured and addressed with a CRN. Notwithstanding the individual successes of CRH cases across the globe, we lack fundamental research on capacity, scalability, sustainability, transferability, and financial viability of such CRH networks.

In this NSF CIVIC‐FA project, we propose to build on the Stage 1 preparatory work done by the project team in an ongoing NSF CIVIC‐PG planning project focused on developing a community‐led sociotechnical infrastructure framework for adapting a public school (Buckman Elementary School) to become a Pilot School CRH. The overall objective of this Stage 2 proposal is to establish and evaluate this new Pilot School CRH, to embed in a community‐led digital twin network of CRHs, and transform communities’ capacity towards disaster resilience by: (1) promoting community knowledge (Information Hub), (2) reshaping connectivity between local communities (Communication Hub), and (3) building resilience capacity and access to resources & services (Service Hub) while integrating resilience workforce development and training to enhance preparedness and empower community‐led response to disaster events (wildfire, earthquake, and floods). The 1921 Buckman Elementary School (Buckman for short, see Figure 1), located in the Buckman neighborhood community of southeast Portland, OR, is a publicly funded school district that educates children in Southeast School District (Portland School District 1j), Multnomah County and serves 448 students in grades K‐5. Enrollment by gender is Female 56%, Male 43%; and Minority enrollment is 32% of the student body (Black or African American 3.8%, American Indian/AK Native 0.5%, Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander 0.7%, Hispanic/Latino 13.7%, Multiple Race 13.7%, White 68%). Buckman was selected for this pilot project due to its various uniqueness including being an art magnet school embedded in a mixed‐use community neighborhood. Buckman is an example of a school in a highly diverse cultural community with the most diverse graduating class in its local geography.

During an initial planning phase (NSF CIVIC‐PG), the project team implemented a preliminary multi‐hazard disaster risk and vulnerability assessment of the Multnomah County, Portland, OR (Figure 2) and conducted three main community resilience workshops to engage and unify stakeholders, understand resilience needs of the community and disaster scenarios, and assess implications of using digital twin technology. The initial CRH model for the school was a plausible `physical place’ to serve as a focal point for the community to share their knowledge, needs, and experience; (2) receive support, safety, and access to services; and (3) learn skills towards building stronger community resilience. To serve as a CRH, the school would generally require a series of upgrades to ensure that the facility is able to provide critical services in three operating states of normal, the event of a disruption (wildfire, flooding, earthquake), as well as recovery. Buckman is undergoing current and planned resilience renovations to increase the facilities’ capacity towards serving as a CRH (see the FEOR document). A dedicated team of community volunteers (youth and young parents) would be educated about disaster preparedness and trained in disasterresponse and management skills to serve the community within the school CRH (the SOLACE Team). However, through the initial Stage 1 engagements with the school community, emergency managers, and stakeholders, the project team learned that although the `physical place’ model would build resilience capacity towards disaster management and response, there remains a gap between capacity and utilization, identified as the ``communication” gap. Many community and stakeholder members pointed out that it is not until the whole community is connected and can effectively communicate, that a School CRH would become a place to convene and be practically utilized. Part of the problem of communication is prevalence of numerous community groups involved and lack of coordination with emergency management authority resulting in difference in nomenclature and the lack of a common baseline. Preparing a community for disaster relies heavily on the school CRH’s ability to communicate with the surrounding community. This includes hearing the community’s voice, connecting the community to the response teams and support services, offering advice and access to resources, and raising awareness. Closing the gap between local essential needs, resources, and services and advancing community resilience, is only accomplished through integration of theory into practice; A central depository and information dispatch platform, such as a `virtual place’ that could accompany the `physical place’ model of school CRH. This `virtual place’ would exist in parallel with the `physical place’ to capture and replicate the dynamics, while connecting the community to resources and to one another.

The emergence of ``digital twins” [1] , an endeavor to create intelligent adaptive machines by generating a parallel virtual version of the system along with the connectivity and analytical capabilities enabled by internet of things (IoT), constitutes the foundation for development of this `virtual place’ CRH infrastructure. In this project, we will investigate how to establish a community‐led CRH sociotechnical infrastructure that integrates evolving community needs, resources, and conditions to facilitate emergency response, broad and timely information‐sharing, resilient connectivity, and resource identification, location, and distribution across a digital twin network of schools as CRH in response to disaster events (wildfire, earthquake, and floods). This will be achieved through development and experimentation of a digital twin web‐based communication platform (Figure 3), capturing the impact (disaster developments and risks) of key emergencies such as earthquakes, wildfires (air quality effect), and flooding and the CRH services and accessibility to connect and enable the whole community (school community, emergency managers, and the SOLACE team) to interact pre‐, during, and post‐ disaster events. The project team will pilot a digital twin‐based sociotechnical infrastructure of a community‐led School CRH that integrates three key components of such CRH: (1) an Information Hub, (2) a Communication Hub, and (3) a Service Hub. It will then cultivate the capacities of School CRHs by establishing a CRN that is based on updated city management and community‐led strategies towards expanding CRH resource resilience capacity, distributed disaster response (across vulnerable communities and CRHs), and data‐driven decision‐making on disaster response. The pilot project will capture evolving community needs and resources to facilitate emergency response, communication, information sharing, and resource distribution and management in response to disaster events; through three primary goals:

Goal 1. Establish and evaluate a pilot Community Resilience Information Hub

Goal 2. Establish and evaluate a pilot Community Resilience Communication Hub

Goal 3. Establish and evaluate a pilot Community Resilience Service Hub

Figure 4 illustrates schematically the team brought together to execute this proposed project. The proposal team members have a history of collaboration across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, technology domains, and community affiliations. At the core of the figure, is the Core Civic‐Academic Partners team. The second layer is comprised of the Stakeholder Partners at the emergency management‐, school‐, community‐, and technology‐level stakeholders. The effort is led by a set of core team members that are part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC) SuperClusters (in particular, the Smart Buildings and Mobility SuperCluster). Wilfred Pinfold, Lead Civic Partner (Civic Partner) is an expert in leading industry, academic, government and community partnerships to deliver advanced technology solutions, who will lead the civic partners team and the civic partnerships and engagement activities taking place in the project site, Portland, OR; Jiri Skopek, Project Manager (Civic Partner), is Chair of the Smart Buildings GCTC SuperCluster and he specializes in community climate action through the 2030 Districts network and smart buildings and cities. He is a high‐performance building districts expert and will lead community engagement with district infrastructure including energy and how this infrastructure responds to stress. He is joined in this core team leadership effort by Stan Curtis, Civic Partnerships Lead (Civic Partner), an expert in introducing technology solutions to municipal governments and gaining community support; he will lead partnerships with Local & State governments, Emergency Managers and the School Administration; and Ann M. Marcus, Community Communications Lead (Civic Partner), a Global Communications Strategy expert will lead community and school communications with focus on whole community response. Deborah Acosta, Civic Engagement Lead (Civic Partner), is an expert in municipal technology deployment and public communications will lead public awareness and workforce development. Finally, Ken Montler, Technology Partner on Mobility (Civic Partner) is an expert in vehicle Automation, Electrification, Connectivity and Sharing (ACES), and will lead all aspects of mobility including vehicle connectivity, battery management, Vehicle‐to‐grid (V2G) and V2 Everything. They will lead the major civic partnerships and engagement activities in Table 1, described later in this proposal, which focuses on building the community network and understanding the community’s needs and vulnerabilities. The core team leadership includes Gregory Durgin, Co‐PI (Academic Partner) who specializes in digital twin networks and parallel intelligence and has expertise in wireless power transfer and harvesting, will lead digital twin platform development and network integrations listed in Table 2; and Neda Mohammadi, PI (Academic Partner), who will provide overall leadership to the project and who has completed numerous projects on social and infrastructure networks, disaster dynamics, and has conducted experiments with partner communities in the state of Georgia (GA) on infrastructure utilizing digital twins. She specializes in disaster decision makings with smart city digital twins, city infrastructure data analytics, human‐infrastructure interactions, and virtualization. She will provide overall direction and oversight of all project components, including the research and civic partnerships and engagement activities, and will lead the design and implementation of the digital twin platform and the associated data analyses, simulations, and virtualizations. The core team/academic‐civic partners are described in Table 1.

1.1. Research Questions Schools

have emerged as promising candidates for CRHs as they already hold an important community role as trusted hubs for students, parents, educators and other community members. By further integrating a school with the sociotechnical infrastructure of the community through emerging technologies (digital twins, etc.), and critical resources and services (connectivity, energy, mobility) they could be better prepared to liaise with first responders and retain connectivity to a larger network of resilience hubs. In this NSF CIVIC‐FA project, we seek to explore the following overarching research question: RQ: How should communities close the gap between local essential needs, resources, and services to prepare for disaster events through a community‐led digital twin network of Community Resilience Hubs? To this end, the civic‐academic team will, cumulatively, address the following subset of research questions:

RQ 1 – What Information on resilience is necessary to a CRH (and CRN) to capture and fulfill local essential community needs and challenges to prepare for disaster events (Wildfire, EQ, and floods)?

RQ 2 – How can local communities, provided with access to a Digital Twin CRH (and CRN), best Communicate information to prepare for disaster events (Wildfire, EQ, and floods)? RQ 3 – What key local essential access to resources and Services (connectivity, electricity, and mobility) should be made available to local communities in a CRH (and CRN) to prepare for disaster events (Wildfire, EQ, and floods)?

The Core Civic‐Academic Team will meet as a group on a SemiMonthly basis. This is critical in a collaborative community‐university partnership of this kind. We will share context, and discuss possible outcomes, to complete the project Tasks described in Table 2.

Goal 1 Tasks (1.1‐1.5) Database Development: We will develop a Community (demographics, needs, access, and vulnerability), Disasters (Wildfire, Flooding, EQ), Neighborhood (GIS, hazard identification, service disruption, risk), integrated database. The civic partners will demonstrate and explain a School Mobile Unit, and implement Data Fusion, Transfer, & Privacy considerations (private Data store for information transfer with permission). Early in the program we intend to acquire a cutaway school bus and kit it out with batteries to provide power for phones and devices, a Starlink satellite link and servers to store information provided by the community until there is available bandwidth to upload that information to the digital twin. School buses are an integral part of many communities, and they are trusted by both parents and educators alike. The fact that school buses have been a fixture of American life for decades means that they have earned a level of trust and respect within communities that is hard to replicate with other forms of transportation. All of these factors combine to create a sense of confidence and security in parents and educators when it comes to school buses, making them a trusted and essential part of many communities. This level of trust will align well with our efforts to communicate the ways in which seeing such a vehicle in the midst of a disaster is bringing SOLACE.

Goal 1 Task 1.6 Social Science Development: Community Resilience Survey(s). Goal 1 Task 1.7 Tech Development: Digital Twin Multiscale Dynamic Database (automated for continuous model training).

Goal 1 Tasks 1.8 Workforce Development: Disaster Workforce (SOLACE Team). Goal 1 Tasks 1.9 Community Resilience Training: Disaster Scenario.

Goal 1 Tasks 1.10 Community Data Partnership: Learning Sessions on Data Sharing & Privacy (Digital Wallet).

Goal 2 Task (2.1‐2.4) Tech Development: Digital Twin Models (Development, Training, Analysis & Integration), Community Crowdsourcing Mobile Application (Figure 5), Digital Twin Visualizations (GIS + UI Design), and Integrated Digital Twin Communication Web Platform.

Goal 2 Task 2.5 Social Science Development: Community Resilience In‐depth Interviews