Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

Computing… at the Frontiers of Disaster Response

September 12th, 2011 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

NSF Special Report on Disasters [image courtesy NSF].As we noted in this space yesterday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) published a special report on disaster research last week, as part of National Preparedness Month and the events surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The report highlights the fundamental research impacting and enabling policymakers and disaster responders to better predict, prepare for, and respond to significant hazards affecting life, property, societal infrastructure, and natural assets.

What’s noteworthy is the critical role for computing research in this space — to include communications systems, rescue robotics, predictive modeling, game theory, etc.

For example, at a related showcase of 30 research projects on Capitol Hill last week — attended by members of Congress, Federal agencies, and the media — CCC Council member and Texas A&M University Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) Director Robin Murphy, along with two of her graduate students Brittany Duncan and Jesus Suarez, exhibited three search & rescue robots, as well as footage of the team’s robots in action following 9/11, the Japan nuclear event earlier this year, and other disaster response situations.

Check out the photos after the jump…

Texas A&M University Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) Director Robin Murphy and graduate students Brittany Duncan and Jesus Suarez, with NSF/CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian [image courtesy Karen Geary/NSF].Murphy, Duncan, and Suarez, with NSF/CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian

Robin Murphy and Brittany Duncan, with NSF Deputy Director Cora Marrett and NSF/CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian [image courtesy Karen Geary/NSF].Murphy and Duncan, with Jahanian as well as NSF Deputy Director Cora Marrett

…and be sure to read the NSF Special Report, particularly the description of the critical role for research in disaster response.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director, and Gera Jochum, NSF/CISE Writer/Editor)

Disclaimer: Posts on this blog report on happenings, opportunities, and issues that arise in the broad computing research community, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the CCC or the National Science Foundation.


Related posts:

  1. On 9/11 Anniversary, “Lessons from the Tragedy”
  2. “How High-Tech Robots Help in Search and Rescue”
  3. “Rescue Robots Don’t Replace People or Dogs, but People and Dogs Can’t do it All by Themselves”
  4. Finding One Man in 60 Million Square Miles
  5. Qinghai Quake and Robots
Computing… at the Frontiers of Disaster Response

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