News

When a pandemic and a natural disaster hit a community simultaneously, disease exposure and social distancing can limit the availability of critical personnel, leaving a community positioned for a lengthy recovery. With both types of events expected to occur with increasing frequency, a team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been running simulations to better understand how communities can weather concurrent crises.

TROY, NY — As coastal communities prepare for the possibility of hurricanes this summer and fall, they are doing so amid the uncertain landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic — a crisis that has already taxed health care systems, governments, and supply chains. A faculty and student team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been modeling how the combined disasters may make community recovery vastly more difficult. What they have found serves as a stark warning to policymakers preparing for hurricane season.

Engineers and scientists are working to develop powerful new decision-making and data visualization tools for emergency management.

Systems Engineering Expert and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Al Wallace Identified Major Infrastructure Challenges in the Wake of World Trade Center Attacks Al Wallace was watching the live television news coverage from Manhattan when his phone rang. Only a few hours after the unthinkable terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a program manager from the National Science Foundation called to ask for Wallace’s help in assuring nothing like this could ever happen again.