Browsing by Author "Wartman, Joseph"

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    Natural Hazards Reconnaissance With the NHERI RAPID Facility
    Berman, Jeffrey W.; Wartman, Joseph; Olsen, Michael; Irish, Jennifer L.; Miles, Scott B.; Tanner, Troy; Gurley, Kurtis; Lowes, Laura; Bostrom, Ann; Dafni, Jacob; Grilliot, Michael; Lyda, Andrew; Peltier, Jaqueline (2020-11-11)
    In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a multi-institution interdisciplinary team to develop and operate the Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (known as the "RAPID") as part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program. During the following 2 years, the RAPID facility developed its instrumentation portfolio and operational plan with input from the natural hazards community, the facility's leadership team, and an external steering committee. In September 2018, the RAPID began field operations, which continue today and include instrumentation, software, training, and support services to conduct reconnaissance research before, during, and after natural hazard and disaster events. Over the past 2 years, the RAPID has supported the data collection efforts for over 60 projects worldwide. Projects have spanned a wide range of disciplines and hazards and have also included data collection at large-scale experimental facilities in the United States and abroad. These projects have produced an unprecedented amount of high-quality field data archived on the DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure platform. This paper describes the RAPID facility's development, instrumentation portfolio (including the mobile application RApp), services and capabilities, and training activities. Additionally, overviews of three recent RAPID-supported projects are presented, including descriptions of field data collection workflows, details of the resulting data sets, and the impact of these project deployments on the natural hazard fields.
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    Research Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance
    Wartman, Joseph; Berman, Jeffrey W.; Bostrom, Ann; Miles, Scott B.; Olsen, Michael; Gurley, Kurtis; Irish, Jennifer L.; Lowes, Laura; Tanner, Troy; Dafni, Jake; Grilliot, Michael; Lyda, Andrew; Peltier, Jaqueline (2020-11-10)
    Natural hazards and disaster reconnaissance investigations have provided many lessons for the research and practice communities and have greatly improved our scientific understanding of extreme events. Yet, many challenges remain for these communities, including improving our ability to model hazards, make decisions in the face of uncertainty, enhance community resilience, and mitigate risk. State-of-the-art instrumentation and mobile data collection applications have significantly advanced the ability of field investigation teams to capture quickly perishable data in post-disaster settings. The NHERI RAPID Facility convened a community workshop of experts in the professional, government, and academic sectors to determine reconnaissance data needs and opportunities, and to identify the broader challenges facing the reconnaissance community that hinder data collection and use. Participants highlighted that field teams face many practical and operational challenges before and during reconnaissance investigations, including logistics concerns, safety issues, emotional trauma, and after-returning, issues with data processing and analysis. Field teams have executed many effective missions. Among the factors contributing to successful reconnaissance are having local contacts, effective teamwork, and pre-event training. Continued progress in natural hazard reconnaissance requires adaptation of new, strategic approaches that acquire and integrate data over a range of temporal, spatial, and social scales across disciplines.