FURI –

Above is a picture I found while looking something up for work on the City of Tempe Engineering website. Immediately, I realized that this was an old picture because the building I work in is not shown...but then I saw also there was a Lockness Monster in the water--scary. I guess our town has its own mythical creature...Apparently someone had too much time on his hands over at the City of Tempe (it even has a shadow).

Anyway, I found out this week that I got accepted into the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI) at ASU. I’ve been told that this is a pretty competitive program so I’m happy I got in.

Basically, next semester, I’m going to be doing some research with my transportation engineering professor to obtain necessary data to build a framework to design an emergency evacuation plan for the Phoenix Metro Area. I will not design the plan this semester, but research some essential data to be able to do so. If I go to graduate school I’d probably work the evacuation plan into my thesis.

I’m doing this to be able to decide whether or not I want go to graduate school. Not only will I see if I like this type of work, but I will also learn important skills that will be useful to me if I pursue more education. Additionally, this will help set me apart from the other applicants and hopefully enable me to get into the school of my choice.

The research will count as a tech elective towards my graduation, and I will be paid to do it. So, like I said, I’m happy to have been accepted into the program. It should be fun.

I’m pasting my proposal at the bottom of this post.

Scott

Development of an Emergency Response Planning Framework Based on Space-Time Profiles of Human Activity and Travel Patterns

Due to recent events, the world is recognizing the increasing need of preparing for unexpected and extreme scenarios that can cause frustration, harm, or even death. Various government agencies, regional committees and groups of concerned citizens are working together to help prepare for natural disasters or other unanticipated catastrophes.

Locally, Maricopa County is one of the fastest growing areas in the country and accounts for about one-half of the population in the state of Arizona. Generally, the Maricopa region is perceived as a low risk area for natural disasters as compared to other American cities. However, many doomsday scenarios could be conceived ranging from drought and floods to terrorist activities. Accidents may occur at any of the dams along the Salt River which could potentially flood much of the Valley of the Sun. Additionally there are a multitude of other unknown disasters that unfortunately cannot be foreseen.

There is a need, therefore, to formulate region-wide emergency response strategies for the area that falls within the jurisdiction of MAG (Maricopa Association of Governments). These strategies include: evacuation, shipping of essential supplies where they are needed most, and perhaps most important, protecting vital links in the transportation network that facilitate the movement of people and goods in and out of the region. The development of such strategies requires an in-depth understanding of the distributions of locations and activities of residents in the MAG region at various times of the day.

This research will involve the development of space-time profiles of human activity patterns in the MAG region using the MAG 2001 Household Travel Survey data. This survey includes information on activities and trips for approximately 10,000 people living in the Maricopa region. The data from this survey provides socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the survey respondents as well as detailed information about all the trips they make in a typical day. Time and location information associated with trip origins and destinations can be used to construct time-space profiles of human activity patterns over the course of a typical day.

Using ArcGIS (geographic information system software), graphical space-time profiles will be constructed to identify: critical links in the transportation network, high intensity activity locations, and the movement of people through the region throughout a typical day. These profiles and the GIS-based analysis results will provide an excellent basis to develop extreme event response and evacuation strategies for the MAG region. The research results and a framework for emergency response planning in the MAG region developed based on the research findings will be presented in the UG Student Research Symposium scheduled to be held on April 20, 2007.