This video was recorded August 26, 2020 1:15 pm to 2:00 pm ET
In this webinar, join a discussion about ongoing research and efforts to address evacuations from disasters and emergencies amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This session will provide summaries of critical transportation, sheltering, logistic, and communication challenges, as well as possible strategies for evacuating large populations from danger. In addition, the session will include several case studies of recent disasters and broader research directions related to evacuations and resilience to address the ongoing and worsening climate crisis.
Speakers:
Stephen Wong, Doctoral Candidate in Transportation Engineering, University of California, Berkley
Katherine Idziorek, 2020 Thomas J. O’Bryant Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation
Stephen Wong is a doctoral candidate studying Transportation Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the intersection of evacuations, decision-making, and shared mobility. His research aims to develop empirically driven and equitable evacuation and resilience strategies for governmental agencies to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Stephen has also conducted research on sustainable transportation and innovative mobility. Stephen is an affiliate with the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a graduate student researcher at the UC Institute of Transportation Studies’ (UC ITS) California Resilient and Innovative Mobility Initiative (CA RIMI). CA RIMI aims to inform the state’s and nation’s immediate COVID-19 response and recovery needs, while establishing a long-term pathway for more sustainable and resilient transportation systems. Stephen currently serves as a member of the Committee on Disaster Response, Emergency Evacuations, and Business Continuity (AMR20) at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the Emergency Management and Evacuation Working Group at the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS). He was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow (2015-2020), an Eno Center for Transportation Fellow (2018), and a Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellow (2018-2020).
Katherine Idziorek is Eno’s 2020 Thomas J. O’Bryant Fellow. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Washington’s Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning and a member of the THINK Lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research is focused on understanding the ways in which social networks, social infrastructure, and trust contribute to disaster preparedness attitudes and actions at the community scale. Katherine also serves on the Seattle Planning Commission, where she works to support integrated multimodal transportation planning as well as planning for resilient social and physical infrastructures. Before returning to the University of Washington to pursue a Ph.D., Katherine worked as a professional urban planning and design consultant, contributing to place-based transit planning and community visioning projects across the Seattle and Vancouver, BC metro areas.