Current Projects

(1) Socio-economic Impacts of new Flood Insurance Rate Maps:
PROBLEM OVERVIEW: The socioeconomic and cultural effects of adopting stronger flood mitigation standards are largely understudied. In coastal Louisiana, the economic and cultural costs of DFIRM adoption on communities, particularly in the traditional Acadian region, could be catastrophic. However, these political concerns compete with an important "moral" concern: failure to adopt flood mitigation strategies may place human health and safety at risk and create a subsidy for people living in high-risk areas. This creates conflicts between (1) FEMA’s implementation of the NFIP and particular local government concerns, and (2) accurate risk assessment-based mitigation and land use planning strategies and the sustainability of local communities on the other.

JUSTIFICATION: Local planners and stakeholders face difficult decisions about how and when to implement measures that mitigate flood risks without eroding the economic, cultural, and social fabric of their communities. This project provides an opportunity to address public concerns raised in the recent Louisiana House Concurrent Resolution No. 180. It will not only develop best practices for local planning bodies for DFIRM and BFE adoption, it will also help to understand the broader impacts on local communities that must grapple with the tension between mitigation and long-term recovery and sustainability and short-term effects on local socioeconomic and cultural viability.

FOCUS: The goals of the project are to: (1) identify socioeconomic and cultural effects of DFIRM adoption and generate Best Practices for adopting DFIRMs that minimize negative outcomes, (2) promote long-term resilience and hazard mitigation with attention to short-term socioeconomic and cultural viability, and (3) improve disaster preparedness while maximizing a community’s socioeconomic and cultural integrity.

Funding Agency: Louisiana Sea Grant
PI: Melanie Gall
Co-PIs: Rachel Dowty, M. Jude Egan, Daniel Monchuk

(2) Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan for the LSU System:
Funding Agency: Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness
PI: Melanie Gall
For more information see project website

(3) Managing Evacuee Ingress and Host Community Capacity:
PROJECT BACKGROUND: The overall goal of this project is to contribute to the understanding of disaster mass evacuations by examining how interactions between governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and their respective operational systems, produce specific outcomes in the management of evacuations. In particular, the proposed project focuses attention to the ability of a community or geographic area to accommodate evacuee ingress—in contrast to the more traditional focus on issues related to egress management.

FOCUS: The objective of this proposed research is to address evacuation issues in three key ways that are distinct from most prior research in this area:
1) improving the understanding of evacuation management through explicit identification and evaluation of how networks of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations interact during an evacuation, and how those interactions are influenced by internal capacity, institutional context, and incident-specific conditions,
2) integrating the evaluation of governmental and nongovernmental organizational interactions with specific performance indicators in order to understand why evacuation management is more or less effective, and
3) focusing particular attention of the question of how receiving or host communities function when managing evacuee ingress.

Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
PI: Brian Gerber
Co-PIs: Warren Eller, Melanie Gall, Scott Robinson

(4) Caring for the Caretaker:
PROJECT GOALS: The long-term goal of this project is to establish effective methods of assessing early responders’ needs during a disaster response and develop ways to care for their needs while simultaneously needing their assistance. Realization of this goal will help organizations responding to disaster situations provide preventative care for their representatives to mitigate longer-term effects of stress and, collectively, ongoing organizational effectiveness. In the case of human services workers as early responders, such as those working in Medical Special Needs Shelters, the responders’ psychological health, as well as physical health, precludes the effectiveness of their organization to effectively care for people with special needs. Thus, it is vital that organizations develop clear indicators for tracking employees’ resilience in times of extreme stress, overwork, and lack of sleep.

Funding Agency: Louisiana State University
PIs: Rachel Dowty and Tracey Rizzuto

(5) Center of Excellence (COE) for Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure, and Emergency Management (NDCIEM) Education Component, Project 6:
PROJECT GOALS: This project will convert and offer a selected number of DSM courses in an online, extended learning format. This will enable students at both LSU at other collaborating NDCIEM COE universities to take advantage of these courses as part of their program of study. Part of this endeavor will involve the addition of these courses to appropriate curricula in any university comprising the COE Education Team.

Funding Agency: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
PI: Patrick Hesp
Co-PI: Rachel Dowty