About: Current Research
The Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management (DIEM)
RESEARCH FOCUS AREAS
DIEM achieves its mission by establishing four research focus areas:
I) Coastal Hazards Modeling
II) Engineering to Enhance the Resilience of the Built and Natural Environment
III) Disaster Response and Social Resilience
IV) Planning for Resilience
Within each of these Research Focus Areas, DIEM partners are carrying out projects that will expand our understanding of hazards science and lead to translational models that move knowledge into practice.
Cross-Cutting Areas:
Cross cutting programs support the research of the four focus areas and translate that research into action. The Advanced Information Systems program provides visualization, analysis and geospatial technology that supports all focus area research and helps to communicate findings to practitioners. The Education program, led by our partners from Jackson State University, creates new university level course content in natural hazards and emergency management. An aim of the educational model is to educate the current and next generation of emergency managers, hazards practitioners and scholars, emphasizing the need to reach out to underrepresented populations.
Project Summaries
Project summaries are divided into each of the four Research Focus Areas. The summaries include a listing of project leaders or principal investigators, a brief project description, the analytical approach used, data collection methods, and measurable goals. Projects conducted within the Coastal Hazards Modeling Focus Area include:
- Meteorological Modeling
- A Hydrologic Modeling System for Coastal Environments
- Coastal Wave Surge Modeling
Projects conducted within the Engineering to Enhance the Resilience of the Built and Natural Environment Focus Area include:
- Evolving and Engineered Landforms
- System Observability, Diagnosis, and Prognosis
- Innovative Component Design and Retrofit of Critical Civil Infrastructure
- Integrated Systems Modeling of Civil Infrastructure and the Environment
- Cyberinfrastructure
- Infrastructure Modeling – Decision Technologies
- Risk of Levee Failures in the Western U.S.
Projects conducted within the Disaster Response and Social Resilience Focus Area include:
- Psychological Adjustment Following Coastal Disasters: Risk and Protective Factors for Families and Web-Based Curriculum Development
- Evacuation Models and Dynamics
- Computational Network Modeling Research
- Optimizing Knowledge Networks in Disaster Response
- Supply Chain Structure and Management
- Risk Perceptions, Preferences, and Preparedness
- Revealed Preferences Research
- Multi-Organizational Collaborative Leadership
Projects conducted within the Planning for Resilience Focus Area include:
- Analysis of Federal Mitigation Policy in the U.S.: Mitigation Plans, Expenditures, Civic Engagement, and Local Capability
- Risk Based Planning
Cross-Cutting projects include:
- Visual Analytics Applied to Natural Disasters and Coastal Infrastructure
Click here to view PowerPoint presentations about each of the projects within the DIEM Research Focus Areas