IRES Track I: Mapping and Quantifying the Natural Disaster Resilience of Displaced People with the University of Rwanda Center for Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing

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This International Research Experience for Students (IRES) is focused on mapping and quantifying the natural disaster resilience of displaced people in Rwanda. Over a three year period, fourteen U.S. graduate students from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and three undergraduate students from the Monroe Community College Geospatial Information Science and Technology program (MCC) will participate in a ten-week summer research experience at the University of Rwanda Center for Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing (CGIS). Significant activities include student access to and learning from CGIS on displaced population natural disaster resilience issues unique to Rwanda, East African context student research training activities, and access to disaster management organizations focused on displaced people such as the Rwandan Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR) only available in Rwanda. The project will create unique linkages to East African organizations that will train, educate and professionally develop 17 STEM student research scientists over three years focused on disaster resilience, displacement and GIS. The project will broaden participation of underrepresented groups as we will fully leverage RIT's existing underrepresented recruitments networks such as RIT's large Deaf-and-Hard of Hearing population, women, and minorities. The MCC student will create a unique opportunity for undergraduate international research experience as well as community college international research capacity development. Displaced people in Rwanda will also benefit through their participation as field research assistants as well as the research providing outreach and advocacy for their situations. Intellectual products created by IRES students, such as community-scale resilience maps displacement resilience indexes will provide important benefits to society that can bring global attention to displacement and disaster resilience research and GIS. The project is particularly strong in enhancing infrastructure for research and education as IRES students will become part of Rwandan and East African research networks only available by being on-site in Rwanda. CGIS and MIDIMAR for the first time become linked to NSF research. Workshops on disasters and resilience GIS mapping will be conducted by IRES students with Rwandan secondary schools and disaster stakeholder groups for broader project outreach. If successful, findings will be generalizable for additional internationally-focused research beyond displaced population natural disaster resilience in Rwanda (for example, the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises) and particularly US-national interest disaster resilience and displacement issues like seen in hurricanes Harvey and Maria, creating the potential for broader US-national and international research on displaced population natural disaster resilience that can provide future students with the knowledge, motivation and inspiration to pursue internationally-focused science careers to solve US-national and global challenges.The primary student research project goal is community-level scale field mapping with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing of resilience indicators relevant to displaced population natural disaster resilience. Data collected by IRES students will be used as an input for spatially modeling, indexing and quantifying the natural disaster resilience of displaced people. The research team will create transformative knowledge on understanding the relationship between displacement and natural disaster resilience. Spatial indexes of displaced population natural disaster resilience currently do not exist at any scale - let alone at the community-level scale that will only be possible to investigate through the foreign research site. Student research efforts will make valuable intellectual contributions to understanding (a) the spatial relationships between displacement and disaster resilience, (b) how developing displacement disaster resilience spatial metrics can inform displacement planning, and (c) how resilience is developed and manifested in displacement and disaster contexts to inform disaster management decision making and risk-reduction. Rwanda is a unique location for research on mapping and quantifying displaced population natural disaster resilience due to both refugee populations and internally displaced Rwandan citizens who face natural disaster risks. Access to these diverse and unique groups is only possible by being in Rwanda.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.