RSGIS Lab’s NSF-funded research project “RAPID: Collaborative Research: Data Mining and Fusion Between Unmanned Aerial Systems and Social Media Technologies to Improve Emergency Operations” has been featured on the LSU College of Engineering webpage. In the article, Drs. Jafari and Lam discussed the group’s novel research on reconciling social media and drone footage to assist urgent disaster management operations.
Source: LSU College of Engineering
The AAG Fellows is a program, started in 2018, that recognizes geographers who have made significant contributions to the advancement of geographic research, education, and outreach. Very few (less than 50) outstanding geographers in the world are selected for this prestigious fellowship so far. More information about Dr. Lam’s awarding achievements could be found in the AAG announcement.
Rachel Correll, RSGIS lab’s Ph.D. student and Southern Regional Education Board Doctoral Fellow, was recently awarded by another competitive and prestegious fellowship, Environmental Fellows Program. Environmental Fellows Program at University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability is a paid, 12-week internship (May-August). Participants of this program complete a three-day orientation at the University of Michigan (late May) and are placed in various influential environmental organizations across the USA. After completing this internship, the cohort of participants attends the Environmental Grantmakers Association’s annual Fall retreat (late September; depicted in photo).
Rachel shared her reflections on participating in this program and her internship at Huron River Watershed Council, Ann Harbor, MI in a recent blogpost.
Volodymyr Mihunov and Kejin Wang were recognized at the annual 2018-2019 LSU College of Coast and Environment scholarships and awards convocation. Volodymyr Mihunov received Sustainable Environment Award, that recognizes outstanding research that furthers understanding of social and ecological resilience, for his PhD dissertation “Dynamics of the Community Resilience to Drought Hazard in the South-Central United States”. Kejin Wang received Dr. Joseph Martinez Memorial Award, that recognizes outstanding graduate student research in environmental sciences in memory of Dr. Joe Martinez, the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies. His master’s thesis is titled “Twitter Use in Hurricane Isaac and Its Implications to Disaster Resilience”.
Dr. Nina Lam presented an open lecture titled “Are Happiest Cities Most Resilient To Disasters? – Challenges in Community Resilience Assessment” at Penn State College of Earth and Material Sciences, Department of Geography. Her presentation outlined the major challenges related to resilience assessment, described a new model developed by the author, called the Resilience Inference Measurement (RIM) model, and demonstrated a number of its applications to assess community resilience. The talk concluded with some perspectives on new research directions in resilience and sustainability research.
Kejin Wang successfully defended his Master’s thesis titled “Twitter Use in Hurricane Isaac and Its Implications to Disaster Resilience” and will graduate with Master’s degree in Spring 2019. After graduation he will pursue a PhD degree at the Department of Environmental Sciences, LSU, under advisement of Dr. Nina Lam.
Zheye Wang received his PhD in geography from Kent State University. His broad research agenda concentrates on advancing geographical information science (GIS) approaches for better understating of the human dimensions of environmental change. His current research focuses on mining location-based social media data to enrich human-centric information for enhancing situational awareness and disaster response.
Volodymyr Mihunov successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled “Dynamics of the Community Resilience to Drought Hazard in the South-Central United States” and graduated with a PhD degree in Environmental Science in December 2018. Dr. Mihunov will continue to conduct his research as a postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Environmental Sciences, LSU.
Volodymyr Mihunov, Lei Zou, and Dr. Nina Lam attended American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2018 in Washington, DC. Dr. Zou, a visiting assistant professor at Texas A&M, presented an elightning talk “Sensing, Building, and Improving Disaster Resilience through Social Media Data Mining“, and Dr. Mihunov presented his abstract “Emerging Disparities in Community Resilience to Drought Hazard in South-Central United States“.
Rachel Correll, PhD student and graduate researcher at RSGIS lab, participated at the 2018 American Geophysical Union Fall meeting and presented her poster titled “Move or Stay? A Dilemma for Coastal Louisiana Residents“.
