The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable emergency managers, first responders, and elected officials across the country to increase community resilience in disaster to save countless lives, save key critical infrastructure, and save the environment from otherwise catastrophic outcomes during disasters, some of which continue to increase in frequency and severity. It will allow for significant advances in protecting our society's most vulnerable populations in disaster. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project develop a platform to integrate, interpret, and organize a multitude of relevant data sources in order to deliver actionable insights to those responsible for intervention before, during, and after disaster. This project will enable a fully integrated, dynamic web-based tool capable of generating estimated and real-time results for a broad set of hazards across the nation down to the neighborhood level granularity. As a real-time, dynamic tool, it will operationalize population vulnerability data and provide forward-leaning decision support and actionable intelligence to first responders, emergency managers, and elected officials that will save lives by identifying those populations with the greatest needs and highest risk during a disaster. 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.
