FEMA, Reunification After a Disaster
Carnegie Mellon University, Spring 2022
Problem Statement
National preparedness teams need improved coordination between emergency response stakeholders in order to reunite families quickly after a natural disaster.
Problem Scoping and Discovery
The team conducted 25 interviews and realized there are too many involved agencies involved in disaster relief. The team narrowed the scope to counties who are the main entity people turn to when looking to be reunited with survivors. People turn to who they are most familiar with so family members of survivor victims don’t tend to think of FEMA and go straight to their local county. The county teams, such as the head of emergency operations in nashua county, do not rely on social media companies as a communication partner since those private companies have limited resources dedicated to emergency response. The reason social media communication has worked is due to the easy access without the firewall of needing to log in to a different platform.
Outcome
The team learned there are significant politics in each disaster relief silo that helps break down the current and future systems created for emergency management and family reunification. For this reason, the team recommends focusing the solution on building community awareness standardization by creating an agreement that relieves the burden off of associated sats who are who are helping assist during a disaster, because, disasters are local. This agreement should be a mechanism triggered by the potential of a disaster and not have to wait for the president’s order. This is already happening with the University at Albany who is working with FEMA to standardize disaster messaging for emergency managers to spread awareness to their communities.
Results / Next Steps
Focus on community Wendy is looking to continue working on this problem and integrating the solution. They will discuss awareness standardization and a product that can mimic the easy access twitter has.