Research

This is a continuation of RIT Grant ID 31047(Phase1), 31266 (Phase 2) and D1266 (Phase 3). The team will design, set up and run a tabletop exercise for disaster situation impacts on critical infrastructure in the UASI region.

Award date: 4/6/2015
Sponsors: DHS-Department of Homeland Security / Monroe County Emergency Management

The proposed project will leverage national and international documentary standards to build knowledge and expertise at the undergraduate and graduate levels in health, safety, environmental, and community sustainable development management systems. To meet these challenges, the project proposes a modular approach with the following goals:

• Develop and embed a set of reusable course modules on management system standards application at different levels appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students (Curricular Goal).
• Support cross-disciplinary faculty expertise development in management system standards application by sharing our processes for development and our content both internally and externally (Faculty Goal).
• Ensure the effectiveness of the course modules via a cohesive and proven educational structure (Educational Effectiveness Goal).
• Disseminate our results through published papers, conference presentations and a website (Dissemination Goal).

Co-PI: Greenwood, Lisa; Rosenbeck, Joseph; Valentine, Maureen and Wainwright, Gretchen
Award date: 8/30/2016
Sponsors: DOC.National Inst for Standards and Tech

This is a continuation of grant ID 31047: The research team will support the Rochester Monroe County Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) which includes the counties of Monroe, Orleans, Livingston, Ontario, and Wayne, by creating a calculated analysis of the Critical Infrastructure/Key Resources (CI/KR) throughout UASI using Federal, State and Local guidelines. The project includes the assessment of risks and vulnerabilities of CI/KR, their vulnerability for disruption, and evaluation of different disruption scenarios. Efforts also include support of DHS and related data calls and analysis, including creation of tools for local emergency management organizations.

Co-PI: Rogers, Jeffrey and Romanowski, Carol
Senior Personnel: Goldowitz, Josh; Indelicato, Mark and Wainwright, Gretchen
Award date: 5/23/2012
Sponsors: DHS/​MCEM

Disaster and emergency planning is a critical element of community resilience. Childcare centers are the community resource focused on our most precious and vulnerable members; therefore, it is paramount that a community build resiliency into this system. The project team will assess the state of childcare emergency planning in the five county region with a report detailing findings and creation of web based guidance and templates to assist childcare centers undertake emergency planning.

Award date: 1/30/2012
Sponsors: DHS-Department of Homeland Security / Monroe County Emergency Management

The project consists of two phases:

Phase #1: Perform a gap analysis on CI/KR data in use for Ontario County within the Automated Critical Asset Management System ("A/CAMS") and other available data as appropriate (i.e., ArcGIS). Provide direction to county personnel for the capture and characterization of data to fill identified gaps, and addition data to the A/CAMS tool for later use.

Phase #2: Conduct the CI/KR analysis and recommend by written report a risk ranking list of CI/KR vulnerabilities by impact including surrounding and linked soft targets. Provide recommendations for minimization of risk to the community; Link risk analysis results as they relate to Target Capabilities, and future mitigation of risks.

Co-PI: Romanowski, Carol
Award date: 1/24/2012
Sponsors: DHS-Department of Homeland Security / Ontario County

The Rochester Monroe County Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) which includes the counties of Monroe, Livingston, Ontario, and Wayne, is focusing on determining a scientific and calculated analysis of the Critical Infrastructure/Key Resources (CI/KR) in using Federal, State and Local guidelines throughout UASI. The project includes the assessment of gaps in the data used for/by the Rochester Monroe County UASI including Automated Critical Asset Management System (A/CAMS) and Maritime Security Risk Assessment Model (MSRAM). The project will include providing direction for the capture and characterization to fill the gap in the data. The data will be analyzed to identify CI/KR, their vulnerability for disruption, and evaluation of different disruption scenarios.

Co-PI: Hanna, Frank and Romanowski, Carol
Award date: 5/18/2010
Sponsors: DHS-Department of Homeland Security / Monroe County Public Emergency Management

Objectives:

1. To provide efficient, cost effective, practical training materials that address hazards in the target industries.
2. To seek a target audience that includes small employers and employees within the targeted industry sector, with special attention paid to recruiting companies that operate high risk or hazardous activities, and/ or employ significant numbers of non-English speaking, minority or youth workers.
3. To provide an opportunity for prepared undergraduate or graduate student(s), and newly minted health and safety professionals, to apply knowledge, gain practical experience, and assist pilot small business participants under the direction of the grant's principal investigators.

Co-PI: VanStrander, Kitren
Award date: 9/16/2004
Sponsors: DOL.Occupational Safety and Health Administration

OSHA Training Materials Development Grant: Small Business and Health Management Systems.

Co-PI: VanStrander, Kitren
Award date: 9/24/2003
Sponsors: DOL.Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Buildings play a vital role in the environment and provide shelter to its inhabitants but buildings are responsible for about 40% of U.S. energy consumption. A significant amount of energy is used in the operations phase. To tackle this high energy use, sustainable and high-performance buildings work towards improving energy performance and providing comfort to the occupants using various systems and technologies. Despite these efforts, people still seem to be dissatisfied with the indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This proposal focuses on occupant interaction with building systems in offices at educational institutions.

Award date: 5/8/2019
Sponsors: Rochester Institute of Technology

The proposed project will leverage national and international documentary standards to build knowledge and expertise at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the domains of risk, disruption and continuity. As the pandemic has demonstrated, understanding and being able to apply standards for organizational resilience to prepare for and respond to various forms of disruption is a useful, practical, and sought-after professional skill set, given the increasing complexity of organizations and supply chains, and as organizations and society are faced with increasing continuity threats and vulnerabilities.

Co-PI: Abraham, Yewande and Schneider, Jennifer
Award date: 9/15/2020
Sponsors: DOC. National Inst for Standards and Tech

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are collectively responsible for significant pollution impacts, and are under increasing pressure from stakeholders to demonstrate sound environmental management and sustainable practices through implementation of an environmental management system (EMS). The lSO l400lstandard for such systems has been promoted as a management solution to enable firms of any type or size to achieve environmental goals in support of sustainable development. However, resource constraints and competency limitations pre~nt challenges for implementation in smaller organizations, While firms can gain considerable value from ISO 14001, it may offer limited value at a high price for SMEs.

This research will examine environmental management in SMEs, with a focus on small organizations and ISO 14001. The study will identify elements that po~ competency challenges and areas for potential engagement with academic institutions to enhance EMS competency and literacy in SMEs.

Award date: 4/30/2020
Sponsor: Rochester Institute of Technology

The objective of this work is to assist Bausch + Lomb to develop and enhance their EHS management system manual and related standard operating procedures to address the requirements of ISO 4S001: 2018. This work will include reviewing existing documentation and information, participating in an onsite facility visit and ISO 45001 readiness review, and identifying and making recommendations for enhancement to enable Bausch + Lomb to ensure that the new concepts and requirements of ISO 45001:2018 are incorporated into their processes and documentation.

Award date: 3/4/2020
Sponsors: Baush & Lomb/ World Headquarters

This planning proposal seeks funding to take the initial step towards preparing and supporting CS faculty to create interdisciplinary CS+ X courses through partnerships with faculty in other disciplines. We define interdisciplinary CS+ X courses as those where both CS and X students and faculty partners, learn together in the same classroom with interdisciplinary projects. The team will (1) identify faculty who have designed some flavor of CS+ X courses, (2) develop and implement a workshop program to bring together these experienced faculty with a set of faculty partners (CS and X) committed to create prototypes to gather knowledge on faculty preparation and resource needs and various models for partnered teaching of CS+X courses, and (3) disseminate our gained knowledge and understanding through writing a report based on the workshop discussions and findings.

Award date: 2/9/2015
Sponsor: NSF - National Science Foundation

This multi-partner project will build knowledge and expertise in Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) at the high school and undergraduate levels. Although CIP-related concepts and dissemination efforts have targeted graduate students, very little curricular material is available to the high school and undergraduate population in a suitable pedagogic modality.

Co-PI: Raj, Rajendra; Romanowski, Carol and Schneider, Jennifer
Senior Personnel: Howles, Trudy
Award date: 7/24/2013
Sponsor: NSF - National Science Foundation

We propose a one year RGH-RIT joint project to perform basic scientific research with the purpose of understanding and monitoring labor. We would make use of state-of-the-art methods in electrohysterography for gathering patient data at RGH OB GYN, and apply advanced methods of signal processing to analyze the gathered data at RIT. The proposal is the culmination of many brainstorming sessions and extensive literature survey performed by our RGH-RIT team over the past six months. We expect the project to end with an NIH (or equivalent) grant proposal. Funding this seed project will allow publication of initial results, which will enhance the chance of NIH or equivalent funding.

Co-PI: Oh, Tae and Tsouri, GIll
Award date: 4/19/2012
Sponsor: The Rochester General Hospital

The objective of this project is to conduct a study for determining the most suitable wireless networking technology for smartgrid applications. Smartgrid technology can be considered as the modernization of the electric grid with the addition of bi-directional wireless communication links between the supplier and the consumer. This enhancement will provide the capability of monitoring electricity consumption at coarse (per-home) as well as granular (per electrical appliance) levels.

Award date: 1/29/2010
Sponsor: Rochester Institute of Technology

Building on findings from, and relationships built at, their October 2020 NSF-supported IUSE-supported “Workshop on Aligning Educational Goals with Professional Practice,” as well as prior work, this multi-institutional team proposes a partnership among computing employers and academia, with input from diverse professional computing bodies such as ACM, IEEE Computer Society, as well as accreditation bodies such as ABET.

The proposed project involves three goals: (1) development and deployment of a national, comprehensive survey to gather specific actionable evidence of competencies expected by employers who hire computing graduates; (2) development and deployment of a comprehensive theory of change that applies to both academic and employer stakeholders that is driven by the survey results; and (3) development of a sustainable model for a permanent process that supports the survey, change process and ongoing dialog between academia and employers for continual continuous improvement. The RIT contribution will involve each of these goals.

Award date: 5/26/2021
Sponsor: NSF- National Science Foundation

Building on the success of the last three years of running GenCyber camps, this proposal calls for another set of day GenCyber camps on the RIT campus in the summer of 2018 to continue to address the national need of skilled cybersecurity professionals. Specifically, two student day camps will be organized: the first capped at 60 students will provide an introductory coverage of security in web and mobile computing, and the second capped at 30 students will cover more advanced topics in the same space. To increase participation of students underrepresented in STEM disciplines, specific outreach activities are planned to target the majority-minority Rochester City School District, a local girls' high school, as well as a select set of suburban districts with significant minority enrollments.

Co-PI: Krutz, Daniel
Senior Personnel: Olson, Rob and Steele, Ben
Award date: 5/25/2018
Sponsors: DOD. National Security Agency

FEMA's 2011 National Disaster Recovery Framework describes the recovery continuum as having four phases: preparedness, short-term, intermediate and long-term. Both within each phase and across multiple phases, emergency managers pursue several interdependent, often concurrent, activities to help their communities recover successfully. However, this recovery success tends to be assessed from a single point variable or a set of single point variables that do not reflect interdependency for the most part. This project will therefore quantify recovery success by identifying appropriate metrics that help emergency managers optimize responses and outcomes. Building on their prior experiences working with local and state emergency managers, the project team will also categorize metrics for defining operational resilience.

Co-PI: Mishra, Sumita; Raj, Rajendra and Schneider, Jennifer
Award date: 11/5/2014
Sponsor: LMI

Emergency management on a regional scale involves the efficient deployment of first responder (FR) unites, e.g. police, fire, and emergency medical services, to large-scale incidents such as flooding, multiple-alarm fires, or severe weather events. In the case of multi-nodal incidents or co-occuring emergencies or both, the emergency manager must balance the load on the system by allocating and, when possible, pre-positioning units based on attributes such as functions, capabilities, and distance to the event. To accomplish this task, the manager must have two foundational inputs: (1) the region's critical infrastructure assets and how they are interconnected, and (2) a predictive model of how each particular event will unfold over time. This project, which is phase 1 of a long-term initiative, proposes to develop a proof of concept for systems approach to learning historical emergency data to support emergency management.

Co-PI: Mishra, Sumita; Raj, Rajendra and Schneider, Jennifer
Award date: 10/22/2013
Sponsor: LMI

Emergency evacuation occurs within a social context despite the risk, danger of impending devastation. Humans make decisions in connection with their social obligations, the most important of which is family (Drabek and Boggs 1968). In preparing more efficient and effective emergency plans, the role of family needs to be recognized, maximized and transformed from a liability preventing timely evacuation to an asset encouraging it.

This research proposes the use of agent-based modeling to simulate how varying levels of family obligations directly alter evacuation rates as a preliminary step to modeling more complex evacuation scenarios.

Award date: 3/2/2012
Sponsor: Rochester Institute of Technology

Why have 64% of Americans never left the United States? The State Department reports that only 36% of Americans have valid passports in circulation. To what extent can this low proportion of passport holders be explained by fear in travel? This comprehensive, holistic, and process-based approach in the proposal reported here is distinct from most studies on this topic that have been formulated for tourists as rational decision-makers in isolation of other influences (e.g. emotions such as fear). By taking a process-based approach, researchers and managers can be more cognizant in their understanding of what factors characterize fear in tourist decision-making.

Award date: 3/16/2018
Sponsor: Rochester Institute of Technology