Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Purdue Research Team Investigates Disaster Recovery

March 4th, 2016

One of the research teams for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and the 21^st Century Grand Challenges project has just released their initial findings that coincides with the 4-year anniversary of the Southern Indiana tornadoes (March 2-3). Their ongoing research focuses on these communities and how they handled the after-effects of the tornado devastation.

The title of the research project is “Resilient Communities: Strengthening Post-Disaster Recovery by Understanding Interdependent Social and Physical Networks.”

The team conducted its study as part of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and the 21st Century Grand Challenges project, an initiative created by President Barack Obama in 2013 to harness science, technology and innovation to solve important national or global problems. The $538,000 grant was issued to Purdue University in March 2014 for a project titled “Catalyzing the Involvement of Humanists and Social Scientists in Grand Challenge Initiatives,” led by Principal Investigator Jim Mullins, dean of libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor.

Megan Sapp Nelson, associate professor, Purdue University Libraries is quoted in the article as part of this research team.  A link to the article can be found here: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q1/purdue-research-team-investigates-disaster-recovery.html.

For more about the Mellon Grand Challenge Exploratory Initiative led by Principal Investigator Jim Mullins, dean of libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor, go to: https://www.purdue.edu/research/ppri/research/grants.html.