Mitchell Givens at AGU poster session

Mitchell Givens, 2022 SimCenter REU, presented his research poster at the AGU Fall Meeting held December 12-16, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. Mitchell is an undergraduate student pursuing a double major in Urban Planning and Public Policy at SUNY Albany. The poster summarizes the project “Evaluation of Brooklyn Storm Shelter Capabilities to Meet the Needs of Vulnerable Populations,” conducted with SimCenter colleagues Adam Zsarnócsay, Ann-Margaret Esnard, and Matt Schoettler.

The purpose of the project was to find areas in Brooklyn with potentially high shelter needs, after hurricanes, based on socioeconomic and geographic risk factors. The research maps the distribution of social vulnerabilities and storm surge damage throughout Brooklyn, New York. The vulnerability maps are used to determine if current designated emergency shelters adequately meet the needs of vulnerable groups under multiple NOAA storm surge scenarios. The SimCenter tool Regional Resilience Determination (R2D) tool was used to complete a damage assessment of the building inventory in Brooklyn, New York.