Tracy Kijewski-Correa, professor of engineering and global affairs and the William J. Pulte Director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development, was the lead author for the study, published in the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering.
“This research shows how the 2021 earthquake response in Haiti leveraged both local data collection and remote expertise on a large scale to quickly assess the damage and inform local decision makers,” Kijewski-Correa said. “This hybrid approach shows how we can proactively embrace localization, empowering affected populations to play a significant role in generating solutions.”
Kijewski-Correa, partners at GeoHazards International and students at Notre Dame helped coordinate the assessment, which she said unfolded amid travel constraints following the assassination of the Haitian president. But going hybrid turned out to be an advantage: Small teams of Haitians used smartphones to share data and images with remote engineers.
This divide-and-conquer approach allowed responders to cover more ground more quickly than they could have with a conventional arrangement where engineers traveled to see damage sites firsthand, Kijewski-Correa said. And after any disaster, she said, gathering forensic information quickly, before debris shifts, is critical to determining what caused the damage.
Responders captured a representative sample of different building classes, including residential, educational, commercial, government and medical facilities, Kijewski-Correa said, facilitating a rapid assessment that assigned global damage ratings to over 12,500 buildings.
“This model can help vulnerable communities worldwide more swiftly learn from disasters and build back better to reduce future risk." -Tracy Kijewski-Correa
Next, remote engineers used machine learning to analyze approximately 40,000 collected images and identify some 200 homes that were built using traditional Haitian construction, Kijewski-Correa said. This in turn enabled data collectors in Haiti to conduct forensic documentation of 30 of these homes that performed well in the earthquake using another mobile app.
The results were surprising, Kijewski-Correa said: Structures built using traditional Haitian construction fared better than those built with contemporary concrete and masonry approaches that experts had been touting in Haiti. She said the traditional homes’ bracing scheme, which determines how buildings distribute and support the shock imparted by the earthquake, made all the difference.
Kijewski-Correa has shared takeaways from the earthquake assessment with researchers and humanitarian responders, including at the World Bank, to help better support housing recovery after major disasters.
Originally published in the Pulte Institute 2023-24 Annual Review.
Originally published by at pulte.nd.edu on September 14, 2024.