Revival of Personal Connections and Communities

Physical separation has cut off many Katrina evacuees from each other, as well as their community leaders and elected representatives. Restoring many of these personal and community connections (and developing new ones) will play an important part in addressing the losses and recovery of evacuees.

I am a professor of management and engineering, and I have expertise in organizations that are geographically-dispersed, volunteer-based, open to anyone, and structured in part through the use of Internet applications and services.

This open and collaborative project is committed to three outcomes, in order of priority and complexity:

1. Assessment and expression of evacuee needs
   
2. Local meetings for evacuees where they are now displaced
3. Reliable communications between evacuees and the people they chose to represent them prior to their displacement

A core operations team is composed of participants at my home institution, Dartmouth College.

Hurricane Katrina impacted multiple states in the Gulf Coast region, but New Orleans evacuees will provide the nexus of most project activities.