SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A:CaReDeX: Enabling Disaster Resilience in Aging Communities via a Secure Data Exchange

Disasters over the years have shown that a disproportionate number of older adults suffer fatalities and injuries during extreme events. A large number of older adults live in age-friendly communities and senior health facilities (SHFs) that promote independent living. During a crisis, older adults are often unable to shelter safely in place or evacuate on their own due to a range of physical conditions (need for life-sustaining equipment, impaired mobility) and cognitive afflictions (e.g. dementia, Alzheimer’s).

Seamless access to information about the living facilities (e.g., floor plans, operational status, number of residents) and about the residents (e.g.,health conditions such as need for dialysis, oxygen, personal objects to reduce anxiety) can empower first responders to improve response outcomes during disasters. Such information, typically held by caregivers and in the logs maintained by the organizations, is inaccessible and/or unavailable at the time of response.

This proposal seeks to create a novel community contributed data-exchange platform, entitled CareDEX, that will empower organizations to readily assimilate, ingest, store and exchange information, both apriori and in real-time, with response agencies to protect and care for the elderly in extreme events. Using CareDEX, SHFs will be able to share information about an individual’s changing health conditions, their personalized needs and identify those in need of specialized triage and critical care.

Given the sensitive nature of personal information, e.g. health profiles, ability status, CareDEX will incorporate techniques to balance the need for individual privacy with authorized release of information to responders when needed. The pilot 4-month planning effort will involve 2 workshops and a demonstration pilot study that will focus on bringing stakeholders from the emergency response and senior living communities to identify specific information needs, design protocols for collection and sharing of such data, and explore privacy/security concerns.

The workshops and pilot will address simulated emergency scenarios, e.g a wildfire event requiring evacuation of seniors and a complex event when the fire occurs during a pandemic such as Covid19. The goal of the workshops would be to help identify the requirements which will guide the research, design, and development of CareDEX. The planning workshops will engage a diverse group of students and postdoctoral researchers and thereby contribute to the education of the next generation of citizens in interdisciplinary topics that are relevant to communities worldwide.

This project is in response to Track B - CIVIC Innovation Challenge - Resilience to Natural Disasters a collaboration with NSF and the Department of Homeland Security.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.