Geography, Planning & Environment to assist with Hurricane Florence Relief Efforts
The American Red Cross is currently undertaking disaster recovery surveys in Eastern North Carolina in response to Hurricane Florence. One of their district teams is located here in Greenville. They contacted GPE yesterday to determine if we could assist with the following items:
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Students and faculty volunteers to assess damage in a variety of locations throughout Eastern NC. The American Red Cross will provide training on how they do this and a phone to conduct the surveys on.
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Students and faculty assistance in developing routing maps in GIS to aid volunteers get to locations in need to assess damage.
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Students and faculty assistance with GIS quality assurance of the data collected in the field.
The fieldwork (#1) would require an all-day commitment. Volunteers are in the field seven days a week, so even if you cannot do it during the week, you could volunteer on the weekends.
Numbers 2 & 3 would be done here in GPE computer labs and would require whatever time you could give. We expect there may be some peak times in the evening where we would need people as we will be trying to get out routing maps to volunteers for the next day.
This would be a great opportunity to represent the program in efforts to assist our region recover from the impacts of Hurricane Florence. For students this would also be a great opportunity to gain some practical GIS experience and volunteer hours. Furthermore, once all of these data are collected there would also be opportunities for internships with the American Red Cross to examine the data in greater detail for this and future recovery projects.
All of the work for the American Red Cross must be completed by October 10th, 2018. The more people we can get to assist with this, the better chance the American Red Cross will reach this deadline.
I encourage you to strongly consider volunteering for this worthy effort and represent ECU and GPE in a positive manner in the region.
If you are interested please sign-up below (time is critical).
You will be contacted within 24 hours on how we will proceed with these efforts.
Also, would like to pass along thanks to Karen Mulcahy, Rob Howard and Scott Wade for the assist with the Red Cross on and off campus visits yesterday.
Thank you for your support!