Students in the pilot offering of CEE 498: Community Disaster Resilience applied interdisciplinary knowledge to prototype two websites addressing emergency-preparedness needs in Champaign County.
Working with the Champaign County Emergency Management Agency, the teams used the Engineering Unleashed Entrepreneurial Mindset principles — Curiosity, Connections and Creating Value — to investigate community needs, consult stakeholders, test ideas, and revise their designs in response to feedback. The class divided into two teams to address critical issues related to emergency preparedness in the community surrounding the University campus.
The Critical Connections Crew — comprised of CEE students Marissa Campobasso, Juliana Marks, Dennis Arthur, Lizet Alvarez, and Yuhui Zhai — created the Champaign County Emergency Preparedness Resource Hub. The mobile-friendly site organizes trusted resources into five categories: emergency response, communication, shelters, transportation and public health. It was designed with particular attention to older adults, people with disabilities, households without cars, mobile-home residents, and residents with medical, mobility or language-access needs to ensure these vulnerable populations have access to important information in case of emergencies.
The Chambana Sheltr team — which included CEE students William Wei, Tessa Kleiner, Ryan McAllister, Sarthak Bhandari, and Anusha Selva — developed Chambana Sheltr, a mobile-oriented dashboard that helps people find shelter for incoming severe weather. The app includes multilingual information, filters related to accessibility for pets and families, emergency-based safety tips, real-time location-based National Weather Service feed, and a shelter locator that includes direct links to Google Maps.
The student teams reached out to local stakeholders to identify local needs regarding community emergency management. For this year’s set of projects, the teams consulted primarily with John Dwyer, Champaign County's Emergency Management Agency Coordinator, while also gaining perspective on community needs through presentations from Brian Brauer, Executive Director of Emergency Management at the University of Illinois; Andy Nelson, Director, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, U.S. Army ERDC; and Mamadou Tounkara, Public Health Administrator for the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. Stakeholder consultations helped teams to reconsider their initial assumptions and emphasize practical usability, accessibility, and transparent communication.
The student teams also prepared maintenance instructions, update/maintenance procedures and transition materials to help community emergency managers evaluate and potentially use the tools beyond the semester.
Together, the projects demonstrate the new course’s service-oriented approach. Students connected engineering and planning expertise with locally identified needs to create practical digital prototypes intended to support community emergency preparedness.
Course development was supported by a grant from the Kern Family Foundation (Engineering Unleashed) through the Grainger College of Engineering's Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) and the collaborative efforts of faculty and community emergency leaders: S. Koloutsou-Vakakis (CEE); A. P. Barros (CEE); Y. Ouyang (CEE); Vishal Verma (CEE); A. S. Stillwell (CEE); F. T. Lombardo (CEE); C. Van Riper (NRES); A. Nelson (CERL, U.S. Army ERDC); B. R. Brauer (U of I Emergency Management); J. Dwyer, (Champaign County EMA); G. Heintz (NIBA, IGB), M. Tounkara (C-U PHD).