Throughout the world every year, disasters claim considerable loss-of-life and property, and cause short- and long-term impact on the socioeconomic development of cities, regions, and even countries. Due to the concentration of populations in large urban centers and other factors, our modern societies, which strongly depend on a highly interconnected network of infrastructures for water, energy, transportation, public health, telecommunications, banking, information technologies, etc., have become increasingly vulnerable to disasters, be it natural or man-made. In this respect, water infrastructures occupy a particularly important position. Various other critical sectors, such as public health, transportation, energy, and protection against fire, rely on their continuous and flawless operation. A threat resulting in incapacitation or destruction of water-related infrastructures may lead to some serious “cascading”, “escalating”, and/or “common cause” failures in other systems, and amplify the impact of the disaster by disrupting the delivery of vital services to our nation.

The National Center for Computational Hydroscience of The University of Mississippi is proud to announce the organization of a series of one-day seminars dedicated to Disaster and Emergency Management.

Disaster management, according to FEMA, should be considered as a sum of the actions to “prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies," and has become a highly multidisciplinary field requiring input and expertise from numerous scientific fields, such as mathematical and computational modeling, geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies, information technologies, operations research and management sciences, economy, social sciences, etc. It is hoped that, by bringing together scientists, researchers, engineers, decision makers, emergency management personnel from different universities, research centers, state and federal agencies, local governments and the public in general, this seminar series will be instrumental not only in disseminating knowledge and experience in all issues related to disaster and emergency management, but also in stimulating collaborative fundamental and applied research and educational projects in the area of homeland security.

After each seminar, all presentations will be posted in Adobe PDF format on this website as part of our outreach, education and capacity-building efforts in the domain of homeland security and disaster and emergency management.

The seminars are open to all interested persons, and registration is not required to attend.

If you wish to sign up for our mailing list in order to receive future announcements and the newsletter regarding this seminar series, please click here and send a blank email to the email address.

Contact person and organizer: Dr. Mustafa S. Altinakar
Associate Director and Research Professor, NCCHE, The University of Mississippi
(P: 662-915-3783; F: 662-915-7796; email: altinakar@ncche.olemiss.edu)

Seminar No. 1

Tuesday March 6, 2007
Lyceum Building, Room 200

Click here to view the announcement with program and abstracts
Click here to download the announcement in PDF format
Click here to access/download the presentation files in PDF format 
Click here to access/download photos from the seminar

Seminar No. 2

Friday April 13, 2007
Lyceum Building, Room 200

Click here to view the announcement with program and abstracts
Click here to download the announcement in PDF format

Seminar No. 3

Friday April 13, 2007
Lyceum Building, Room 200

Click here to download the announcement in PDF format