Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Jean-Marie Nshimiyimana - Johnson C. Smith University
Co-Author(s): Cody Byrd, Ehije Idehenre, and Chen Hang
After a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, approximately 220,000 to 316,000 people died from this single event. This study was conducted to determine the resiliency of Haiti’s community before and after the earthquake and its recovery process. Part of the analysis that was done was to understand the condition of Haiti pre-earthquake. This allowed us to understand the impact of the earthquake on the country’s economy, social, and political scale. The analysis of the actual data was accomplished using Tableau, which is a software that allows the importing of data from multiple sources, such as excel, access, SQL server, etc., and allows users to create models in order to visually represent the data. A team of three students used Tableau to identify the resources available in response to a natural disaster. The focus was to determine if the organizations present in Haiti had the necessary resources and funding. In addition, the secondary focus was to determine the availability of medical services that would be used to care for the affected people. The findings were that Haiti was not prepared for such an event. The organizations on the ground did not have the support they needed to easily respond to people in need because more than 62% of the affected population were located within a 100-mile radius of the epicenter. In addition to that, more than 50% of the medical facilities were destroyed thus pushing Haitians to seek medical help in the Dominican Republic also.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This research was supported in part by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence.
Faculty Advisor: Hang Chen, hchen@jcsu.edu
Role: My main responsibility was to perform the analysis of the data using Tableau and generate appropriate graphs representing the findings on the vulnerability and lack of resources after the earthquake.