For Our Communities, With Our Communities
Public Service
RIDER faculty engage and inform communities through town hall sessions and meetings, allowing public perspective and perception of our research findings as part of the center activities. Recognizing the significant impact the center can have on emergency operations—particularly for rural communities—we help agencies develop an effective remedial action by closing the loop between communities, governments, environment, and infrastructure. This allows officials to make informed choices about the progress of evacuation and emergency response operations. We believe this information can be used to create more effective emergency response strategies and policies that reduce the community-dwelling public vulnerability to injury or death in hurricanes.
In addition, we share our findings with the general public include via our website, community meetings and lectures that we organize through our affiliate members.
Training
University communities are engaged primarily through student and faculty researchers from FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (which encompasses engineering students and faculty from both Florida A&M and Florida State universities), and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program of FSU. The center is also part of the FSU’s Young Scholars Program to train high school students. Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars actively work on multidisciplinary grant projects, which are extremely valuable training for them.
Applied Research
At RIDER, our research doesn't only decrease the negative impact of natural disasters in Florida's panhandle but also improves the daily lives of our communities. Watch the short clip below to find out about the work of Dr. Tarek Abichou, one of our center-affiliated faculty, on monitoring and reducing the impact of local and regional landfill byproducts. Innovative technology we use at RIDER reduces the environmental impact of landfills by converting them into recreational spaces.