When disasters strike, restoring access to critical infrastructure is among the first orders of business for emergency operations personnel. However, access to support services and resources for recovery is often scarcer in under-resourced communities, further exacerbating the impact felt by residents.

Enter the Resilience, Education, and Advocacy Center for Hazard Preparedness (REACH) hub — the product of a partnership between researchers from UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and the City of Orlando. Officially unveiled Jan. 28 at the Orlando Emergency Operations Center, the hub is a self-sustaining mobile unit designed to be deployed to neighborhoods in need of critical services following emergencies. These include air-conditioning, mobile charging stations, broadband internet connection, and an onboard refrigerator and freezer that can assist with food storage and distribution.

“The program is focused on community-centered projects in close partnership with civic agencies, which was perfect for this idea.” — Kelly Stevens, assistant professor

Kelly Stevens, principal investigator and assistant professor in the School of Public Administration, says the city approached the team with an idea for a mobile resilience hub over five years ago. She found the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Civic Innovation program shortly after.

“The program is focused on community-centered projects in close partnership with civic agencies, which was perfect for this idea,” Stevens says.

Funded by a total of $1 million in grants from both the NSF and U.S. Department of Energy, the project kicked off in 2022 with a planning phase before receiving approval to begin the design and development phase in 2023. Stevens has led the REACH hub project alongside co-principal investigators Yue “Gurt” Ge, public administration associate professor; L. Trenton S. Marsh, urban education assistant professor; Liqiang Wang, computer science professor; and Zhihua Qu, electrical and computer engineering professor. Other faculty on the project include Maritza Concha, nonprofit management lecturer; Christopher Emrich, emergency management professor; and Kristopher Davis, associate professor of materials science and engineering.

The solar-powered REACH hub will be placed in socioeconomically vulnerable parts of Orlando, contributing to the improvement of more equitable disaster response and recovery efforts. Although designed primarily with “gray skies” or emergency situations in mind, the pilot hub will not go unused during “blue skies” conditions. The REACH team has taken a collaborative approach that engages community partners and underserved populations in helping drive not only the hub’s design process but also ideas for its use outside of emergency deployment. That includes an educational component, which uses 360-degree video technology and virtual-reality headsets to transport residents to city landmarks representing vulnerability or resilience.

“Partnerships have been the cornerstone of this project,” Stevens says. “One of the strengths in our proposal was the demonstrated partnership UCF has with the city of Orlando. Further, we have two core partners on this project —the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida’s Levy-Hughes Clubhouse and Hebni Nutrition, both located in Parramore — and they have provided feedback on how the hub could be useful to the work they do in the community with residents and Orlando youth.”

“The hub is the result of the city, UCF and our other partners taking the concepts of equity and resilience and creating something with them.” — Michael Hess, director of sustainability and resilience for the City of Orlando

Michael Hess, director of sustainability and resilience for the City of Orlando, also served as director of its Future Ready program, which focused on guiding the city toward a smarter and more sustainable future. It was during the plan’s development phase that he and his staff met Stevens and began collaborating on bringing the resilience hubs to life.

“The hub is the result of the city, UCF and our other partners taking the concepts of equity and resilience and creating something with them,” Hess says. “It’s going to get used in ‘blue skies’ 99% of the time — hopefully, we don’t have too many disasters — which means our sustainability and resilience team can use it for both education and fun. That could be anything from a movie night to teaching kids how to harvest from our community gardens. We’re looking at different types of educational content to help people be more sustainable and resilient.”

The city will ultimately be responsible for deploying and maintaining the hub, but Stevens and her team will remain closely involved throughout the rest of the grant period, which runs through the end of September. Currently, they are continuing to collect insight from community members and partners that will further inform and hone the hub’s possible uses.

“We will be conducting demonstrations over the next few months where we will be collecting feedback from residents about the hub, evaluating the educational programs, and making adjustments to the resilience educational programming,” Stevens says.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer says the hub is a welcome addition to the city’s six existing community centers — which double as resource distribution centers for residents following disasters — as it provides a means to bring resources straight to those who need them most.

“We’re always excited when we can provide additional support to our residents — especially after heat events, hurricanes or whatever other storms we may have,” Dyer says. “UCF has partnered with the city on so many different things, including designing and providing this deployable mobile hub, which I would say is pretty incredible. We are ecstatic to now have the ability to locate a resiliency hub anywhere in the city.”

Researcher Credentials
Stevens joined UCF in 2017 and holds a doctorate in public administration from Syracuse University. She is also a member of UCF’s Resilient, Intelligent, and Sustainable Energy Systems (RISES) Cluster and FSEC Energy Research Center.

Ge joined the College of Community Innovation and Education in 2018 and serves as co-lead of the Urban Resilience Initiative. He is also part of the Center for Resilient, Intelligent and Sustainable Energy System (RISES) faculty research cluster. He holds a doctorate in urban and regional science from Texas A&M University.

Marsh earned his doctorate in teaching and learning with a concentration in urban education from New York University. He joined UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education in 2019.

Qu arrived at UCF in 1990 after earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is both a Pegasus Professor and the Thomas J. Riordan and Herbert C. Towle Chair of UCF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Additionally, Qu is the founding director of both RISES and the multi-institutional Foundations for Engineering Education for Distributed Energy Resources Center (FEEDER).

Wang earned his doctorate in computer science from Stony Brook University in 2006 and joined the UCF Department of Computer Science in 2015.