Projects

Since Hurricane Helene in Sept 2024, parts of Appalachia have been hit by severe non-cyclonic storms, tornadoes, and other severe weather events. STAR-TIDES initial focus of the in 2025-26 will be recovery and resilience planning across Southwest Virginia, and parts of the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Components of the project will include: helping communities do better than building back to restore an inadequate pre-crisis status quo, improving their ability to anticipated future crises, and co-developing an adaptive infrastructure to increase resilience moving forward.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) two-year planning grant is examining cascading climate hazards through science-community integration in Puerto Rico, focused on cross-cutting infrastructure disruptions affecting multiple sectors.

The Alfred Lee Loomis Council is a forum for technology leaders and policymakers to share expertise, consider the future of technology policy, and build innovative solutions to 21st century problems. This partnership has provided a number of insights that can benefit the reimagining resilience initiative.

The Marshallese-led Kwajalein Atoll Sustainability Lab (KASL) in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) conducted a series of innovative projects over several years addressing sea-level rise mitigation and related technologies, from which we have learned. Although US government funding for these efforts has been halted (hopefully temporarily), STAR-TIDES members also are working to apply lessons from the Pacific Islands to the Caribbean.

Projects in Puerto Rico began in 2018 in conjunction with the People-Centered Internet (PCI) on digital opportunities on the island in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. During COVID Mason faculty and affiliates taught (virtually) a set of courses on Resilience and Business Innovation (RBI), focused in 4 areas: “digital Puerto Rico,” energy, micro-manufacture, and integrated agriculture. In addition, STAR-TIDES members have focused on building a resilient and sustainable island-wide infrastructure (especially in energy) and improved emergency communications. Beyond this, increased local resilience is essential. Recurring issues include multi-hazard preparedness, mitigating flooding and sea level rise; rebuilding to meet local needs; developing a climate-ready workforce; understanding the allocation of Federal and territorial funds and applying them to municipalities; reducing delays in permitting; and improving emergency communications. C-RASC, STAR-TIDES and Mason’s College of Science (COS) are working with communities, research centers, universities and the Puerto Rican government. Masters degree students in Mason’s Data Analytics Engineering (DAEN) program have focused several of their CAPSTONE projects on Puerto Rico-related topics.

In the spring of 2018 Mason Masters degree students in the Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) Department developed a CAPSTONE project related to the development of land near Welch, the capital of McDowell County, WV, one of the poorest counties in the State. Although the project met all its technical objectives, it never succeeded in developing the social relationships with the community to reach its full potential.

The emphasis has been on using the Internet to help build sustainable resilience that meets the needs of people, vice corporations or governments. PCI also brings ties to organizations such as the Internet Society, World Economic Forum, and IEEE. Cooperation with PCI was essential in the “Native American Broadband & Workforce Initiative” (see below).

These efforts originally focused on the general concept of “Appalachia Advancing”– supporting the southern coal counties and later COVID-related resilience issues and rural broadband. Present collaboration centers on Shepherd’s Tabler Farm agricultural research center. Appalachia recovery efforts may play a bigger role in the future.

STAR-TIDES was first affiliated with Mason through the Center of Excellence in C5I Center (Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Cyber, and Intelligence), now C5I Center. The precursor of C-RASC was established in 2017 as the Community Resilience Lab under the C5I Center (then C4I & Cyber) with a focus on continuing the annual capabilities demo and examining cybersecurity aspects of humanitarian assistance. In 2019 the C-RASC concept won a university-wide competition and was established as a transdisciplinary center. In addition to the topics noted elsewhere, collaborations with STAR-TIDES have included water for sustainable agriculture in Ethiopia; complex, adaptive threats, such as cyberattacks concurrently with natural disasters; cascading casualties across infrastructures; and COVID early warning projects. C-RASC was re-chartered by Mason in 2025.

Originally linked to a Japanese government program on Public, Environmental Health and Disaster Medicine, this network will be reoriented to focus on other STAR-TIDES-related topics in the Indo-Pacific region.

STAR-TIDES and C-RASC supported a People-Centered Internet (PCI)-led project focused on Native American Communities, with the potential to expand to other areas. Begun during COVID, this three-year, privately supported effort emphasized rural broadband and community-level workforce development, building on a tripartite, locally led approach:

• hands-on training (known as “boot camps”).

• A trusted online information repository called the Tribal Resource Center (TRC) Resource Center (TRC).

• A broadband academy to sustain the initiative, set up a micro-certification program, and provide general infrastructure support.

Starting from engagement with four Tribes, over 175 ultimately were reached. This tripartite model could be applied in other regions as well and is being considered for parts of Appalachia and Puerto Rico.

A recent team has addressed rural bandwidth to support people working on the ground to enhance connectivity to remote communities. A poll of the STAR-TIDES network generated about 25 replies of interest, which developed into a smaller enduring core team. One part of this developed into a successful project to promote digital opportunities in Native American Communities (see next bullet above). Team members have skills such as: The project focused first on Native American Communities, but explored other areas such as rural Vermont, mixed use counties in Virginia, and rural North Carolina.

• Installation of different kinds of communications capabilities.

• Functions such as tele-medicine, tele-work, and distance learning.

• Network design.

• Seeking out funding opportunities.

• Administrative support.

• Experience in various geographic regions.

The project focused first on Native American Communities, but explored other areas such as rural Vermont, mixed use counties in Virginia, and rural North Carolina.

This work was coordinated with Dr. David Bray, the Center’s director and focused on community resilience from the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

The wide-ranging collaboration with Dr. Lee McKnight and his team from the Syracuse University School of Information Studieshas included secure cloud computing architecture and COVID early warning efforts.

BROCADE was an initiative to provide a focal point for coordinating the diverse skill sets within the STAR-TIDES network onto focused projects. It also included a concept for “Integrated Resilience and Risk Management” (IRRM) that examined ways to use commercial concepts of risk management and ROI calculations to address interdependencies in resilience (e.g. the military can’t deploy without civilian infrastructures, even as those infrastructures may depend on the military for physical and cyber protection). A problem is that govt (civil and military), business, academia, and International Organizations/NGOs typically have different concepts and even vocabulary. Some of the cross-cutting areas BROCADE proposed to examine included:

• Building resilience to natural and man-made disasters (Sendai Risk Reduction Framework, STAR-TIDES).

• Developing resilience in under-served communities to reduce economic/social/ political unrest (BROCADE, Sustainable Development Goals)

• Cyber security (resilience of systems and networks).

• Critical infrastructure protection (resilience against cascading casualties).

• Smart cities/smart nations (as used in Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 resilient cities).

• Military mission assurance (continuing to function under any level of attack).

• Business continuity of operations, supply chain risk management, succession planning, etc…

This understanding begins with empathetic listening. Risk also needs to be communicated–through narratives and storytelling. Clearly most nations haven’t communicated to their publics the importance of cyber risks (among others). Two themes kept recurring:

• Applying whole-of-society approaches, like Singapore’s response to SARS, to most other contingencies.

• How to lay the groundwork so you never waste a good crisis.

In the end, BROCADE formed the basis for much of the work that went into the establishment of Mason’s Community Research Lab and later the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) and was subsumed into those initatives.

The Iraqi Embassy in Washington approached members of the STAR-TIDES team about how the network might be used to provide support to internally displaced persons (IDPs) around Tikrit or Basrah. In that case, when we asked the STAR-TIDES network: “Who would be interested in supporting refugee/IDP camps in Iraq?” we got about 80 offers of support within a week, several of which indicated a willingness to be part of an initial survey team. We then met with the Embassy, described the response and emphasized that this MUST be an Iraqi-led effort, so we asked:

• Who their points of contact (POCs) and core team would be to define the problems?

• When and where would they be ready to engage with interested members from the STAR-TIDES network?

The US Defense and State Departments also were kept informed, with emphasis to the Iraqis that STAR-TIDES efforts were NOT a USG initiative. As it turned out, Iraq never identified their POCs, or what they wanted members of the network to do, so the project did not go further, but the network’s response showed what capabilities could be brought to bear.

Super Typhoon Hayan-Yolanda was one of the strongest storms ever to hit the Philippines, devastating much of the central part of the archipelago. Some STAR-TIDES members were able to support relief operations on the ground, working with Philippine government representatives. Lessons from this storm have been applied to other disasters and helped strengthen ties to Philippine institutions such as Ateneo University in Manila.

On December 23, 2012 a small electrical fire turned devastating for the first modern clinic in Old Fangak, South Sudan. After three years of construction, roughly half of the nearly completed clinic, most of its medical supplies, and solar power generators were destroyed in a matter of minutes. Among the ruined medical supplies was a year’s worth of medicine meant to treat Kala-azar disease, a prevalent parasitic disease that is lethal if left untreated. It took only one day for the TIDES team at the National Defense University’s (NDU) Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) to receive word of the devastation and jump into action. Leveraging the global STAR-TIDES network, TIDES and the clinic’s team were able to tap into the network to replace all the medical supplies, solar power generators and transport at little or no cost. This crowdsourcing-for-solutions example shows that a small DoD entity like CTNSP and its TIDES Project can quickly and efficiently tap into the rapidly growing private sector/NGO expertise on a variety of issues, including situational awareness and off-the-shelf commercial applications (COTS).

Hurricane Sandy (Colloquially “Superstorm Sandy”) caused widespread damage in the Caribbean and the eastern US in October 2012. As it turned out experiments done at Camp Roberts during JFEX in the summer of 2012 had helped improve ways that the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) collected post-disaster imagery (higher altitude oblique images vice lower altitude nadir photography), and the new techniques were used to good effect as the clouds cleared after Sandy. Also, STAR-TIDES reps worked very closely before the storm with local business developers and studied their plans for Business Emergency Operations Centers (BEOC). Sandy provided many lessons in communications and related technologies for cross infrastructure coordination during and after disasters (e.g., if there are 2 gas stations and 1 has fuel but no power, and the other has power but no fuel, neither will work, but with better coordination the capabilities might be combined to have at least one functioning site).

TIDES/STAR-TIDES personnel focused on lessons learned about the international integration of civilian capabilities with military assistance. They also collaborated on innovative approaches to the monitoring and display of information about radioactivity.

This project stemmed from a US Southern Command request in the wake of the Haiti earthquake to develop a deployable multi-function kit for emergency responders, although development of the concept of such a kit had begun earlier based on exercises with Central American disaster relief organizations. PEAK was a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) initiative, under the Office of the Secretary of Defense and managed by Mr. Philip Stockdale of the (Center for Technology and National Security Policy CTNSP) at the National Defense University (NDU). PEAK focused on providing low-cost and sustainable water, power and communications capabilities for a variety of missions requiring rapid deployment and civil-military engagement. PEAK won JCTD “team of the year” in 2013. The award letter stated: “PEAK stands ready to support Counter-Transnational Organized Crime (C-TOC) operations and Foreign Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response (FHA/DR) around the world. In 2011 it was used to contain a cholera outbreak in the Philippines and is continuing to provide thousands of gallons of life-saving drinking water. AFRICOM is using PEAK as well as SOUTHCOM and PACOM.”

The disastrous Haiti earthquake led to an extensive TIDES/STAR-TIDES engagement of with the US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) and with the open-source crisis mapping community (Crisis Mappers and OpenStreetMap). It also led to investigations of alternative communications (analog SMS texting and plugging into local cell phone networks). A review of the chaotic state of multiple overlapping command structures, and coordination with the Center for Joint and Strategic Logistics (CJSL) at NDU focused on the importance of achieving “unity of results without unity of command.” It also led to the development of the PEAK (Pre-positioned Expeditionary Assistance Kit) JCTD (Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration)–see above.

The Joint Inter-Agency Field Experimentation (JIFX) program is coordinated by NPS. From the website, JIFX provides “an opportunity for NPS faculty, students, private companies, and academia to demonstrate and evaluate new technologies related to the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense. At JIFX we conduct research in an operational field environment, and also to provide the operational community the opportunity to experiment with these technologies to better understand the capabilities that they may represent.” TIDES personnel participated actively in the quarterly JIFX activities, typically at Camp Roberts in central California, from 2009-2014, when STAR-TIDES began to transition away from the National Defense University. TIDES continues to be coordinated through NPS.

This engagement was instructive because Myanmar was then an international pariah, and the situation initially was thought to be too complicated, with too many moving parts for TIDES/STAR-TIDES to engage effectively. However, Cyclone Nargis taught us about ways to ship relief supplies that leveraged indigenous resources and capabilities (for example, using fasteners to tie together bamboo poles instead of rolls of blue tarpaulins for shelter). It was more of a learning experience than a practical application of TIDES capabilities.

Since its beginning, TIDES/STAR-TIDES has sought to learn from, share ideas with, and collaborate among different types of organizations and people to improve mutual capabilities.

TIDES personnel and STAR-TIDES network members produced several papers and monographs on community engagement and relations with local partners based on experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan (see list in References section). Observations by the Synergy Strike Force in Afghanistan were particularly valuable. A 2009 visit from DC focused on 3 things: distributed, renewable energy; information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure; and the use of radio to enhance the effectiveness of Shuras (religious governing councils). The energy component leveraged a State Department program that provided funds to communities who helped with counter narcotics program. The villages would choose how it wanted to spend the money and some chose micro-hydro power plants. Turning these into effective operational systems provided enormously valuable lessons in the need to:

• Tailor technical capabilities to meet local needs.

• Address social tensions created by the new technology.

• Provide ongoing maintenance to keep the plants operational.

The tropical Cyclone Sidr in November 2007 was “one of Bangladesh’s worst natural disasters. Causing extensive damage and evacuations, estimates of deaths in Bangladesh range from 3,400 to 15,000.” During and after the disaster, private companies had taken satellite imagery of the affected areas, but since the companies had provided the images to the government with restricted licenses, the government was unable to share them further with other aid organizations/NGOs to coordinate responses. TIDES (transformative Innovation for Development and Emergency Support) representatives worked with the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the companies to get the imagery released in support of disaster relief efforts. In the end, it was agreed that “flat file” images could be released to those working on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief for 30 days after the disaster. This also set a precedent that was extended to subsequent emergencies.