Smart and connected communities are critically important for community resilience during and after disasters such as the COVID pandemic. Those who experience the digital divide through lack of access to the Internet or the lack of skills to use it effectively can experience a deleterious effect on their resilience. Research shows that poorer communities, especially older adults in those communities, are particularly vulnerable to the digital divide. A digitally empowered older and disabled community will not only be prepared to prevent or minimize the risk of damage to health/life, livelihood, property, and the environment due to disasters but also have the ability to quickly recover from and return to their everyday life and livelihood after a crisis. This research will identify critical parameters to enhance recovery and resilience planning of older adults related to pandemics and disasters. It will provide a foundation for identifying essential pillars needed for increasing a community's resilience and capability in responding to their environment. This collaborative proposal with primary stakeholders, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Westside Community Partnership, the R&D league, City of San Antonio (COSA) and San Antonio Oasis Institute, and Goodwill will employ a use-inspired research approach, grounded in an understanding of community cooperativeness, cohesiveness, user community digital needs and challenges.
The focus of this planning grant is two-fold: 1) research and identify the obstacles to the use of technology by the older adults on the West Side, one of the poorest communities in the City of San Antonio through a pilot study and 2) based on the pilot, develop a plan for a national study (for example, Atlanta in partnership with Atlanta Regional Commission) on the roadblocks to enhancing scalable strategies to enhance the quality of life through improved community cohesiveness, and digital inclusion of divergent communities. This research will impact the resilience of the workforce and micro-businesses that are affected by the digital access and literacy challenges of older adults in these poorer communities as owners, employees, and customers. Learning modules related to this project will educate students and older adults on mechanisms for improving emergency resilience and conduct workshops for emergency responders and organizations about the community-supported response. Research output will include white papers on measures of resilience, resilience building of older and disabled communities, collaborative user-based research frameworks, and evaluation of digital interventions.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Abstract
H. Raghav Rao
Dr. H.R. Rao was named the AT&T Distinguished Chair in Infrastructure Assurance and Security at The University of Texas at San Antonio Carlos Alvarez College of Business in January 2016. He also holds a courtesy appointment as full professor in the UTSA Department of Computer Science. Prior to working at UTSA, Professor Rao was the SUNY Distinguished Service Professor at the University at Buffalo. He graduated from Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University.
Professor Rao was inducted into the UTSA Academy of Distinguished Researchers in 2019. His interests are in the areas of management information systems, decision support systems, e-business, emergency response management systems and information assurance and artificial intelligence. He has chaired sessions at international conferences and presented numerous papers. He also has co-edited four books, including Information Assurance Security and Privacy Services and Information Assurance in Financial Services. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers, of which more than 125 are published in archival journals.
Dr. Rao was the recipient of the AIS fellow award for 2021. Professor Rao was the inaugural recipient of The Bright Internet Award for his contributions to the information systems discipline by KMIS, the Korea Society of Management Information Systems. In 2018 Professor Rao was awarded the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Outstanding Service Award for significant service contributions to the field of information systems and information systems security. In November 2016, Professor Rao received the prestigious Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award (Class of 2016) for outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.
Rao’s work has received best paper and best paper runner up awards at ISR, AMCIS and ICIS. He has received funding for his research from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and the Canadian Embassy. He also received the Fulbright fellowship in 2004.
Rao is a past chair of IFIP WG 8.11/11.13, the working group for Information Systems Security Research. He is co-editor in chief of Information Systems Frontiers, advisory editor of Decision Support Systems, associate editor of ACM TMIS and senior editor at MIS Quarterly.
He has placed Ph.D. students at Sogang U, UNCG, ASU, USF, FAU, MSU, OK State, FSU, Penn State, University of Warwick and others.
Rao was ranked No. 3 in publication productivity internationally in a 2011 Communications of the Association for Information Systems study. In August 2020, Rao’s h-index was 64 and his i-10 index was 178. He is a graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy.
Performance Period: 10/01/2021 - 09/30/2022
Institution: University of Texas at San Antonio
Award Number: 2126504
Core Areas:
Health and Wellbeing