Tuck professor and students chart status of New Orleans recovery
More than a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf
Coast and ravaged New Orleans, good news about recovery efforts in the Crescent
City is still hard to come by, but in one small corner of the city, a Dartmouth
professor and his students are making progress using an unusual tool:
mapping.
Quintus Jett (far right) with the group of Dartmouth students who traveled to
New Orleans in March. Jett and the students mapped the progress of post-Katrina
recovery in the Gentilly neighborhood. (Photo courtesy Quintus Jett)
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Quintus Jett, senior research fellow at the Tuck School of Business, is studying
disaster recovery and working to develop practical, locally based solutions to
the task of rebuilding in New Orleans. He and 13 Dartmouth students spent their
spring break walking the entire Gentilly district of New Orleans. Gentilly is a
severely flood-damaged area that was home to over 40,000 residents
pre-Katrina.
The Dartmouth students walked every street in Gentilly to perform a
"local census" and indicated the rebuilding status of each property
by color code. (The effort was the second complete survey of the area conducted
by Jett and other volunteers.) With help from ad hoc volunteers, the students
mapped over 14,000 addresses—roughly the entire neighborhood—in just 10 days.
That data has been added to an interactive, online map that
was designed by Jett and Assistant Professor of Geography Xun Shi.
The map—and the data it represents—serves as a resource for New Orleanians
trying to make decisions about allocating rebuilding resources. Says Jett,
"I foresee the data being used by planners. However, my hope is that
residents and small business users can also use this local recovery
data."
Rashmi Agarwal '09 was among the student volunteers. "While we were
working, we met someone who needed their house gutted, and we connected that
person to a group that could help. Since the mapping data is being put online,
the information gets to neighborhood presidents and gives them a sense of the
progress," says Agarwal.
Jett praises the volunteers' efforts and what they accomplished in such a
brief period. "Completing so much mapping required significant effort,
preparation, and analysis of data," he says. "The team exhibited more
results than is commonly expected of student volunteers, and I believe that
more of this kind of volunteerism is needed in New Orleans."
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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