Coos County Emergency Management Strategic Plan

22 pagesA Community Planning Workshop (CPW) team of four graduate students worked under the direction of a faculty manager to facilitate this planning process. The student team conducted research, facilitated meetings with local steering committees and prepared the final plans and project reports. This project was completed in collaboration with the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (OPDR). This strategic planning process evaluated Coos County EM’s core mission areas - Planning, Organization, Equipment, Training, and Exercises (i.e. the POETE framework) - against available and forecasted resources. The resulting strategy outlines how the county will sustain EM capabilities through an action plan informed by the processes, stakeholders and influences that drive local Emergency Management.Coos County Emergency Management Strategic Steering Committe

Landmine Neutralization: Air Excavation Unit

The Landmine Neutralization team’s poster will present our team’s progress towards designing and prototyping an air excavation unit. To accomplish this, the project team is working with the HALO Trust, the world’s largest demining NGO. The HALO Trust works in many countries to remove the remnants of war, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and unexploded ordnance (UXOs). This project seeks to help deminers by providing a device that blows air at high velocity to clear dust and other debris away from potential IEDs and UXOs in war-torn areas to help in their effort of demining. We have focused on designing our prototype to operate reliably in harsh environments while fulfilling our client’s specifications. Our client requested that we design our excavation unit to be easily installed onto their Volvo 220 backhoes and their custom-made backhoe attachments. The current design is modular and consists of a hydraulic motor powering a fan from a backpack leaf blower, all of which is assembled within a steel frame that attaches to the rake of the HALO excavators. Due to circumstances beyond our control, our project will be wrapping up at the end of this semester, which is sooner than anticipated. This means the goals of our project have been narrowed to having a functional prototype and relevant documentation that we can present to our client.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1008/thumbnail.jp

Hybrid Thermal Lance

The Hybrid Thermal Lance (HTL) is a device used to burn through landmines to destroy them safely. Designed for the team’s client, The HALO Trust, the HTL has proven to work well in destroying explosives, which has been demonstrated by field trials conducted in a number of countries including but not limited to Afghanistan and the Republic of Georgia. The HTL works by igniting acrylic burn tubes, which act as a fuel source and also focus the flame on a specific location on an explosive device. The system is controlled via a user-friendly, rugged control box that can run the HTL automatically and allow the device to burn for different lengths of time upon user command. The team was asked by HALO to make the HTL as user-friendly as possible. In order to do this, the team has been researching ways to make the ignition system as reliable as possible so the device works every time. The team plans to move forward in testing and refining the ignition system and the control circuit in order to give the client a trouble-free device. Future plans include designing a fixture that can be fitted over the end of the HTL burn tube which can focus the heat of the flame for a more concentrated burn.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2020/1022/thumbnail.jp

Better Pumps: Promoting Reliable Water Infrastructure for Everyone

Approximately 90 million people in Africa lack access to safe drinking water, despite having water infrastructure installed in their community. The India Mark II and the Afridev handpumps are among the most widely used handpumps in the world. Sadly, studies show that approximately 30% of these handpumps are non-operational due to failures of the bearings, seals, head flange, and other common components. The Better Pumps team of the Collaboratory provides engineering support for partners who are working to improve handpump sustainability. We have partnered with Tony Beers and AlignedWorks to validate a bearing test methodology for the India Mark II handpump. By modifying the loading conditions in our handpump test machine, we were able to replicate failures observed by AlignedWorks in a field trial of their bearing design. However, these modifications caused our test machine tabletop to noticeably deflect, so we made modifications to stiffen the tabletop. We partnered with Matt Schwiebert and Living Water International to test new seal designs for the India Mark II and Afridev handpumps. Seal performance data collected by the team was used to validate a new design in advance of field trials by Living Water International. We developed and performed clear cylinder testing on the seals to visualize the leak paths. A new Afridev testing apparatus is being designed to test the longevity of the Afridev bearings and seals. Test methodologies and results are reported. Funding for this work provided by The Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2022/1000/thumbnail.jp

MuJoCo fruit fly body model datasets supporting "Whole-body simulation of realistic fruit fly locomotion with deep reinforcement learning"

Datasets and supporting material for "Whole-body simulation of realistic fruit fly locomotion with deep reinforcement learning". This work presents an anatomically-detailed body model of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster for MuJoCo physics simulator and reinforcement learning applications. The fly model was developed in a collaborative effort by Google DeepMind and HHMI Janelia Research Campus. We envision our model as a platform for fruit fly biophysics simulations and for modeling neural control of sensorimotor behavior in an embodied context. Our fly model and code are available at https://github.com/TuragaLab/flybody</p

Air quality, infant mortality, and the Clean Air Act of 1970

August 200