We’re delighted to announce the ProgCity PhD student, Aoife Delaney, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. The scholarship will fund a five month research/study visit to Boston to undertake further research on Coordinated Management and Emergency Response Systems (CMaERS) in the city. In Boston she’ll be hosted by Prof. Alan Wiig and colleagues in the School for the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMASS), where she’ll also be taking some courses. Aoife embodies the values of Fulbright and we’re sure she’ll fulfil their aim to “to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”
The research will be a comparison of CMaERS in Dublin and Boston, with the two case sites being utilised to understand the transformative potential of smart technology for emergency management systems within different governance systems. The research will map out CMaERS in Dublin and Boston to their organisation, assess where the systems fail because of institutional tensions, lack of technology and resources, policy exclusion, etc., and to evaluate the impact that the ‘smart city’ agenda will have on the future evolution of emergency management systems. This will be achieved through semi-structured interviews with first responders, senior officials, representatives of local and central government and private industry, supported by a discourse analysis of relevant documentation and interview transcripts. The research will build upon preliminary fieldwork undertaken in April 2016. As well as a thesis and academic papers, one output to help city officials in both cities learn from experiences and systems in both places.
We’re absolutely delighted for Aoife and the resulting research will be a huge plus for the ProgCity project. Many congratulations, Aoife. We’re sure you’ll have a great time in Boston and we’re looking forward to hearing and reading about your research findings.
Rob Kitchin