Caldwell and students Annika Mabe and Megan Shevelson participated in initial meetings of community and university representatives and the newly-formed Virgin Islands Office of Disaster Recovery (ODR). The ODR and the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) are committed to support collaborative and community responsive projects for updating the Territorial Hazard Mitigation Plan.  

"The Virgin Islands office where our collaborators work is part of the NSF Territorial Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) effort," explained Caldwell. "It's one of the research offices supporting their efforts with hazard mitigation and community infrastructure resilience."

Mabe and Shelveson graduated in May 2019, after conducting independent study credits with Caldwell on the topic of "Mission Driven Careers" during the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters. Both students approached Caldwell to explore opportunities for how their IE degrees could be used to address larger scale social and technical challenges. They were past officers of the Purdue Chapter of the Institute for Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE), and used those experiences to help design possible mechanisms for future IE students to engage in Maymester or other applied learning experiences.

The Purdue School of Industrial Engineering and the Purdue Systems Collaboratory (PSC) are in a position to provide unique expertise and human capital resources to assist the ODR, UVI, and the USVI in developing sustainable and resilient sociotechnical systems. The PSC supported the team's travel to the USVI because it looks at communications, community movement patterns, resilient response, and community dynamics after natural disasters. Challenges in the Caribbean regarding disaster response and are similar to those studied by a current PSC Fellow, Takahiro Yabe.

 As of August 12, Caldwell has been involved in a "reboot" of the operations of the PSC to be aligned with Purdue's Office of the Provost initiatives. He also directs the GROUPER Lab and the Indiana Space Grant Consortium.

The Virgin Islands Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) was awarded $20,000,000 by the National Science Foundation to implement the project Mare Nostrum Caribbean: Stewardship through Strategic Research and Workforce Development. 

Read more: FEMA disaster recovery testimony and U.S.V.I. Hurricane Disaster Recovery resources