Fire Drill: DET professors strive for community safety

Fire Drill: DET professors strive for community safety

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Media Contact: Kristi Wheeler | Manager, CEAT Marketing and Communications | 405-744-5831 | [email protected]

Whenever a scenario like a natural disaster or a fire occurs, many factors determine how people respond to the situation.
Three Oklahoma State University professors in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology are undertaking three related but separate research projects to identify what can help make people more resilient during a disaster.

Drs. Haejun Park, Xiangyu (Dale) Li and Chen Chen of the Division of Engineering Technology within CEAT received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Standards and Technology totaling approximately $1.4 million.

All three were inspired to undertake these research projects to potentially aid people in need during a crisis. Their separate projects aim to look at ways that make things safer for people in any community.

Dr. Chulho Yang, professor and interim department head of DET, said the endeavors are a great example of the effort to blaze new trails through research.

"In a remarkable demonstration of academic excellence, our faculty members have secured multiple research grants from the NSF," Yang said. "Their outstanding achievements not only propel their individual research endeavors but also enhance the prestige of the engineering technology division at Oklahoma State University. This success resonates with our unwavering effort and commitment to pioneering research and service to the academic community."

Li, an assistant professor in DET's fire and emergency management program, is researching firefighters' mental health and what coping strategies are used during times of stress.

OSU firefighters controlling fire on the Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology training grounds.

One of the main areas of research will be how firefighters cope with such a stressful working environment. Even those on the administrative side, or who may not be responding to fires directly at times, are also dealing with tremendous stress. The goal is to help contribute to an improved understanding of stress and coping among first responders.

It will also focus on how the "fire service culture" can vary across different departments, stations and shifts.

"We're doing a nationwide study to make sure that our model works and help us learn why these people are having these issues and what kind of coping strategies they may have," Li said.

Li said those on the administrative side can be overly stressed by people being combative when firefighters respond. He said they may also be unappreciative or irritated at the firefighters, adding to the stressors of battling fires. Li said departments are also understaffed, which results in shifts being longer and can be a cause of things such as sleep deprivation.

Firefighters are subject to two primary sources of stress: operational stressors in the field, such as sleep disturbance, grotesque trauma calls and trauma calls involving children; and managerial stressors, such as poor leadership and staffing issues.

Li also said he believes there can be a "hypermasculine culture" in some fire departments that can result in somebody not seeking out help that may be needed. He said a collaboration with Dr. Lindsey Greco - an associate professor in the Spears School of Business who has worked with first responders on mental stress - is an excellent opportunity to gauge firefighters' stress levels.

He has also worked on this research with Dr. David Huntsman, a senior researcher and owner of Huntsman Consulting LLC., on gathering data.

Li and Greco were honored in October 2023 with OSU's Public Impact Research Award for research on first responders and work-related stress.

He said some of the research has shown that some firefighters deal with withdrawal behavior, such as locking themselves away or avoiding people altogether, as well as some coping with alcohol or another intoxicant in response to the high-stress level.

"We don't want that to happen, and we want to explain what can actually change them or get them out of that little box," Li said.
The research will be part of a two-year plan. The goal is to gather nationwide data by collecting 3,000 responses from firefighters.
The vast amount of data collected during this project will be available to students, and Li feels it can benefit graduate students or Ph.D. students who are working on their dissertations, as they can save time by searching through the data.

Li said he is proud to be able to serve the public through his research, which is the reason he joined DET's fire and emergency management program.

"Public impact, we are serving the public; that's the reason why I joined this program when I was doing my Ph.D., which is in public administration," Li said. "It's because I care about this public value, and this project serves that goal pretty well."

Chen, an assistant professor in CEAT's fire and emergency management program, received a research grant to study how micromobility, such as scooters and bicycles, can deliver supplies to areas impassable by vehicles.

The research will look at promoting the persistence of a community and investigate the potential role of social networks and micromobility to study how they can enhance the planning and operation of resilience hubs.

Resilience hubs are facilities that support residents and help coordinate resource allocation before, during or after a natural disaster.
Chen said the project aims to understand and validate the pros and cons of using micromobility in disaster response and recovery efforts. He said micromobility to respond during disasters has been used for a long time, but in a marginal capacity overall, and said it is most common on the West Coast.

"In 2017, when the Mexico City earthquake happened, it shut down the public transportation and roads were damaged or congested," Chen said. "Some parts of the city relied on using bicycles to send out supplies, especially medical, to people in need. This is when they don't have supplies, electricity, or a cellphone signal, but when only bicycles can get around a city to deliver and communicate."
Chen said the project will look at the positives and negatives of micromobility in both the response and recovery stages of any kind of disaster. He said another part of the study will also delve into how micromobility can help bring a community closer together.

"It increases people's feeling of belonging to the community," Chen said. "When we feel a part of their community, we want to help other people. So, during an emergency, we can dedicate ourselves to helping other people."

Chen said the research will also focus on people's perspectives, such as first responders and emergency managers in cities. He said a bike drill will also be organized to test how supplies can be distributed during a disaster.

This grant provides funding to support students seeking their doctorates as it will be used to support students in presenting research at conferences and provide training opportunities, which Chen said will allow them to practice their research skills.

"All of our goals are to protect people in the public and increase community resiliency and public safety," Chen said.

Park, an associate professor in the fire protection and safety engineering technology program, is researching how to improve fire resiliency during a situation where there is a fire burning in an area that includes both the urban environment, such as a house or business, and wildland, such as a forest or pasture, or the wildland-urban interface.

Park said the area being studied is essentially a fire on the boundary between the residential buildings and wildland vegetation where there is a possibility that a fire can spread from either side of the boundary.

A problem with fires in such an area is they are generally large, with firefighters tasked with extinguishing fires on multiple structures as well as vegetation, which Park said they aren't commonly trained for. Therefore, the best risk reduction method is to take mitigation measures in advance.

He said a typical fire around residences or businesses includes multiple buildings, and the research will focus on when a community gets damaged from such a fire.

"We have multiple efforts to reduce WUI fire risk, but the problem is we don't know which one is more effective. In addition, each community has its own characteristics that influence WUI fire outcomes," Park said. "For example, one community might have lots of people but equipped with nice roads and sufficient defensible space, and another community might have a similar number of houses, but they are sparsely located and secluded, with one way in and one way out, so it's all different. Currently, there is no model to evaluate the community resilience level for WUI fires."

The research will study where more effort or resources could be put into specific areas, and it is unknown if the effects of certain methods of fighting such fires are efficient.

He said the project would be a performance-based model for fire resilience during this type of fire and identify and develop solutions for communities at risk of a fire within an urban and wildland boundary.

"It's kind of a framework that will give you community-specific optimized solutions," Park said. "For this project, we need to present our progress every year at NIST. Our students will be exposed to high-profile research activities conducted by other researchers as well."

Park said his inspiration for this type of research comes from a desire to help make communities safer when a fire in the wildlife and urban boundary occurs. He also said he is proud multiple projects are happening simultaneously, which shows the passion DET researchers have for helping communities.

"I think it's a good time to make this DET-wide effort more visible," Park said. "Previously, we had a few grants here and there, but recently, with a firefighter mental health grant and two disaster resilience grants, we want to showcase our departmentwide efforts with our research."

Photos: Ellie Piper & Kristi Wheeler

Story by: Tanner Holubar

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