Title
Councilmember Follow-up Questions to the Presenters of the Citizen Presentation for Evacuation Planning and Modeling Discussion
This Item will be heard at 1:00 PM.
Presenter:
Dr. Thomas Cova, University of Utah
Dr. Mike Robinson, Old Dominion University
Dr. Brian Wolshon, Louisiana State University
Tim Hoiles, Maverick Observer
R.C. Smith, Jr Westside Watch member
Jim Shirley, Westside Watch member
Bill Wysong, Mountain Shadows Community Association
Body
Summary:
This item is an opportunity for Councilmembers to ask follow-up questions from the Work Session presentation on Monday, November 22, 2021.
Background:
Dr. Mike Robinson:
Dr. Mike Robinson is the Executive Director of the Hampton Roads Maritime Industrial Base Ecosystem (MIBE) program, Director of the Old Dominion University Center for Innovative Transportation Solutions (CITS) and leads the transportation and evacuation research group at the ODU Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center (VMASC). He also leads the Virginia Cyber Alliance, a Commonwealth of Virginia funded effort to strengthen the cybersecurity industry and diversify the regional economy and is the Deputy Director of the Coastal Virginia Center for Cyber Innovation, a southeast Virginia effort focused on research and commercialization of cybersecurity applications in defense, maritime, and transportation domains. His work focuses on the use of computer modeling and simulation techniques to develop solutions in transportation related projects with an emphasis on partnerships with experts from multiple disciplines. Dr. Robinson joined VMASC in 2004, initially working in the homeland security area. He served as VMASC’s Director of Program Advancement for two years where he was responsible for identifying and developing new research subject areas; he created the transportation and evacuation research group in October 2007. He has served as the principal investigator (PI) on projects with total funding of approximately $15 million and as the co-principal investigator (co-PI) on projects with additional funding of over $1.8 million.
Dr. Robinson is the chair of Virginia’s Commonwealth Center for Advanced Logistic Systems Technical Advisory Council. He is a past chair of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Transportation Research Board Standing Committee on Emergency Evacuations, as well as a past co-chair of the Standing Committee on Disaster Response, Emergency Evacuations, and Business Continuity, and is a member of the TRB Transportation Systems Resilience Executive Committee, the Joint Subcommittee on Emergency Response, the Pedestrian Modeling and Simulation Subcommittee, and the Cyber Security Subcommittee. Prior to coming to ODU, Dr. Robinson served as a nuclear submarine officer in the U.S. Navy, receiving numerous awards for leadership and innovation.
Dr. Brian Wolshon:
Brian Wolshon, Ph.D., P.E., PTOE is the Edward A. and Karen Wax Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University and the founder and Director of the Gulf Coast Research Center for Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency. During his 24 years at LSU, he has engaged on a diverse variety of research projects but is most noted for his research in the design, operation, and management of transportation systems for emergency and major event conditions. In 2001, Dr. Wolshon founded the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies Committee on Emergency Evacuation and for 17 years served as its Chair. He has been appointed as an International Visiting Professor at Beihang University in China; the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the University of Hawaii; the University of New South Wales in Australia; in the Radiological Consequence Management and Response Technologies Department at the Sandia National Laboratories; and as an Affiliate Researcher in the Energy & Infrastructure Analysis Laboratory at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. He has authored dozens federal reports, book chapters, and more than 80 scientific journal papers, including numerous seminal works related to evacuation planning and engineering. He has also served as an expert consultant to dozens of federal, state, and local government agencies; national laboratories; and engineering firms throughout the United States. He has also been interviewed by more than 100 media outlets including The Discovery Channel, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Times of London among many others and has served as a commentator on several television programs.
Dr. Thomas Cova:
Tom Cova is Professor of Geography at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His research and teaching interests are environmental hazards, emergency management, transportation, and geographic information science (GISci). His primary focus is wildfire evacuation analysis and planning, and he has published on a variety of topics in many leading hazards, transportation and GIScience journals. He served as Chair of the GIS Specialty Group and Hazards, Disasters & Risks Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). In 2008, he served as Program Chair for the International Conference of Geographic Information Science (GIScience '08) held in Park City, Utah. Rencently, he led an NSF-funded program to mentor junior faculty in the field of Hazards/Disaster research. He teaches courses on environmental hazards, human geography, emergency management, and GIS.
Mr. Tim Hoiles:
Tim Hoiles is the owner of The Maverick Observer, an online news publication founded in February 2020, with the express purpose of holding our local government, politicians, and business owners to open, accountable, and responsible practices in the local and state area.
With vast experience in newspaper media and hours of research, Mr. Hoiles became an activist for the safety of our community in the event of a natural disaster or emergency. He is actively championing the use of FLEET software to model clearance evacuation times and prevent catastrophic bottlenecking of our roadways.
Mr. R.C. Smith, Jr.:
RC and his wife Cathy have been residents of the Mountain Shadows community for 12 years. RC had a 38 ½ year career with the Colorado Springs Fire Department. Almost 25 of that career was spent as a Battalion Chief in Operations. During part of his tenure as Battalion Chief he was the Fire Department’s Wildland Fire Coordinator. RC had the opportunity to be deployed to several major wildland fires including the Hayman Fire west of Colorado Springs and the Bircher Fire in the Four Corners area of Colorado. After retirement from CSFD RC was employed by El Paso County doing recovery work. Most of the work centered around Flood damage caused by the Waldo Canyon Fire. RC has volunteered as a board member for the Aventa Credit Union for over 10 years. He is currently the Vice Chair. RC and Cathy enjoy travelling and are trying to catch up on vacations missed due to the pandemic.
Mr. John McLain:
Mr. McLain’s father retired as the Executive Director of the Joint Chief of Staff. His father advised President Kennedy in the Pentagon War Room during the entire 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis. Susan and David Eisenhower, grandchildren of President Eisenhower attended one of Mr. McLain’s preschool birthday parties. His youngest sister is named after Barbara Anne Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Eisenhower.
Mr. McLain’s technical skills landed him 13 Patents - 6 for modeling and simulation. Mr. McLain refused Bell Canada’s $147M offer for one of his simulation tools. His strategic skills earned him a direct report position to the CIO in a global telecommunications equipment manufacturing company where he was Head of R&D for the Americas. Based on the company metrics, he took the 8th place organization to 1st place in less than two years. His tactical skills in a Fortune 100 telecommunications company that served 85 million customers made him the “go to guy” for high impact projects. Mr. McLain led the team that won the FTS-2001 (Federal Government Telecommunications Systems) contract worth $8.5 billion in 2001. He also led the development of the 800 Service and Advanced 800 Service products, both worth billions of dollars per year in today's money. He created the first AI (Artificial Intelligence) program that stabilized the Nation’s 2nd largest long-distance network. He embedded himself in the team that struggled for 8 years to create a self-healing network. In less than 9 months, the Real-Time-Restoration tool was created, which replaced 3-day manual intervention to repair major network outages to less than 3 minutes - an important milestone for customer retention.
Boards: Mr. McLain served 6 years on an education board with the focus on advancement of technology. Participants from 350 companies and guest speakers came from all over the world to the all-day, semi-annual seminars. Mr. McLain also served on the Colorado Governor’s Advisory Board for 6 years. He met with the CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) management and engineers to design safer and more cost effective rumble strips. The new design was adapted, is safer for the public, and saves CDOT millions of dollars a year on milling cost. Mr. McLain took the lead for developing the bicycle and pedestrian chapter in the Inter-modal Transportation Plan. He also testified in the Colorado House and Senate to support a bill that became law. His testimony focused on the positive financial gain to the State of Colorado which generated an estimated $50M per year in tax revenue.
Sports: Mr. McLain competed at the international level where he broke two international records. In a different discipline, he played the Northern Virginia tennis champion and won the tiebreaker in a 5-set match. His fastest mile was 4:27. Mr. McLain coached an 8-year struggling cyclist to become a guest rider in 1.5 years at the Tour de Femme (the women’s equivalent to the men’s Tour de France). She was eventually signed as a tier-1 rider for the Canadian professional cycling team. He also coached a para-athlete that won 5 gold medals competing against non-para-athletes in the National Senior Games. The following year, she won 3 gold medals.
Mr. Jim Shirley:
Jim is a product of the Farm and Ranch industry in central Oklahoma where his great-grandfather, grandfather and great-uncle broke-out land during the Oklahoma land rush in the late 1800’s. The family then obtained land in southeastern Colorado as land became available. Jim grew up in Lamar Colorado and returned every summer to help with the farms in Oklahoma until graduating in 1976. He then attended the University of Northern Colorado majoring in economics. In 1981 he arrived in Colorado Springs and started his construction career with GH Phipps Construction Companies. The companies’ focus were commercial projects including Rampart High School, Hewlett Packard, Rolm Telecommunications, best known as 2424 GOG, COS Airport, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado College, Centura Health to name a few. GH Phipps was one of the largest Construction Management Companies in the country while performing projects only along the front range of Colorado. Jim was the president of El Paso County Contractors and a member of the Associated General Contractors of America. Jim was also an Employee Trustee helping to manage union Health and Welfare, Pension Plans and negotiating triennial union contracts. Later, he owned and operated a Specialty Construction Company for eleven years before selling the business and joining the retirement ranks. He is currently the President of the Skyway Association which encompasses over 1250 homes and works with Historical Neighborhood Partnership, a newly formed organization providing oversight to the city’s ReTool COS, Affordable Housing Initiative and Connect COS. Jim believes the city has a responsibility for transparency and the safety of the public over developers interests thus his passion for Westside Watch.
Mr. William (Bill) G. Wysong, Jr.:
Bill is currently the Mountain Shadows Community Association (MSCA) President, and the Acting President of the Westside Watch. Bill was a board member for 3 years with the MSCA before taking over the president position nearly two years ago. As a founding member of Westside Watch, the focus is on ensuring the west side of Colorado Springs will be fairly represented in community planning and development. Bill and his wife, Dorian, have lived in the Mountain Shadows area for fifteen years and are avid gardeners and grandparents. Bill graduated from the University of Oregon, earned an MBA, and moved to the Colorado Springs area in 1986 working for the ROLM corporation, and continued with the telecommunications industry for 40 years. He is currently the owner of Fortress Home Inspection. Bill has volunteered for many years with the Boy Scouts of America in various leadership positions and attained the Rank of Eagle Scout during his high school years in Eugene, Oregon.
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