Publish Date: 09/15/2009

Drs. Edward Fox, Andrea Kavanaugh, Naren Ramakrishnan, Steve Sheetz, and Donald Shoemaker, all of Virginia Tech, presented a poster  “CTRnet: A Global Human and Computer Network for Crisis, Tragedy, and Recovery” at the 2009 Outreach NOW conference.

The Outreach NOW conference series is sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Outreach and International Affairs and the Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED). The conferences are designed to increase the participation and advancement of Virginia Tech faculty, staff, students, and community partners in outreach and engagement. This year’s conference, Outreach NOW 2009, Celebrating Progress in the Internationalization of Virginia Tech, was held September 14^th at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center.

The winning poster displayed the team’s work in creating a Crisis, Tragedy and Recovery (CTR) global integrated distributed digital library. Communities have responded to human tragedies that result from either natural or manmade events in various ways, with thousands of examples of vigils, memorials, and archives demonstrating the desire to preserve the communal memory of a tragic event. The impact of these events is felt over extended periods, requiring longitudinal perspectives to understand their complexity and inter-dependencies. Yet, advanced intelligent information integration methods have not been applied to this domain. The CTRnet digital library includes collecting and permanent archiving (aided by the Internet Archive), before it can be lost, as much information as possible- through uploading, crawling, harvesting, and connecting with Web 2.0. Those facing a new crisis, as well as scholars, support professionals, and recovering communities, can be aided.

For more information regarding the CTRnet project please see: