Drexel Professors to Improve Water and Sanitation Issues in Haiti

July 15, 2010 Drexel professors Dr. Franco Montalto (CAEE), Patrick Gurian (CAEE), Michael Piasecki (CAEE), and Dr. Mimi Sheller (CoAS) are working to improve the infrastructure in Haiti on behalf of Drexel Engineering Cities Initiative (DECI) with their NSF funded project, “Supporting Haitian Infrastructure Reconstruction Decisions with Local Knowledge.”

On January 12, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake ravaged Haiti, with its epicenter near the city of Leogane, a town of approximately 80,000 people. The team’s research focuses on water and sanitation issues within Leogane to provide clean drinking water to the people and to rebuild infrastructure within the city. 

Early search and rescue efforts to rebuild Haiti were given emergency status and failed to focus on the necessities that the Haitian people needed to rebuild their lives. “When the earthquake hit, there was too much search and rescue and not enough concern about what it is people need to survive in the coming months,” said Dr. Montalto. “By educating and getting Haitians involved in the rebuilding process, we hope to stabilize the economic situation by creating jobs while simultaneously boosting the amount of useable resources like water.”

Dr. Montalto, director of Drexel’s Sustainable Water Resource Engineering lab, and sociology professor Dr. Sheller, director of Drexel’s Center for Nobilities Research and Policy, set out to interview and survey the people of Leogane to learn what it is they need to survive.  The team will present its findings at an NSF sponsored workshop on Haitian reconstruction to be held in the fall.

For more information, listen to the teams interview on WHYY.  Photos from their research in Haiti can be found on the DECI FLickr page.