Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation

Homeland Security Award Columbus Scholar 2010

Field of Emergency Response to Natural and Man-Made Disasters

Budhendra Bhaduri, Ph.D.

Group Leader
Geographic Information Science & Technology
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Dr. Budhendra Bhaduri leads the Geographic Information Science and Technology group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Energy's Geospatial Sciences Steering Committee.

He is internationally recognized for his leadership role in conceiving, designing, and implementing innovative geocomputational methods and algorithms to solve a wide variety of national and global problems involving population dynamics modeling, natural resource studies, transportation modeling, critical infrastructure protection, and disaster management. Dr. Bhaduri is a principal member of the LandScan population modeling programs at ORNL and leads the LandScan USA project.

The unanticipated occurrences of most natural and technological disasters put a large number of people at risk. High resolution population distribution data is nucleus to disaster management. Commonly available Census data has traditionally been the exclusive source for population information. However, typical Census data is constrained both in space and time and fails to capture the obvious dynamic behavior of population as functions of space and time. Using an innovative approach with geographic information science and remote sensing, human activity patterns are modeled to produce LandScan USA data that describes US population for 90m cells for nighttime residential and daytime scenarios.

LandScan USA potentially magnifies the utility of high-resolution population data across a broad range of applications. Among all, disaster and consequence management, public health, and socio-economic analysis are the three areas where the impacts are immediate and most significant. The main accomplishment of LandScan USA is its impact on enabling the homeland security and defense community to estimate populations at risk during emergency preparedness and in saving lives during emergency response.

Dr. Bhaduri received his B.Sc. and M.Sc.(Geology) from the University of Calcutta, India, MS (Geology) Kent State University, and Ph.D. (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) Purdue University.

The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation is honored to have had the assistance of the following distinguished individuals serving on the 2010 Homeland Security Award Evaluation Committee:

Stephen Cass, Special Projects Editor, Technology Review Magazine, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Cass studied experimental physics at Trinity College Dublin before relocating to the U.S. He has worked for the nature Publishing Group, IEE Spectrum, Discover Magazine, and is currently working for Technology Review, published by MIT. He has written about security, privacy, intelligence gathering and engineering design as well as aerospace and other science and technology topics. Mr. Cass is a member of the IEEE and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauts.
Frances S. Ligler, D.Phil., D.Sc., U.S. Navy Senior Scientist for Biosensors and Biomaterials in the Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. Dr. Ligler has worked in the Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering at the Naval Research Laboratory since 1985. Ten biosensors based on her inventions have been produced commercially, and her publications have over 6,700 citations. She is the 2009-2011 Chair of the Bioengineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Ligler was the recipient of the 2003 Homeland Security Award in the Biological, Radiological, Nuclear field.
Steven D. Webster, Vice President of Advanced Technology Research and Development, AgustaWestland North America (AWNA), Reston, Virginia. Mr. Webster joined AgustaWestland North America in January 2009. He is responsible for North American Research and Technology opportunities for both the Commercial and Department of Defense product lines. He comes to AWNA from Bell Helicopter Textron and brings over 24 years of rotorcraft technology development experience.