INES Students’ Achievement
“Beyond the Floodplain: A Multi-Criteria Framework for Emergency Shelter Placement in Buncombe County, NC”
Kibri Hutchison Everett , Srijana Raut , Tung Le, Sodiq M. Balogun, Shen-En Chen, Jy Wu
The collaborative research paper introduces a novel, data-driven framework for evaluating emergency shelter locations in flood-prone regions. By integrating GIS analysis, HAND-derived flood modeling, land-use data, and a machine-learning-based Socio-Economic Vulnerability Index, the team identified critical gaps in current shelter placement strategies. Their findings reveal that several existing shelters may be located in high-risk flood zones, while safer areas remain underutilized.
This interdisciplinary project demonstrates how advanced analytics and engineering research can support more resilient and equitable disaster preparedness strategies for communities. The research was under the guidance of faculty members , Dr. Shen-En Chen and Dr. Jay Wu, published in Applied Science Journal. Posted 4/4/2026
https://doi.org/10.3390/app16052608
INES Student, named the winner of the 2026 ASHRAE student paper competition
Felix Ekuful has been selected as the winner of a 2026 international student paper competition organized by ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers. This organization recognizes outstanding student research in the field of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration.
Last semester, graduate student Ekuful submitted his master’s thesis, “A Comparative Study of Occupancy-Based Dynamic Ventilation Reset Strategies for Variable-Air-Volume Systems.” The research examined how ventilation can be adjusted based on real-time building occupancy to improve both energy efficiency and indoor air quality. For this work, Ekuful won the competition, which was announced in January. Posted 4/4/2026