Valerie Washington

I'm a PhD Candidate in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, where I am co-advised by Drs. Seth Guikema and Joi-Lynn Mondisa. My dissertation research focuses on the influence of natural hazards on human behavior. More specifically, for this research, I

1. Use mobile phone location data to infer departure times during Hurricanes Matthew and Irma, and use statistical models to identify factors that may contribute to the observed departure trends;

2. Predict travel times during hurricane evacuations using historical travel time trends; and,

3. Develop an agent-based simulation model to evaluate the impact of subsidized flood insurance on communities.

Research Interests

• Applications: natural hazards, human behavior, hurricane evacuations, departure time estimates, flood insurance, flood mitigation

• Methods: operations research, predictive models, statistical models, agent-based models, surveys, interviews

Select Awards

• Bill Anderson Fund Fellowship, William Averette Anderson Fund, 08/2018 – Present

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, 09/2017 – 08/2022

• Rackham Merit Fellowship, University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, 09/2017 – 08/2022

• 2016 Engineering Student of the Year for State of Georgia, Georgia Society of Professional Engineers, 02/2016

Defense

• 12/01/2022: I successfully defended my doctoral thesis, titled "Examining the Influence of Natural Hazards on Human Behavior".

Publications

• Washington, V. & Mondisa, J.-L. (2021, Sep.). “A need for engagement opportunities and personal connections: Understanding the social community outcomes of engineering undergraduates in a mentoring program.” Journal of Engineering Education. doi:10.1002/jee.20422

Presentations

• Washington, V., Guikema, S., Mondisa, J.-L. & Misra, A. (2022, Dec. 7). “A method for identifying locations and times of hurricane evacuations from mobile phone location data”. Society for Risk Analysis 2022 Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL.

• Washington, V., Guikema, S., Mondisa, J.-L. & Misra, A. (2022, Jul. 13). “Mobile Phone Location Data Informing Better Hurricane Evacuation”. 2022 Natural Hazards Workshop, virtual. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gjEHUOIRh4