ERDC establishes new center focused on public health, infrastructure research

VICKSBURG, Miss. (WJTV) – The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Environmental Laboratory (EL) is establishing an Engineering for Public Health and Human Factors (EPH) Center.

The new center’s focus will be developing engineering and public health research and data analytics before, during and after crisis events.

During the COVID -19 pandemic, researchers realized there was a significant gap in capability in how the federal government deals with human factors in the context of engineered infrastructure questions.

“Everything comes back to three things: money, labor and lives,” said Dr. Benjamin Trump, ERDC research social scientist and EPH lead. “Our research will help reduce spending, help reduce the amount of time it takes to either build up a service or remove unnecessary redundancies and help minimize risks to life.”

The EPH Center will work to accomplish two objectives. First, the EPH Center will house ample capability to address a wide range of infrastructure, health and human factor-based questions for any type of crisis.

Second, when there is no crisis, the EPH Center will investigate how human factors and health-based inputs and outputs should be considered when making infrastructure planning and analysis.