What can formal incident response teams learn from the Cajun Navy? Brant Dylan Mitchell, Director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute (SDMI) at the Louisiana Emerging Technology Center, is studying this and how government groups can help citizen-responders be more effective, thanks to a $225,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation.

"When looking at the type of operations they are currently conducting, they are actually doing a lot more than just se...arch and rescue," Mitchell said. "They’re delivering food and supplies, and we’ve even seen some groups get involved with clean-up and debris removal."