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Emergency Management (EM) strategies often overlook the communication challenges faced by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) community, limiting their involvement in disaster preparedness and response. This paper introduces SafeSigns, a geospatially enabled toolkit designed to bridge this gap by facilitating hazard reporting and communication by and for DHH individuals. By integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with user-centered design, SafeSigns empowers users to report incidents, identify hazards, and coordinate with Public Safety (PS) officials. Unlike traditional EM technologies, which rarely prioritize accessibility, SafeSigns leverages ArcGIS Pro, React Vite, and TypeScript to ensure usability, efficiency, and accessibility. This research represents one of the first ISCRAM-related efforts to explicitly include DHH communities in EM. Findings support a more inclusive and participatory approach, demonstrating the significance of geospatial solutions in enhancing community resilience. Future work will refine SafeSigns through real-world testing and explore applicability to other vulnerable populations in disaster response. 

In this study, we conduct the first comprehensive, nationwide assessment of social equity performance of multiple federal post‐ and pre‐disaster assistance programs that differ in targeted recipients, project types, forms of aid, and funding requirements. We draw on the social equity and distributive justice theory to develop and test a set of hypotheses on the influence of program design and specificity on their aid distributional patterns and equity performance. The analysis uses panel data of about 3000 US counties to examine the relationship between a county's receipt of federal assistance and its recent disaster damage, socioeconomic, demographic, political, local government, and geographic characteristics in a two‐stage random effects Tobit model. Expectedly, we find that post‐disaster grants are largely driven by recent disaster damage, while damage is simultaneously influenced by local socioeconomic conditions. For all disaster programs, disproportionately more federal aid is allocated to populous counties. For programs geared toward state and local governments and targeting community recovery and mitigation, more aid is received by counties with better socioeconomic conditions. Conversely, for programs targeting individual relief and recovery, more aid is given to counties with lower incomes and greater social vulnerability. Results also indicate that counties located in high‐risk regions receive greater outlays. These findings shed light on the varying degrees of social equity of federal disaster assistance programs tied to their cost‐share requirement, funding caps, and inherent complexity of application procedures. 

We fabricated a van der Waals heterostructure of WS 2 –ReSe 2 and studied its charge-transfer properties. Monolayers of WS 2 and ReSe 2 were obtained by mechanical exfoliation and chemical vapor deposition, respectively. The heterostructure sample was fabricated by transferring the WS 2 monolayer on top of ReSe 2 by a dry transfer process. Photoluminescence quenching was observed in the heterostructure, indicating efficient interlayer charge transfer. Transient absorption measurements show that holes can efficiently transfer from WS 2 to ReSe 2 on an ultrafast timescale. Meanwhile, electron transfer from ReSe 2 to WS 2 was also observed. The charge-transfer properties show that monolayers of ReSe 2 and WS 2 form a type-II band alignment, instead of type-I as predicted by theory. The type-II alignment is further confirmed by the observation of extended photocarrier lifetimes in the heterostructure. These results provide useful information for developing van der Waals heterostructure involving ReSe 2 for novel electronic and optoelectronic applications and introduce ReSe 2 to the family of two-dimensional materials to construct van der Waals heterostructures.