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Millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum offers wide bandwidth resources that are promising to realize high-throughput wireless communications in agricultural fields. Due to the relatively small wavelength at this frequency band, mmWave signals tend to be scattered when the wireless link is established above the crop canopy. However, little is known about the scattering effect caused by crop canopy at mmWave. In this work, the scattering loss in the mmWave spectrum is quantified for different crop canopy states that are represented by the leaf area index. In particular, an approach based on a Rayleigh roughness criterion is utilized, coupled with canopy height statistics, to calculate the scattering loss. The results of the model agree well with empirical data collected from agricultural field experiments conducted in Summer 2021. The results demonstrate that as the leaf area index decreases with crop maturity, the scattering loss also decreases. This is the first work that illustrates the feasibility of using the mmWave communication links to perform sensing on the leaf area index, which is a critical metric in estimating crop conditions. 

Orange County, Florida is intimately familiar with impacts of natural disasters because of the yearly threat of hurricanes in the southeastern United States. One of the tools that has aided them in their efforts to monitor and manage such disasters is their 311 non-emergency call system, through which local residents can issue requests to the municipality for disaster-related information or other services. This paper provides a preliminary examination of the potential for the Orange County 311 system to provide actionable information to them in support of their efforts to manage a different type of disaster: the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential of the system to support the County in this context is illustrated through several preliminary analyses of the complete set of service requests that were registered in the first ten months of 2020. 

In hazard and disaster contexts, human‐centered approaches are promising for interdisciplinary research since humans and communities feature prominently in many definitions of disaster and the built environment is designed and constructed by humans to serve their needs. With a human‐centered approach, the decision‐making agent becomes a critical consideration. This article discusses and illustrates the need for alignment of decision‐making agents, time, and space for interdisciplinary research on hurricanes, particularly evacuation and the immediate aftermath. We specifically consider the fields of sociobehavioral science, transportation engineering, power systems engineering, and decision support systems in this context. These disciplines have historically adopted different decision‐making agents, ranging from individuals to households to utilities and government agencies. The fields largely converged to the local level for studies’ spatial scales, with some extensions based on the physical construction and operation of some systems. Greater discrepancy across the fields is found in the frequency of data collection, which ranges from one time (e.g., surveys) to continuous monitoring systems (e.g., sensors). Resolving these differences is important for the success of interdisciplinary teams in protective‐action‐related disaster research.