To best help his native Bangladesh, Volgenau School of Engineering doctorate student Mithun Deb knew what he needed to do: leave his home country for the opportunity to conduct research that could help it.
Deb is the winner of the first Balfour Beatty Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, sponsored by Balfour Beatty Construction — an international construction and infrastructure services company — for his study of coastal flood modeling on the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake, in a way, is a stand-in for the Bay of Bengal, the source through the centuries of so many deadly tropical cyclones along the southern coast of Bangladesh.
Deb, who is working on a PhD in civil and infrastructure engineering, hopes that his research along the Chesapeake eventually could be applied to the vast coastline along the Bay of Bengal at the northeastern tip of the Indian Ocean, where many Bangladeshi live in a sort of nonchalant peril, Deb says, so accustomed are they to devastating storms. About 80 percent of the country is lowland, most with an elevation within 10 meters of sea level.
"It's a very vulnerable country right now," says Deb, who grew up inland in Bangladesh but who has family and friends near the coast. "People are suffering a lot because of those coastal storms, so if we can develop a fresh model, I think we'll help those people living near the shore line because we can predict the storms, the surge and the areas that are going to be affected.
"[The Bangladeshi] are very curious to do these things, but they're running out of the data. They're not getting those kinds of answers. It's kind of miserable right now for many people."
Deb had not visited the United States until he arrived here in August, but he already knew that the data he would need to study coastal flooding in this country was readily available from the U.S. Geological Survey website and other online resources.
In Bangladesh, there is no consistent source of such information, Deb says. That makes coastal flood modeling — and the answers those models could yield — a far more difficult task.
This is not a new problem. Dating back to the 1500s, the Bay of Bengal has been the source of 26 of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones in the world, according to Wunderground meteorologist Jeff Masters. In the last two centuries, 42 percent of the world's deaths associated with tropical cyclones have occurred in Bangladesh, with another 27 percent in bordering India, Masters reports.
When researching U.S. schools, Deb discovered the coastal storm search modeling conducted at George Mason University by Celso Ferreira, who now is Deb's adviser. Ferreira's expertise, among other factors, attracted Deb to the university and its Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering program.
"Besides having an excellent background in water resources engineering," Ferreira says, "Mithun has demonstrated an extraordinary perseverance toward his higher education goals and an impressive sense of responsibility within civil engineering to prevent natural disasters worldwide."
The Chesapeake research can help Deb and others develop models to better determine when storms will hit and where they will hit hardest, — formation that can be used to spur quicker evacuations and perhaps mitigate structural damage.
Deb plans to visit Bangladesh this summer, including the southern coastline along the bay. Even though his tools and home are in Fairfax for at least the next few years, he wants the scope of socioeconomic vulnerability in his native country of about 157 million to remain fresh in his mind.
"I can explore a lot in this field right now," Deb says. "In the U.S and Bangladesh. Everywhere. After getting this degree, I can use it in a very global way."
A version of this story apperared in Mason News on March 3, 2014.
For more information contact Preston Williams.