On May 5, 2026, the NYC Preparedness & Recovery Institute (PRI), in partnership with Columbia Engineering, convened the PRI Innovation Forum: Empowering Hyperlocal Response at The Forum at Columbia University. The full-day event brought together researchers, government officials, industry leaders, community-based organizations, entrepreneurs, and funders to explore how innovation can strengthen preparedness and response at the neighborhood level.
This year’s theme, Empowering Hyperlocal Response, focused on a central challenge in public health preparedness: emergencies are often felt first at the local level, but resources and decision-making are frequently centralized. Throughout the day, speakers and participants explored how cross-sector partnerships, community trust, new technologies, and practical design can support more responsive and resilient systems.
The forum built on PRI’s ongoing work to develop practical, equitable, and evidence-based solutions through expos, showcases, hackathons, seed funding, applied evaluation, and workforce development models. It also reflected one of PRI’s core insights from its COVID-19 Review: New York City must evolve from a centralized emergency command model to a decentralized, coordinated network led by government and inclusive of civil society, business, and cross-sector partners.
Opening the Day: Innovation Rooted in Local Needs
The day began with welcome remarks from Mitch Stripling, Director of PRI, and Eric Vieira, Director of Strategic Collaborations at Columbia Engineering, followed by opening remarks from Jonathan Mermin, Dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Speakers framed the day around the need to generate, refine, and scale practical innovations that can support public health preparedness and response in New York City and beyond.
The program opened with a fireside chat with FloodNet, a New York City-based project that builds and deploys real-time flood monitoring tools to make accessible data available to residents, community groups, agencies, and researchers. The conversation featured Andrea Silverman and Brett Branco, Principal Investigators of FloodNet, in conversation with Furhana Husani of the Waterfront Alliance.
The discussion highlighted how neighborhood-level data can support preparedness and decision-making, especially as climate-related risks become more frequent and severe. FloodNet set the tone for the day, offering a concrete example of hyperlocal infrastructure that connects research, technology, public agencies, and communities.
From Idea to Implementation
A morning panel featured recipients of the 2024 Innovative Tools & Solutions Awards, who shared how their projects have evolved since last year’s Innovation Showcase. Moderated by Harry West (Columbia Engineering), the session included rapid talks and discussion with Jeanette Stingone (Columbia MSPH), Noga Aharony (Columbia MSPH), Rachael Piltch-Loeb (CUNY SPH), and Henry Lam (Columbia Engineering).
The panel focused on a key question for innovation in preparedness: how do promising ideas move from concept to implementation? Panelists discussed the challenges of scaling tools, testing ideas in real-world settings, building partnerships, and keeping community needs at the center of design.
That focus continued through the morning breakout sessions, which explored four areas of applied innovation:
- Student Innovation to Scale: Pathways from Ideation to Implementation, moderated by Moaz Abdelwadoud (CUNY SPH)
- Advancing Quality Health Information to Build Trust, moderated by Scott Ratzan (CUNY SPH)
- From AI Innovation to Community Impact: Building Diagnostic Infrastructure for the Next Outbreak, moderated by Sam Sia (Columbia Engineering)
- Building the Future of Mobile Clinical Care, moderated by Lee Moreau (Other Tomorrows)
Together, the sessions explored innovation pipelines, health information trust, diagnostic infrastructure, and mobile care models designed to reach underserved and hard-to-reach populations.
Centering Trust in Technology
In the afternoon, the forum turned to the role of community trust in technology. The panel, Hyperlocal Community: Trust in Technology, was moderated by Rob Johnson of NYC Mesh and featured Adama Bah of Afrikana, Michelle Bascome of Nonprofit Staten Island, and Allie Bohm of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The conversation explored how technology can support communities during emergencies, but also why it must be designed and governed with care. Panelists discussed issues of access, privacy, accountability, digital equity, and community participation. The session underscored that technology alone cannot build resilience. Trust, transparency, and long-term relationships are essential.
Designing Practical Solutions
Afternoon project design workshops gave participants the opportunity to move from discussion to applied problem-solving. The sessions focused on active or emerging projects to support preparedness, response, and recovery:
- Visual Record Structured Extraction (ViRSE), moderated by Jeanette Stingone, explored how multimodal tools could convert unstructured public health records, including PDFs, faxes, images, and free text, into machine-actionable data.
- Community Insights: Real-Time Summarization in Public Health Emergencies, moderated by Andrew Kemendo, focused on how frontline information could be captured and synthesized into actionable insights during emergencies.
- Building Trust During Disaster Recovery Through Human-Centered Design, moderated by Harry West, included presentations by four teams of Columbia Engineering students and invited attendees to identify problems and priorities for improving recovery planning.
- Every Patient, Every Time: AI that Extends Care Teams to Close the Social Care Loop, moderated by Karmen Williams, featured Alvee’s AI platform and explored how health systems can identify and respond to social needs more effectively.
These working sessions reflected the forum’s emphasis on community co-design. Rather than presenting finished solutions, the project design workshops created space for participants to shape ideas, identify risks, and strengthen projects through public health, technical, and community perspectives.
Innovation on Display
Throughout the afternoon, attendees explored the Demo Expo, which featured tools, technologies, ideas, and research designed to improve hyperlocal public health preparedness and response. Exhibitors included Abobo Tech, Alvee Health, Aviator, BVIZIBLE Reflectors, Cepheid, Chapman University, COVID Information Commons, FloodNet, FloodVoice, Human Centered Design at Columbia Engineering, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 10XBeta, iCleanMedX, Nanovib, New York University, NYC Health + Hospitals, and Social Heat Impact Index.
The Demo Expo invited attendees to engage directly with innovators, ask questions, test ideas, and provide feedback on how projects could be adapted or applied in New York City and beyond.
Demo Expo Winners
Three Demo Expo projects received special recognition judged by Andrew Kemendo (Direction) , Moaz Abdelwadoud (CUNY SPH), Monica Malowney(NYC EDC)
Most Engaging: BVIZIBLE Reflectors
Most Innovative: FloodNet
Most Community-Minded: FloodVoice
The awards recognized projects that sparked conversation, centered community needs, and demonstrated strong potential to strengthen preparedness and response.
Looking Ahead
The day concluded with a review and report-back session moderated by Wafaa El-Sadr, PRI Co-Lead and Director, and Ayo Harrington, Co-Chair of NYC Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters. Workshop leads shared key takeaways from the day’s discussions, highlighting opportunities to continue developing practical solutions rooted in local needs and cross-sector collaboration.
Across panels, workshops, and the Demo Expo, the forum reinforced that preparedness cannot be built from the top down alone. Hyperlocal response requires trusted relationships, community knowledge, flexible tools, and partnerships that connect residents, researchers, public agencies, health systems, technologists, and funders.
PRI thanks Columbia Engineering, the Planning Committee, Innovation Champions, panelists, featured speakers & moderators, Demo Expo exhibitors, judges, and all attendees who contributed to the 2026 PRI Innovation Forum. Their participation helped advance a shared goal: building practical, community-centered solutions that strengthen public health preparedness and recovery.