On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast. On that date, President Bush declared that a major disaster existed in portions of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Less than a month later, on Sept. 24, Hurricane Rita made landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border. On that day, the president declared that a major disaster existed in portions of Louisiana and Texas.

After the disaster declarations were made, people in the affected areas became eligible to apply for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Different forms of disaster assistance were made available for people in the affected areas. Because so many people were displaced by the hurricanes, FEMA installed a streamlined process for victims to receive expedited assistance in the form of $2,000 disbursements.

A person could apply for this expedited assistance by calling a toll-free FEMA telephone number, by sending an e-application using the Internet or in person. Each applicant for expedited assistance was asked to provide their name, Social Security number, current and pre-disaster addresses, and telephone number, among other things.

If approved, an applicant could choose whether to receive their FEMA disaster assistance by a check that would be mailed to an address selected by the applicant, or by a wire transfer that would be sent to a bank account selected by the applicant.

No shortage of crooks
The only people entitled to receive disaster assistance from FEMA for Hurricanes Katrina or Rita were those whose primary residences were in one of the areas designated as having been affected. There were, however, some people who didn’t play by the rules.

News item, May 25, 2006: Twenty-six people in Florida were arrested for fraudulent claims related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The charges were set forth in 23 separate indictments and in one information and include conspiracy, submission of a false claim to a governmental agency, theft of government property, mail fraud, wire fraud and making a false statement to a government agency.

News item, June 5, 2006: A federal grand jury returned a 22-count indictment charging Michael James Green, 25, of Houston, with fraudulently obtaining thousands of dollars in Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita disaster assistance. Green is accused of filing 18 separate fraudulent applications for disaster assistance, using 18 different Social Security numbers and 18 unique “damaged addresses” in Louis­iana and Texas, claiming to have resided at each address during the landfall of Hurricane Katrina or Rita.

News item, June 25, 2006: The City of Los Angeles charged 14 people with crimes related to fraudulent claims for FEMA benefits stemming from Hurricane Katrina. The defendants, all Los Angeles residents, applied for and received up to $2,000 each after claiming losses at non-existent addresses in Abita Springs, La.

News item, July 6, 2006: Four more Houston residents were charged with filing false claims for FEMA hurricane relief, bringing to 20 the total number of individuals charged in the Southern District of Texas with fraud relating to Hurricane Katrina or Rita.

In the end, FEMA may have improperly disbursed more than $1 billion by not adequately validating the identity of aid registrants in the wake of Katrina and Rita, according to a report issued in June by the Government Accountability Office <http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/06/14/GAO.06.844t.pdf>.

In their assessment of whether a payment was improper and potentially fraudulent, GAO did not test for other evidence of impropriety or potential fraud, such as insurance fraud and bogus damage claims. This means the review potentially understated the magnitude of improper payments made.

Part of the GAO audit was a sting operation. In one case, FEMA paid nearly $6,000 to an undercover GAO registrant who submitted a vacant lot as a damaged address.

The eyes have it
It seems pretty clear (human nature being no less larcenous after disasters than before) that relief organizations could use a better way to screen and clear applicants. Help may be just a glance away.

Purdue University is developing a handheld iris scanner that could be used to identify disaster victims and help prevent the double-dipping and other fraud that seems inevitable during aid distribution.

The scanner would allow aid workers to obtain a digital image of a recipient’s iris when he or she registers for aid. The iris-scanning camera is connected to a handheld personal digital assistant that sends the image wirelessly to a central database of all users who have previously been issued aid. If a new image matches an existing image, aid would be denied. It’s about a 20-second process, faster and more accurate than fingerprinting.

“This technology enables fast and accurate registration of individuals, in this case at a benefit or aid station, so that people cannot double-dip,” says Stephen Elliot, an assistant professor of industrial technology at Purdue.

A key feature of this technology is its mobility. Elliot sees the mobile camera being used in the field, at aid stations or at a central entrance to receiving areas. People will have images of their irises taken, then, when they go to a particular processing station, the system would verify their eligibility, thereby reducing the amount of fraud.

Unlike other identification systems, the Purdue concept does not require any paper documents or that users be registered in the system before the disaster. The system is portable, quick, accurate and self-sustaining, all key factors in a time of chaos and destruction, Elliot says. He adds that iris scanning is likely to be accepted more readily by members of the public who might be resistant to having their fingerprints taken.

The technology could also possibly be used to identify emergency and medical personnel trying to enter a disaster area, a need made evident last year when volunteers rushing to help after the storms were denied access for security reasons. This would require creating a national database of iris images collected from disaster crews who are prepared to mobilize in time of emergency. Their identities then could easily be verified by iris scanning when they arrive at the scene of natural or terror-related disasters.

A clear improvement
The Purdue research has passed the proof-of-concept stage, and over the next few months, Elliot says, the researchers will hone the system to verify that the equipment and software are functioning properly. Then they’ll start to collect data.

“We intend to examine the usability of the camera in different environments, such as under various lighting and weather conditions, and compare that to results obtained by the stationary camera in the lab,” Elliot says. The researchers will also test usability and throughput, although they’re still developing appropriate ways to measure this.

Iris-scanning technology itself is not new in disaster relief situations. The biometric technology has already been used by the United Nations to monitor aid distribution to refugees in Afghan­istan, but the scanners in that case were in fixed, sometimes inconvenient, locations.

The problem in Afghanistan was similar to the FEMA relief problem: It wasn’t always easy to figure out who was a refugee and who was a freeloading imposter. In 2002, the u.n. estimated that 300,000 Afghans had received humanitarian aid, gone home, forged new documents to falsify their identities, then returned for a second helping of aid.

So the u.n. installed the iris-scanning system, an improvement over the low-tech invisible ink or wrist bands used by other aid groups in places like Africa to verify who has received assistance and who hasn't. Beating the system in Afghanistan meant winning extra supplies of wheat, plastic sheeting, soap and cash grants for transportation of up to $30.

The Purdue researchers expect that credentialing with their mobile iris-scanning technology could eventually be useful not only to the u.n.’s High Commission for Refugees, but also to the International and American Red Cross, and the Department of Homeland Security, including — and perhaps especially — to FEMA.