Project: The Power of Mapping: Applications of GIS in disaster resilience and planning
Faculty Member: Corrie Walton-McCauley
DP&S Liaison: Janine Glathar
Date: Summer and Fall 2017
Walton-McCauley pursues the research question, how can GIS be used in new ways to analyze disaster preparedness, leading to application use in disaster resilience for a selected community? Over the summer, student Patrick Yang performed a literature review and began to undertake GIS analysis of resource data in Pennsylvania municipalities. In fall 2017 Yang and Assumpta Gasana are continuing to develop the work with the support of a Library and IT microgrant. Yang is focusing on the use of pre- & post-event LiDAR data in modeling impacts of disaster on transportation networks and analyzing redundancy and resilience. Gasana is focused on adapting HAZUS, a software tool created by the USGS for modeling and analyzing the impact of natural disasters, for use in Rwanda.