GIS, Human Geography, and Disasters

GIS, Human Geography, and Disasters is about people and places impacted by disasters. As geographers we emphasize the spatial, using maps to more fully understand the social processes at work. Topics covered include, ""Social"" GIS and disasters, spatial comparisons between disasters, spatial patterns in social and health vulnerability, post-disaster health, and neighborhood scale recovery. The book draws heavily from our ongoing experiences with Hurricane Katrina. However, we have written this book in such a way that instructors need not have personal experience with these events; nor is it vital that an instructor has experience with different geospatial technologies. The exercises included in this book can be used by students with GIS skills, but anyone with access to Google Earth and Google Street View can also benefit. We believe it is important to stress the human and the spatial, not just data and techniques. From the student's perspective, this is not a text full of dates or numbers to memorize. We want you to understand the social processes at work-linked by their geography.