Toward Accessible Hazard Mapping: Tactile Risk Maps and Disaster Preparedness

Risk, Hazard, and Disaster

Natural hazard research began as a study of cultural perceptions to extreme naturally occurring events. Since the advent of the study, natural hazard literature has become steeped in terminology that is sometimes confusing to the reader. The concepts of hazard, risk, and disaster are often confused with one another and with the extreme event itself. Although the extreme event is inherent in haz...

Emerging trends toward holistic disaster preparedness

Our research reflects an emerging shift in understandings of effective preparedness practices from siloed approaches toward more holistic views. We trace a shifting perspective emerging in literature and present in the early qualitative data of current preparedness experts’ interviews within an international humanitarian organization whose core mission is disaster preparedness and response. Des...

Participatory Mapping for Disaster Preparedness: The Development & Standardization of Animal Evacuation Maps

People who own animals are faced with complex decision making in evacuations. In the US, the Emergency Operations Center is often inundated with calls from animal owners who are aware they are under preor mandatory evacuation, but are unsure of what to do about evacuating their animals. Often animal evacuation is a highly improvised activity for owners and responders, though there is a now a ge...

Disaster preparedness.

Public Perception of Flood Risk and Community-based Disaster Preparedness