Resilient Communities across Geographies

Print book publishing in January 2021; e-book publishing in December 2020

p>What makes a community resilient? How do we ensure its sustainable future?

Resilience—the keen ability to adapt to changing physical environments—is essential for populations of all sizes and locales in today's world of unexpected changes. Resilience is not only an ideal; it is something that can be achieved through intelligent planning and assessment. With myriad technologies available, how does a community identify which to invest in and utilize for its greater good?

Resilient Communities across Geographies is a collection of case studies examining the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to environmental and socioeconomic challenges for analysis, planning, and, ultimately, more resilient communities. 

A hybrid of theory and action, Resilient Communities across Geographies uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the critical role of GIS in minimizing or strategizing against community vulnerabilities. Each chapter discusses a spatially driven approach to challenges in geography, social sciences, landscape architecture, urban and rural sociology, economics, migration, community development, meteorology, oceanography, and other fields. This collection of community resilience efforts includes contexts across urban and rural regions, coastal and mountainous areas, indigenous lands in the United States and Australia, and more. 

Resilient Communities across Geographies examines how GIS:

• integrates quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data to reveal vulnerabilities and opportunities for resilience.
• provides a valuable method to capture and integrate knowledge about resources and their usage.
• analyzes and visually displays at-risk systems and likely outcomes of various possible interventions.
• clarifies a vision for community engagement, data analysis, communication, intervention, and policy to make informed decisions to manage and improve community resilience.

The stories shared within Resilient Communities across Geographies help readers develop an expanded sense of the power of spatial thinking and GIS to address the difficult problems we collectively face in various locations and contexts.

Edited by the authors of GIS Research Methods with a foreword by Esri Chief Medical Officer Este Geraghty.

The e-book for Resilient Communities across Geographies, 9781589484825, will be available at most online retailers.

Sheila Lakshmi Steinberg is a professor of Social and Environmental Sciences at Brandman University and Chair of the GIS Committee, where she leads the university to incorporate GIS across the curriculum. Her research interests include interdisciplinary research methods, culture, community, environmental sociology, geospatial approaches, ethnicity, health policy, and teaching pedagogy.

Steven J. Steinberg is the Geographic Information Officer for the County of Los Angeles, California. Throughout his career, he has taught GIS as a professor of geospatial sciences for the California State University and, since 2011, has worked as a geospatial scientist in the public sector, applying GIS across a wide range of both environmental and human contexts.

ISBN: 9781589484818    2020    pages   $49.99