<p> Federal, state and local officials are planning for a (M) 7.8 San Andreas Earthquake Scenario in the Southern California Catastrophic Earthquake Response Plan that would require initial emergency food and water resources to support from 2.5 million to 3.5 million people over an eight-county region in Southern California. However, a model that identifies locations of affected populations&mdash;with consideration for social vulnerability, estimates of their emergency logistical resource requirements, and their resource requirements over time&mdash;has yet to be developed for the emergency response plan.</p><p> The aim of this study was to develop a modeling methodology for emergency logistical resource requirements of affected populations in the (M) 7.8 San Andreas Earthquake Scenario in Southern California. These initial resource requirements, defined at three-days post-event and predicted through a probabilistic risk model, were then used to develop a relative risk ratio and to estimate resources requirements over time. The model results predict an &ldquo;at-risk&rdquo; population of 3,352,995 in the eight-county study region. In Los Angeles County, the model predicts an &ldquo;at- risk&rdquo; population of 1,421,415 with initial requirements for 2,842,830 meals and 4,264,245 liters of water. The model also indicates that communities such as Baldwin Park, Lancaster-Palmdale and South Los Angeles will have long-term resource requirements.</p><p> Through the development of this modeling methodology and its applications, the planning capability of the Southern California Catastrophic Earthquake Response Plan is enhanced and provides a more effective baseline for emergency managers to target emergency logistical resources to communities with the greatest need. The model can be calibrated, validated, generalized, and applied in other earthquake or multi-hazard scenarios through subsequent research.</p><p>

abstract: Economic inequality is always presented as how economic metrics vary amongst individuals in a group, amongst groups in a population, or amongst some regions. Economic inequality can substantially impact the social environment, socioeconomics as well as human living standard. Since economic inequality always plays an important role in our social environment, its study has attracted much attention from scholars in various research fields, such as development economics, sociology and political science. On the other hand, economic inequality can result from many factors, phenomena, and complex procedures, including policy, ethnic, education, globalization and etc. However, the spatial dimension in economic inequality research did not draw much attention from scholars until early 2000s. Spatial dependency, perform key roles in economic inequality analysis. The spatial econometric methods do not merely convey a consequence of the characters of the data exclusively. More importantly, they also respect and quantify the spatial effects in the economic inequality. As aforementioned, although regional economic inequality starts to attract scholars' attention in both economy and regional science domains, corresponding methodologies to examine such regional inequality remain in their preliminary phase, which need substantial further exploration. My thesis aims at contributing to the body of knowledge in the method development to support economic inequality studies by exploring the feasibility of a set of new analytical methods in use of regional inequality analysis. These methods include Theil's T statistic, geographical rank Markov and new methods applying graph theory. The thesis will also leverage these methods to compare the inequality between China and US, two large economic entities in the world, because of the long history of economic development as well as the corresponding evolution of inequality in US; the rapid economic development and consequent high variation of economic inequality in China. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Geography 2016

A number of GIS architectures and technologies have emerged recently to facilitate the visualisation and processing of geospatial data over the Web. The work presented in this dissertation builds on these efforts and undertakes to overcome some of the major problems with traditional GIS client architectures, including application bloat, lack of customisability, and lack of interoperability between GIS products. In this dissertation we describe how a new client-side GIS architecture was developed and implemented as a proof-of-concept application called RADGIS, which is based on open standards and emerging distributed component-based software paradigms. RADGIS reflects the current trend in development focus from Web browser-based applications to customised clients, based on open standards, that make use of distributed Web services. While much attention has been paid to exposing data on the Web, there is growing momentum towards providing “value-added” services. A good example of this is the tremendous industry interest in the provision of location-based services, which has been discussed as a special use-case of our RADGIS architecture. Thus, in the near future client applications will not simply be used to access data transparently, but will also become facilitators for the location-transparent invocation of local and remote services. This flexible architecture will ensure that data can be stored and processed independently of the location of the client that wishes to view or interact with it. Our RADGIS application enables content developers and end-users to create and/or customise GIS applications dynamically at runtime through the incorporation of GIS services. This ensures that the client application has the flexibility to withstand changing levels of expertise or user requirements. These GIS services are implemented as components that execute locally on the client machine, or as remote CORBA Objects or EJBs. Assembly and deployment of these components is achieved using a specialised XML descriptor. This XML descriptor is written using a markup language that we developed specifically for this purpose, called DGCML, which contains deployment information, as well as a GUI specification and links to an XML-based help system that can be merged with the RADGIS client application’s existing help system. Thus, no additional requirements are imposed on object developers by the RADGIS architecture, i.e. there is no need to rewrite existing objects since DGCML acts as a runtime-customisable wrapper, allowing existing objects to be utilised by RADGIS. While the focus of this thesis has been on overcoming the above-mentioned problems with traditional GIS applications, the work described here can also be applied in a much broader context, especially in the development of highly customisable client applications that are able to integrate Web services at runtime.

This research takes as its starting point the past decade of critiques from human geographers, and proposes an alternate model for appraisals of technology. The first section begins with an analysis of the bases and motivation of external assessments of GIS. A historiographical account reveals that the critical impulse among human geographers was not static, but evolved to incorporate greater subtlety based on cooperation with GIS scholars. Critiques from human geographers, nevertheless, had a profound impact on the discipline, and practitioners of GIS frequently felt that their perspectives on issues including the roots of GIS, its epistemological bases, and its ethics had been undervalued by critics. A re-analysis of critiques, from the perspectives of GIS practitioners, investigates objections to critical accounts of the technology. The second half of the research builds upon existing critiques and responses to them, but asks the question, "is there a more constructive means to engage with technology, from a theoretical perspective?" Two contemporary research questions in GIS are investigated, as a means of establishing a preliminary methodology for critique that engages with GIS at a conceptual, as well as a technical level. Factors that have influenced the progress of automated generalization are examined in some detail. The argument is made that both social and digital parameters define the technology, and it is unproductive to focus on one at the expense of the other. The second research question concerns data models and the extent to which fields and objects are inevitable. The case is made that a web of historical and scientific justification has prevented researchers from seeking alternatives to the atomic and plenum views of space. Finally, an appeal is made for continued theoretical examination of the technology as part of an effort to develop geographic information science. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Arguably one of the greatest challenges currently facing humankind is the linking of environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice. These issues all come to a head in the rural smallholder agricultural regions of "underdeveloped" Africa .In these settings climate change and food security are but two of the many challenges faced on a daily basis, compounded by the need for "development". Through a case study of smallholder farmers facing multiple contested development trajectories, this research takes a social-ecological systems approach in order to: 1. investigate the past, present and future dynamics of smallholder agriculture and food practices in mPondo communities of the Wild Coast 2. locate the role of agriculture and agri-food systems in the local development discourses 3. describe the perceived opportunities and challenges which face the local agri-food system Through semi-structured interviews, informal discussions, workshops and participant observation in three regions of the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape a trend of rapid cultural erosion was observed. Many traditional crops are no longer cultivated as farmers turn to commercial seeds and modern cooking methods. Three dominant development trajectories are explored for one region, focusing on the AmaDiba community whose history of resisting imposed development is again being tested by contentious titanium mining proposed in nearby Xolobeni. A central finding is that while resisting imposed development in order to achieve a self-defined development which values mPondo traditions and subsistence off the land, these communities - described as possessing strong community agency - are losing the very culture they are fighting to defend. This is made clear through the social-ecological systems approach of resilience theory. In building resilience to imposed development the community has become vulnerable to other disturbances. As this traditional agri-food system continues to face the enduring shocks of global environmental and social change, the communities must recognise their fragilities as well as the threats which have been overlooked in the past. This study therefore suggests that the community exploit this stage of readjustment so as to reorganise, building on local culture and tradition, through an integrated approach to development which combines agriculture, traditional food and tourism.

Includes bibliographies. / The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) acquired a Geographic Information System (GIS) in 1987. The purpose of acquiring such a system was to aid the department in implementing their water resource management strategy of that time. On acquiring this system it was well recognised that the GIS would need to communicate geo-referenced information, generated by analysis and modelling to decision makers by means of graphic representations or maps (Olivier et al., 1990: 14 73). Towards the end of 1990 it became apparent that the department needed to standardise cartographic output of this system. Maps on the same theme, which were produced at different sites were not comparable and graphic communication was not effective. A consultant was appointed, who, in conjunction with the departmental digital cartographer, established criteria and standards which were flexible enough to accommodate mapping on a wide variety of themes. These standards were implemented, to a limited extent in July 1994. Standards were set for map encoding, map content and map composition. This report investigates how effective these standards have been. The effectiveness of these standards have been measured in terms of the five recognised cartographic design principles that have been identified by Robinson et al. (1984), Wood (1992) and Dent (1990). These include the clarity and legibility of maps, the distinction between figure and ground, the hierarchical organisation of mapped information, the visual contrast of marks on maps and the visual balance or layout of the finished map. A sample of maps made after the implementation of cartographic standards at the department was compared to a sample of comparable maps made prior to the implementation of these standards. In a large organisation like the department the success of such standards do not depend on the standards alone but also on their implementation. Implementation related problems were identified by comparing standardised maps with the standards. The outcome of the investigation proved that the effectiveness of graphic communication had indeed improved albeit to a varying degree. In most cases the standards were adequate and the main problems actually lay with their implementation. Recommendations on the implementation and the few aspects of the standards that require amendment have been included in this report.

Hurricane evacuation refers to an individual’s or household’s response to a hurricane threat by temporarily relocating somewhere safe. However, it is rarely the case that everyone will comply when he/she is ordered to evacuate by authorities. Understanding why people fail to heed evacuation orders is vital in order to minimize non‐compliance. In the past, factors contributing to hurricane evacuation behavior have been studied mainly using survey instruments. The most significant variables include official evacuation orders, housing type, perceived risks, environmental cues, and social cues. Factors such as information sources, experience, and demographic characteristics have weaker impacts on evacuation decisions or are significant in only a limited number of studies. In this study, many of the literature‐documented factors that contribute to evacuation behavior were examined using survey data collected in Charlotte County, Florida, before and after Hurricane Irma (2017). Additional environmental factors, some of which were not included in a majority of the previous hurricane evacuation studies, were examined together with the survey‐based, socioeconomic, and risk‐perception variables. Environmental factors examined less frequently include variables such as the structural characteristics of people’s homes, storm surge zone, wind zone, and distance to shelters. Environmental variables examined in the previous literature include elevation, flood zone, and distance to the coastline. These data were collected through publicly available data sources and linked with the survey respondents’ home locations. The literature review points to the importance of risk perception on people’s hurricane evacuation decision‐making, so factors that may have contributed to people’s hurricane risk vi perception were also examined. These factors include both the survey‐based socioeconomic variables and the GIS‐derived environmental factors described above. Risk perception in this study was measured through the respondent’s answers to a question regarding their sense of safety in a hypothetical Category 3 hurricane. Since an individual’s perception of safety is an overall measure of whether people think they are threatened by particular hurricane‐induced risks (such as flood damage, wind damage, and power loss), the term perceived vulnerability was adopted and used throughout the entire thesis. In this study, perceived vulnerability refers to a respondent’s overall sense of safety when they consider all the potential threats associated with a Category 3 hurricane. Descriptive statistics, chi‐square test, and independent samples t‐test were performed to assess for associations between independent variables and the two dependent variables. One of the dependent variables is the evacuation decisions made by the survey respondents in Charlotte County in response to Hurricane Irma. The other dependent variable is perceived vulnerability. Logistic Regressions were performed for each dependent variable with only significant factors (according to the chi‐square or t‐test analysis) input as the independent variables. The results showed: 1) For survey respondents in Charlotte County living within evacuation zones A and B (both were under mandatory evacuation orders during Hurricane Irma), education level, perceived hurricane evacuation zone, perceived vulnerability, and distance of residence to the nearest coastline were statistically significant factors associated with the evacuation decisions made during Hurricane Irma. 2) According to Logistic Regression, perceived vulnerability and the distance from the subject’s home to the nearest coastline were vii the most significant factors influencing the evacuation decisions made during Hurricane Irma. 3) For survey respondents living across Charlotte County regardless of evacuation zones, many socioeconomic, risk perception, and environmental factors were statistically significantly associated with their perceived vulnerability. 4) When these factors were included in the Logistic Regression analysis, the respondent’s storm surge zone and their belief that their houses were located in a low‐lying area, were the factors found to be most significantly associated with perceived vulnerability. This study contributes to the assessment of people’s hurricane risk perception and evacuation decisions. It also demonstrates the benefit of including environmental variables in hurricane risk perception and evacuation decision‐making research. Many factors, including less‐researched environmental variables, were integrated into this comprehensive study. Perceived vulnerability, a measure of overall perceived risks, was found to be the most significant factor associated with people’s hurricane evacuation decisions. It was found more important than whether people believe they heard evacuation orders or what type of evacuation order they heard. Evaluating what determines people’s perceived vulnerability is a relatively new research direction in studies examining hurricane evacuation behavior. In this study, many of the environmental variables (such as elevation, the distance of the home to the nearest coastline, evacuation zone, and storm surge zone) were found to be significantly associated with people’s perceived vulnerability. For the subjects in this study, fear of flooding was identified through the two significant variables standing out in the Logistic Regression analysis – respondent’s storm surge zone (an environmental factor) and respondent’s belief that their home is located viii in a low‐lying area (a specific risk perception factor). This finding may be useful to government officials when they communicate with the public prior to a hurricane making landfall. Including information such as flooding risks may motivate residents to comply with evacuation orders. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / 2019 / November 13, 2019. / GIS, Hurricane Evacuation, Perceived Vulnerability, Risk Perception / Includes bibliographical references. / Tingting Zhao, Professor Directing Thesis; James Elsner, Committee Member; Sandy Wong, Committee Member; Earl Jay Baker, Committee Member.

No description available.

no abstract provided. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

No description available.