What makes a community resilient? How do we ensure its sustainable
future?
Resilience--the unique ability to positively adapt to changing physical
and social environments--is essential for populations of all sizes and
locales in today's world of unexpected changes and increasing instances
of environmental change. Communities around the globe possess unique
combinations of culture, skills, and abilities in context of unique
built and natural environments. Identifying and mapping community
strengths and resources facilitates effective planning for where and how
to focus and manage their unique cultures and characteristics.
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. Each chapter
discusses a spatially driven approach to challenges in geography, social
sciences, landscape architecture, urban planning, environmental studies,
sociology, economics, migration, community development, meteorology,
oceanography, and other fields.
Examples explore both the natural and cultural contexts of climate
adaptation in built environments and cultural impacts in a diversity of
communities. These include the Martu people of Australia, First Nation
youth in Canada, and cultural diversity of indigenous Los Angeles to
California farmworkers facing exposure to agricultural chemicals in
their communities. Each example applies powerful GIS tools and analysis
to document, support, and assess resilience across these unique
geographies while recognizing the value and strength which lies in the
diversity of the people who live there.
The stories shared within Resilient Communities across Geographies
help readers develop an expanded sense of the power of spatial thinking,
local knowledge, and engagement to address the difficult problems we
collectively face in various locales.
Edited by the authors of GIS Research Methods with a foreword by Esri
Chief Medical Officer Este Geraghty.
