Project 4
For project 4, we had two goals that we wanted to fulfill. First, we wanted to depict and show some of the potential risks that hurricanes present to coastal dwelling people. We chose Hurricane Ivan for this analysis and have performed much research as to how to accurately depict the infamous storm's path, speed, and damage through and to a selected county. Second, we decided to run a social vulnerability index of the selected county to determine what kind of vulnerable populations were present when Hurricane Ivan struck. We used the data mentioned in Project 2 and have completed the proposed research from that project.
We chose this topic mainly because we all have a background in studying social vulnerability. To learn more about our study of Social Vulnerability, see Project 2. For our proposed analysis, we decided to use Escambia County, Florida for several reasons:
- The majority of damage sustained from a hurricane usually occurs NorthEast of the eye. Hurricane Ivan made landfall in Baldwin County, Alabama. Escambia County lies east of the storm and sustained some of the worst documented damage from the storm.
- Florida does a much better job of documenting data. The State of Florida mandates certain levels of emergency preparedness and disaster documentation. Because of this, data is not only more available, it is more plentiful when it comes to hurricane disaster data .
- Escambia County serves as a better model county. Escambia County contains dense urban areas, rural areas, and cultural diversity making it one fo the prime model counties to run an analysis on.
The People Behind the Research
Zeb Wallace is a graduate student at the University of North Alabama in Geospatial Science. He is a research assistant working on a project with NOAA concerning social vulnerability on the gulf coast. His interests are human-environment interaction, natural disasters and climatology.
Jennifer Melhiser is a senior at the University of North Alabama majoring in Geographic Information Science and will be graduating in May 2011. She has worked as an intern on a NOAA grant for the Department of Geography studying social vulnerability. Currently, she is working on a trail mapping project for the Alabama Trail Society and will be doing an internship in the spring for her minor in Computer Information Systems.
Dennis Jarrard is a senior, graduating in May 2011 in Geographic Information Science, and doesn't know whether he is going to graduate school or going to join the workforce when he graduates. He works for the Geography Department as a part of his internship and enjoys playing Call of Duty, hunting for deer, and playing music in his spare time.