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.
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.
Dr. Este Geraghty is the Chief Medical Officer and Health Solutions Director at Esri where she leads business development for the Health and Human Services sector.
