Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Mapping a Wildfire: Mapping practices, environmental knowledge, and the unpredictable nature of disaster"

测绘野火：测绘实践、环境知识和灾难的不可预测性质总结2007年10月，南加州面临其历史上最大的野火事件之一。开发描述和可视化这些野火的方法对消防官员、灾难应对人员和新闻记者来说是一个巨大的挑战，因为他们正在努力收集和分享有关正在展开的情况的信息。地图既是重要的沟通工具，也是让火灾变得可知的技术。本论文项目研究了2007年野火期间地图的制作，以探索人群的多样性？科学家、急救人员、记者和公众？相互作用，发展相互合法的方式来理解野火。这个项目使用了一套混合的方法，包括对主要参与者的采访，观察野火地图的绘制，以及对政府、科学和媒体文件的分析，以检查技术变化、人类互动、文化想象和环境之间往往出乎意料的协同效应。更广泛的影响本文将有助于研究灾害，这些研究将超越风险管理问题，考虑用于制定灾害计划的知识类型、灾害中的沟通实践以及不同的社区对灾难的概念。由于自然灾害对正常的通信基础设施造成了障碍，它们使得应急人员有必要突破政策的界限，包括混乱和即兴的互动，以完成他们的工作。在这一过程中，可以看到这些行为者如何接受关于环境的新思维方式、新形式的合法数据和测绘技术以及新类型的专门知识。了解这些新的代表方法背后的创造性和合作工作将对参与灾害规划和应对的社区非常重要，因为它们有助于解释为什么环境辩论具有独特的形式，并使人们有可能就未来灾难的规划提出更好的问题。

Mapping Wildfire: Mapping Practices, Environmental Knowledge,and the Unpredictable Nature of DisasterSummaryIn October 2007, Southern California faced one of the largest wildfire events in its history. Developing ways to represent and visualize these wildfires posed a great challenge for fire officials, disaster responders, and news reporters as they worked to gather and share information about the unfolding situation. Maps became both vital tools of communication and techniques for making the fires knowable.This dissertation project examines the production of the maps made during the 2007 wildfires to explore how diverse groups of people ? scientists, first responders, journalists, and the public ? interacted to develop mutually legitimate ways of understanding the wildfires. Technical DescriptionThis project uses a mixed set of methods including interviews of key actors, observation of wildfire map-making, and analysis of government, scientific, and media documents to examine the often-unanticipated synergy between technological change, human interactions, cultural imaginings, and the environment. Broader impactThis dissertation will contribute to studies of disasters that look beyond questions of risk management to consider the types of knowledge used to make disaster plans, the practices of communication in disasters, and the different community conceptions of a disaster. As natural disasters create obstacles for normal infrastructures of communication, they make it necessary for responders to push the limits of policy to include messy and impromptu interactions in order to get their jobs done. In the process, it becomes possible to see how these actors come to accept new ways of thinking about the environment, new forms of legitimate data and mapping technologies, as well as new types of expertise. Understanding the creative and collaborative work behind these new methods of representation will be of great importance for communities involved in disaster planning and response as they help explain why environmental debates take their unique shapes and make it possible to ask better questions about planning for future disasters.