Tactile Maps for Flood Mitigation Planning: Design and Evaluation
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Cole, Harrison
- Graduate Program:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 21, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Anthony Robinson, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jack Carroll, Outside Unit & Field Member
Lorraine Dowler, Major Field Member
Erica Smithwick, Major Field Member
Brian King, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- geography
cartography
accessibility
tactile
disability
flood - Abstract:
- As climate change continues to exacerbate the frequency and intensity of natural hazards, a structural rethinking of natural hazard mitigation planning will be needed in order to muster the necessary resources for reducing community vulnerability to disaster, and doing so will require providing means of access to the planning process for populations that have been historically marginalized. In the United States, communities are able to create what is called a natural hazard mitigation plan (NHMP), which can be submitted to the federal government for funding to help accelerate hazard mitigation projects. NHMPs, as well as other documents pertaining to the study of natural hazards, tend to rely on the interpretation of a multitude of maps. As visually-based documents, these maps are close to useless, if not entirely, for the several million blind and low vision people in the United States. Therefore, if a blind person wants to contribute to their community as it is building a natural hazard mitigation plan, or to update an older plan, they will be excluded from large, crucial portions of the process. The cartographic intervention that the research presented here makes is to help render the planning process more accessible for people who are blind or have low vision. This is accomplished as follows. First, a literature review and research agenda are outlined, focusing on tactile maps and advocating for greater attention to this topic. Second, an experiment is described involving blind and low vision individuals using tactile maps to assess hypothetical flood risk in a community, finding that existing tactile map resources, methods, and design conventions are in fact suitable for creating thematic tactile maps. Third, a subsequent tactile map experiment is described wherein blind or low vision individuals assess flood risk in collaboration with a sighted partner, concluding that tactile maps are indeed able to foster collaboration and generate spatial insights. In sum, this dissertation contributes the outlines of methods for enrolling people who are blind or have low vision into the hazard mitigation planning process, which currently offers no means of doing so.