Geography Of Risk Research Articles

Development of a Methodology for the Assessment of Vulnerability Related to Wildland Fires Using a Multi‐Criteria Evaluation

AbstractIn the geography of risk, vulnerability may be defined as a physical characteristic that describes the tendency of a territory to suffer damage as a result of the occurrence of certain phenomena. According to this synthetic definition, there are two main components of vulnerability in the context of wildland fires. The first is internal, and is related to the effects of fires on the value of the affected assets affected and their capacity for recovery. The second is external, and is related to the characteristics of fires and the ability of society to deal with the hazards of wildland fires. The aim of the present study is to develop an assessment of spatial vulnerability in the context of wildland fires, at a scale appropriate for planning (1/25 000), in a mountainous region of the Spanish Mediterranean coast (Sierra Calderona). The proposed methodology entailed the definition of a synthetic index associated with the management of the risk of wildland fires, which was made up of significant factors such as the difficulty of extinction, the need for forest defence, the need for civil protection, and territorial value. To define and calculate the factors, variables and indicators that reflected aspects of the components of vulnerability (such as exposure, sensitivity, and the capacity to fight fires) were used. These were combined in a hierarchical structure, each having its own cartographical representation. Geographical information systems and multi‐criteria evaluation were then used to provide a successful framework for the analysis of vulnerability in relation to wildland fires. The cartographical outputs of the various components of the index are of particular interest to the planning of certain activities (e.g. forest, wildland fire, and civil protection), all of which are directly involved in the management of risk. In turn, the final synthetic index provides comprehensive spatial information that is useful for spatial planning and also enables the assessment of potential future land use in view of its usefulness in simulations.

Social geography of risk: The role of time, place and antiretroviral therapy in conceptions about the sexual risk of HIV in Kahe, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

The epidemiological pattern of HIV/AIDS in Africa and Tanzania is characterized by geographical variations in HIV prevalence. Despite the geographical variations, heterosexual contact remains the predominant mode of HIV transmission. The article examines the interrelationships of social, spatial and temporal issues in explaining the sexual risk of HIV/AIDS amongst youths in rural Tanzania. Drawing on discussions with young people, the authors employ a comparative approach to establish categories of social practices that explain HIV risk. HIV risk is largely influenced by social interaction as youths engage in routine day-to-day activities in different geographical locales. The availability of antiretroviral treatment ushered in new dynamics in locally available strategies to manage the risk of HIV infection. Gender relations appear to have an underlining influence in determining the timing and place of risk as well as ways of controlling risk. The study participants emphasized both social and biomedical interventions to manage and control sexual activity and risk. Youth-focused and community-wide interventions addressing HIV prevention, care and treatment need to recognize the fact that the HIV epidemic in Tanzania is increasingly becoming a rural phenomenon structured by a wide range of local, national and global processes.

Entering a Risky Territory: Space in the Age of Digital Navigation

Relying on the fecund interface of three fields—studies in science, risk geography, and knowledge management—this paper notes first that the lack of understanding of the relationships between maps and territory and risks is an unfortunate consequence of the way the mapping impulse has been interpreted during the modernist period. Then, taking into account the advent of digital navigation, the paper discusses a very different interpretation of the mapping enterprise that allows a mimetic use of maps to be distinguished from a navigational one. Consequently, we suggest maps should be considered as dashboards of a calculation interface that allows one to pinpoint successive signposts while moving through the world, the famous multiverse of William James. This distinction, we argue, might, on the one hand, help geography to grasp the very idea of risks and, on the other, help to free geography from its fascination with the base map by allowing a whole set of new features, such as anticipation, participation, reflexivity, and feedback, now being included in the navigational definition of maps.

Geographies of risk: an exploration of city childhoods in early twentieth‐century Britain

In recent years geographical concepts and the geography lexicon have been used in different disciplines to explore the diffusion and circulation of ideas and it is increasingly commonplace for academics to speak of a “geography of knowledge”. Little systematic work has been undertaken by historians of education using spatialised approaches to consider the emergence and circulation of educational knowledge. The circulation of knowledge, and an examination of whether spatial thinking can enable historians to gain insights and understand relationships not otherwise obtainable, are the key issues considered in this paper.

Paranoid parenting? Rematerializing risk and fear for children

Both in the social sciences and in popular debates, recent commentaries on fear for children highlight the mismatch between children's and parents' fears and the risk of stranger danger, point to cultural changes to childhood and parenting in explanation. This paper suggests that a materialist approach to fear and risk may be equally helpful to understanding, and of more strategic advantage in promoting social change which benefits children, especially those who have been victims. It is argued that if research is child-centred, grounded in particular places, and explicit about the social stratification of risk, then experience of victimization itself can explain a large part of children's fears. In support, the paper draws on quantitative and qualitative research with 1,069 children aged 10–16 in a deprived area of northeast England. The geographies of child victimization and children's fears are compared, showing that many fears about public space are spatially congruent with experiences of risk. These geographies of risk and fear are gendered and racialized and, in this geographical context, paedophiles and asylum seekers have replaced the ‘stranger’ in children's accounts of danger. Implications for current public and policy debates are discussed.

Adolescent Substance Use and Abuse Prevention and Treatment: Primary Care Strategies Involving Social Networks and the Geography of Risk and Protection

The use and abuse of licit and illicit substances in adolescence is a national public health concern. This behavior impairs healthy development for many adolescents in the United States. Although not every adolescent who becomes a regular user of licit and illicit substances will develop a substance abuse disorder, all adolescents using these substances can experience a life-threatening outcome. Understanding the epidemiology and social profile of adolescent substance use, namely the risk and protective factors and the environmental and genetic factors, is essential to the development of strategies for prevention. There are many methods that can be employed to better assess environments in which adolescents live. The method discussed in this paper is descriptive and utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. The primary goal of this paper is to illustrate and describe an analysis of substance using and non-substance using adolescents, their social networks, the risky and protective settings where they socialize, and the relationship of these variables to health outcomes such as substance use, depression, and stress. Published data from the researchers’ recent investigation examine the effect of social network affiliations and geographical risk factors on drug involvement and illustrate how these factors may then be incorporated into prevention and intervention planning, especially in medical settings.

Geographies of Risk in Studies Linking Chronic Air Pollution Exposure to Health Outcomes

This article addresses the question of how to incorporate spatial processes into the assessment of chronic health effects from air pollution exposure. An analytic framework is developed around three related concepts: (1) the geography of susceptibility; (2) the geography of exposure; and (3) points of intersection between these two, termed the geography of risk. The article discusses how each concept encompasses many lower level issues such as meteorological dispersion of pollutants, time–space activity patterns, and population distributions of susceptible individuals in time and space. A key premise is that researchers should target studies with high degrees of overlap between geographies of exposure and susceptibility. Instances where the overlap remains incomplete, or systematically biased, usually produce attenuated or unreliable risk estimates, and some of this discordance may find expression in spatially autocorrelated residuals.

Assessing adolescent risk behavior using social networks and the geography of risk and protection

To understand the realtionship between the urban adolescents’ social networks, environment, and health outcomes such as substance abuse, depression and stress.

Assessing adolescent risk behavior using social networks and the geography of risk and protection

Assessing adolescent risk behavior using social networks and the geography of risk and protection

Geographies of Risk and Difference in Crop Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering is often depicted as a breakthrough solution to hunger and environmental problems in agriculture. Such claims encourage the further shift of public resources toward molecular sciences, globalized intellectual property rights, and relaxed biotechnology regulation. However, focusing on transgenic crops is a risky and inadequate response to socioeconomic and ecological challenges. The search for a universal, technological solution disregards the complex geographies of food production and trade. This article challenges claims that crop genetic engineering represents a new direction in agriculture, that transgenic crops have performed well, and that the regulatory approaches used in the United States or Europe are universally applicable. It outlines three geographies of difference that distinguish agriculture in the global North from farming in most of the global South. Those differences point to the need for more place‐specific, multifaceted, and farmer‐centered approaches to agricultural productivity and sustainability, approaches to which geographers have much to contribute.

Shooting Gallery Users and HIV Risk

Recognizing that HIV transmission occurs within situated interactions between two or more people, prevention research has increasingly begun to focus on identifying the influence of situations and settings on the spread of HIV. Examination of the social geography of risk has emerged as a powerful tool for understanding where and among whom risky practices occur. In this regard, shooting galleries represent interactional territories where the normative expectations of participation within their spatial boundaries can both encourage and reinforce sex- and drug-related risky behavior. Indeed, research shows that those who inject in shooting galleries tend to be at a higher risk of transmitting HIV than those who inject elsewhere. Drawing upon data from a sample of 1,113 active injecting drug users, we examined the demographic and psychosocial factors that predict shooting gallery use. Next, we compared shooting gallery users with nonusers in terms of drug use, followed by an examination of differences in sex- and drug-related HIV risk behaviors. Then, we explored preventive practices that possibly differentiate those who use shooting galleries from those who do not. We end our analysis by discussing the implications of our results for HIV prevention and social policy.

BOOK REVIEW: Elaine Freedgood.VICTORIAN WRITING ABOUT RISK: IMAGINING A SAFE ENGLAND IN A DANGEROUS WORLD. pp. xii + 216. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

In her wide-ranging, engaging, and informative book on Victorians and risk, Elaine Freedgood examines the "massive, disorganized, and highly successful" cultural enterprise of [End Page 569] textually constructing England as safe in a world of change and danger (1). Her attempt to map the "geography of risk" in the period between 1832 and 1897 stakes its argument on two key theses. The first, theoretical one is that modernity is not characterized by its acceptance of the permanence of risk, as Anthony Giddens, among others, has asserted. Rather, for Freedgood, modernity's relationship with risk is distinguished more by its strategies for containing it, the consequent payoff of these "modern cosmologies" being "large-scale consolation and reassurance" (2). Her second fundamental claim is textual. Because these cosmologies must be directly on point, flexible, and ultimately expendable, they reside most successfully in the ephemera of culture, those texts that quickly gain cultural prominence only to recede with nearly as much celerity into the footnotes of historians and literary and cultural critics.

Victorian Writing About Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World (review)

In her wide-ranging, engaging, and informative book on Victorians and risk, Elaine Freedgood examines the "massive, disorganized, and highly successful" cultural enterprise of [End Page 569] textually constructing England as safe in a world of change and danger (1). Her attempt to map the "geography of risk" in the period between 1832 and 1897 stakes its argument on two key theses. The first, theoretical one is that modernity is not characterized by its acceptance of the permanence of risk, as Anthony Giddens, among others, has asserted. Rather, for Freedgood, modernity's relationship with risk is distinguished more by its strategies for containing it, the consequent payoff of these "modern cosmologies" being "large-scale consolation and reassurance" (2). Her second fundamental claim is textual. Because these cosmologies must be directly on point, flexible, and ultimately expendable, they reside most successfully in the ephemera of culture, those texts that quickly gain cultural prominence only to recede with nearly as much celerity into the footnotes of historians and literary and cultural critics.