Identifying Florida's 'At-Risk' Populations for Disaster Management Purposes: A Case Study and Research Framework

摘要

This purpose of this research is to present a framework for the development of a spatial decisions support system (SDSS), utilizing geographic information systems (GIS), to identify Florida's at-risk populations, those that are likely to have special requirements for disaster management (DM) purposes. A coastal county in Florida is utilized as a case study in reference to the 2004 hurricane season. Florida provides an ideal case study as it has a large elderly population and an increasing number of snowbirds, elderly persons residing in Florida during the winter months leaving the state during the summer months. In addition to hurricane track files, spatial and non-spatial data from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census, the Florida Geographic Data Library (FGDL), Florida Water Management Districts, County Health Departments, and the Comprehensive Assessment for Tracking Community Health (CATCH) data warehouse, will be utilized for model building and validation.