Hazards and GIS Education at

California State University, Long Beach

presented to the special panel:

What\'s Happening in Higher Education?

Student Needs and University Responses

27th Annual Hazards Research and Applications Workshop

Boulder, CO, 14 July - 17 July 2002

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Moderator: David McEntire, University of North Texas

Discussants:

Chrys Rodrigue, California State University, Long Beach

Brenda Philips, Jacksonville State University

Kyle Rhone, Arkansas Tech University

David Hoover, University of Akron

Greg Shaw, George Washington University

Recorder: Wayne Blanchard, FEMA/Emergency Management Institute

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Panel Abstract

The demand for qualified emergency and hazards managers has been on the
rise

since September 11. Now more than ever, these managers must have many
skills

and abilities to successfully execute the ever-broadening range of their

field, implying that education programs must keep pace with this demand.

This session will focus on the status of higher education emergency
manage-

ment programs and identify how student needs are determined and met.

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Chrys Rodrigue

Professor and Chair

Department of Geography

California State University

Long Beach, CA 90840-1101

http://www.csulb.edu/\~rodrigue/

1 (562) 985-4895

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I come at this question from a different perspective than the other
panel-

lists here. The others are involved in bachelor\'s and master\'s
programs

specifically in emergency management. My own campus does run a
State-wide

distance education program in occupational education. This program
focusses

on emergency services administration, and its purpose is to develop
leader

presentation skills for people already in the life safety technology and

emergency management education settings. It confers both bachelor\'s and

master\'s degrees and targets students entering with substantial
experience

in the emergency services or emergency education areas. My department is

not involved in this program at the present time.

I represent a traditional academic department of geography. We have
several

recently hired faculty, who are involved in hazards research and
relevant

geotechnical education, often collaboratively. We offer a bachelor\'s
and

master\'s degree in geography. Our department houses a NASA Regional
Earth

Science Applications Center, which concentrates largely on the
application

of remote sensing and GIS to the analysis and prediction of wildfire
hazard

in Southern California. Faculty in the department are interested in the

physical dynamics of fire and flood hazards and the social dynamics of
fire,

earthquake, flood, technological, and public health hazards. We actively

collaborate with similarly interested faculty in the departments of
geology,

anthropology, psychology, and biology in a series of NSF, NASA,
University

of California, and internally funded research projects. With this rather

abrupt influx of hazards-oriented people, we will be offering our very
first

actual hazards class in the spring.

Additionally, we run a large curriculum in the geotechniques, including
GIS,

remote sensing, cartography, GPS, and spatial statistics, and this often

emphasizes hazards identification, mapping, and analysis. We have a very

successful internship program, which places students into well-paid
intern-

ships in local municipal and county planning agencies, Jet Propulsion
Lab,

the ports, State agencies, and private firms in the aerospace, mapping,
and

environmental consulting areas. A number of our students are interested
in

K-12 and community college education as well.

So, our students\' needs are both more applied and practical than seen
in

departments hosting research doctorate programs and more broad-based and

liberal education focussed than those offering bachelor\'s or master\'s
de-

grees specifically in emergency management (including the one based on
our

campus). Our students will not likely be among first responders or
directly

supervising them in an incident command framework. Rather, they often
wind

up in planning departments dealing with the updating and implementation
of

safety elements in general plans, providing GIS and similar backup to
emer-

gency managers and first responders, working in business research
depart-

ments where they may have to think about business continuity and
communica-

tions issues in a disaster, or teaching hazards among the geography
compon-

ents in K-14 education.

The area of hazards, risk, disaster management, and emergency response,

then, speaks to an extremely diverse audience of professionals in
training,

and they have a diverse range of needs. The result has been a
diversifica-

tion of levels at which emergency and hazards education are offered.
There

are community college associate degree programs and certificates. There
are

traditional disciplinary and interdisciplinary bachelor\'s and master\'s

degree programs, as well as certificates. There are also non-academic

certificate programs that may be offered by community colleges,
four-year

institutions, and vocational education schools, often through extension

services.

First responders from the fire departments have highly specialized and

repeatable needs for information and training to handle the range of
hazards

common or imaginable in their jurisdictions. My colleagues here are
better

qualified than I to address how various levels of the higher education

system identify and accommodate these students\' needs.

Urban, regional, small town, and environmental planners have more
diverse

needs and concerns that can best be met through baccalaureate and
master\'s

degree programs. The key issue for the hazards and emergency management

communities here is building support in the planning community for
requiring

hazards education, including the integration of first responders in the

process of emergency planning. Planning programs have their own
certifica-

tion mechanisms, as, for example, the AICP certification of planning
practi-

tioners that is increasingly valued. It is perhaps here that the hazards

community can make the most effective interventions in the education of

planners to deal with disaster and emergency management. Some of this is

going on here, as individual planners develop interests in this area and

seek information. Perhaps the Center could target the AICP for a
sustained

lobbying effort.

What my department now does most actively for the sake of emergency
manage-

ment and disaster planning education is train students in GIS, remote
sens-

ing, cartography, GPS, and statistics. As seen in sessions throughout
this

Workshop and in the posters, GIS and related geotechniques are
recognized

for their value in real-time response to a disaster and long term
pre-event

risk assessment and planning. Like emergency management itself, the geo-

techniques are used by people at various levels of preparation and
respon-

sibility, and GIS education has diversified into levels similar to the

diversification of emergency management education. We have community
col-

leges teaching GIS, some focussing on software operation. Baccalaureate
and

master\'s institutions convey elements such as database structure, SQL,
data

format conversions, cartographic design, programming, the statistical
quirks

of spatial data, and GIS design and implementation. Doctoral programs

actively push the conceptual basis of GIS and related technologies.

I would like to discuss some of the problems we have had with GIS
education

as a parable for potential problems in emergency management education. A

problem we have encountered at CSULB is the haphazard and unco-ordinated

profusion of GIS programs in the community colleges. This has led to an

articulation nightmare, as community college transfers don\'t understand
why

their several lower division courses in GIS cannot articulate with upper

division GIS courses, even when the classes are of high quality. I
suspect

that emergency management curricula may plow into this problem if there
is

significant transfer of associate\'s degree graduates of emergency
management

programs into bachelor\'s granting institutions to pursue an interest in

emergency management or, more broadly, hazards.

Another parallel from GIS education that may affect emergency management

education is the concept of certification. Many people try to take a
class

in GIS and then represent themselves as trained in GIS. As truly well-

trained GIS people become more common and contrast more and more with
poorly

trained people, there has begun to build a lot of pressure for some kind
of

certification of GIS practitioners. Several professional societies are

trying to respond to this need, and standards for GIS education are
begin-

ning to emerge as guidelines for extant and proposed programs,
particularly

those in community colleges. The hazards and emergency management
communi-

ties should consider ways of professional certification of certificate

programs, particularly those serving the more focussed and narrowly
defined

needs of first responders and emergency management organizations. FEMA
is

laying the basis for this through its EMI prototype degree programs,
which

you can pick up in the poster session. As Dave Garrett noted earlier
today,

FEMA is also encouraging certification of specific, narrowly defined
areas

of expertise, such as search and rescue or hazmat.

So, in a nutshell, there is tremendous diversity of student needs and
cur-

ricular responses. If the parallels with GIS education are valid, then

hazards education and emergency management education may need to address
the

issues of interprogram articulation and practitioner certification.

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document maintained by author

copyright Christine M. Rodrigue, Ph.D., 2002

first placed on the web: 07/14/02

last revised: 07/15/02