U geography professors are working on a study to help everyone get home safely and quickly.
The study, in its third year, identifies hazards to transportation systems caused by natural disasters and studyies the vulnerabilities of transportation networks in the event of an attack.
“Terrorists can disrupt transportation networks like bridges and highways that could make life unlivable,” said Harvey Miller, a U geography professor contributing to the study.
Initially, the study focused on how natural disasters could affect transportation networks, but following the Sept. 11 attacks, the focus shifted.
“Since 9/11, there’s been a major concern about infrastructure vulnerability,” Miller said. “Vulnerability is the inverse of accessibility.”
Though the study encompasses the effects of disasters on transportation networks in general, each member of the research team contributes in his own way.
“I’m mainly working with a remote sensing satellite to look for centimeter-scale displacements on the ground, which will enable us to look for those motions related to transportation networks, like landslides or cracks in the road,” said Rick Forster, a geography professor also contributing to the study.
Where the direct attack on a building could kill hundreds or even thousands of people in a short period of time, the disruption of major transportation networks would have other far-reaching and devastating effects.
Relying on state of the art technology such as remote sensing and geographic information systems, the team of researchers is obtaining information never before available.
Miller, who runs the U’s Geographic Information System (GIS), said this kind of research and technology is the future of geography.
“This is modern geography, which is a science?we want to understand why things are the way they are,” he said.
The U’s GIS program is one of the best and strongest programs of its kind in the country, according to Miller. Students entering the GIS program work jointly with the computer science program, and “students coming out of the GIS program literally have their choice of jobs,” Miller said.
Though Miller’s study of transportation networks is focused on the Salt Lake area, “there’s a big application of this in military logistics, how to move troops and supplies from one place to another,” Miller explained.
GIS combines maps and computers, two of the most powerful technologies in history.
“We can combine the two to create something more powerful than either by itself,” Miller said in the summer 2001 issue of Continuum magazine.
Although Miller has spent the last three years studying the consequences of disasters on transportation networks, he has integrated his knowledge on community liveability and sustainability into his research.
“We need to find new ways of configuring our cities within 50 years, or we may have a major environmental collapse,” he said.
Modern geography picks up where traditional geography studies stop.
“Geography is going through a major revolution right now, it’s becoming a science,” Miller said.
U Geography Professors George Hepner and Tom Cova contributed to the study as well. The study is funded by the National Consortium on Remote Sensing in Transportation, and is being sponsored by the United States Department of Transportation.