Sullivan-Wiley, Short Gianotti, and Connors Co-author Paper on Participatory Vulnerability Mapping
Kira Sullivan-Wiley, a post-doctoral associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, is the lead author of a recent paper titled “Mapping vulnerability: Opportunities and limitations of participatory community mapping.” The paper, published in the journal Applied Geography, is co-authored by Anne Short Gianotti, a Pardee Center Faculty Associate and Associate Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment, and John Patrick Casellas Connors, a former Pardee Center post-doctoral associate and currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University.
Assessments of vulnerability to climate change and its related impacts traditionally relies on mapping approaches at national to global scales, despite widespread interest in understanding these processes at local scales. As a result, a growing body of work uses participatory methods — incorporating local knowledge of the populations experiencing hazards — to better assess the spatial nature of climate vulnerability within communities.
In the paper, the authors explore the local perspective of climate change vulnerability and risk by drawing on participatory mapping fieldwork in eastern Uganda. They evaluate the opportunities and limitations of the participatory mapping methodology, and argue that the approach can provide new opportunities for managing climate change risk.