Daniel Johnson

Interactions Between Social and Environmental Vulnerability

Social vulnerability refers to the limited ability of people or communities to respond to an external stressor such as a heat wave or epidemic. Environmental vulnerability in this context implies the environmental stressors that a location is likely to experience. When social and environmental vulnerabilities overlap, there is a high likelihood of significant negative impacts in the local community .Professor Daniel Johnson's research focuses on social and environmental vulnerability and how they inter-relate in space and time. His focus is on modeling these interactions and working toward predictive models that can help increase resilience, prevent disaster or mitigate the effects. The forces of both social and environmental vulnerability are very pronounced in urban areas where disparities between populations are highly evident.

His models have been deployed in several cities to guide the opening of cooling centers during extreme heat events. Some of his earlier work found that cooling centers were not located in areas or neighborhoods where vulnerable populations lived. Using models he and his research team developed, cities were able to open cooling centers or use buses, as mobile cooling centers, in neighborhoods where they were needed the most.