Natural Resource & Environmental  Management 250

Q1)    What geographic area are you studying?
    Gulf of Mexico. Specifically southern Mississippi (Hancock County, Harrison     County, and Jackson County).


Q2)    What decision do you need to make?
Where best to allocate their disaster aid for the three counties in Mississippi.



Q3)    What information would help you make the decision?
Pre-flood data of geographical features. Data that can demonstrate what geographical areas the flood changed, this would also help established what has not changed. Census data would also help identify what areas relief should be directed to.

Q4)    Who are the key stakeholders for this issue? (This step is important. You need to know the audience for your analysis to help decide how to present your results.)

The greatest bureaucracy ever known to the world the “United States Government.” The main economic aide would come from the Federal Government, while state and local governments would need this type of data to plan rebuilding damaged areas.

Q5)    Investigate the metadata and complete this table:

Layer	Data Type	Publication Information: Who Created the Data?	Time Period Data is Relevant	Spatial Horizontal Coordinate System	Attribut Values	Resolution for Rasters
airports	Vector	US Geological Survey     Reston, VA Tele Atlas North America, Inc., ESRI	2006	GCS_WGS 1984	N/A	N/A
curches	Point	Tele Atlas North America, Inc., ESRI	2006	GCS_North_American_1983	Census data	N/A
counties	Vector	US Geological Survey     Reston, VA		GCS_North_American_1983	County	N/A
elev	Rastar	US Geological Survey     Reston, VA	1999	GCS_North_American_1983	Elevation is expressed in meters	1 arc second 0.000278 decimal degrees 30 meters
hospitals	Vector	Tele Atlas North America, Inc., ESRI	2006	GCS_North_American_1983	Street Data	N/A
landcover	Rastar	US Geological Survey Souix Falls, SD	2001	NAD_1983_Albers	N/A	1 arc second 0.000369 30 meters

Q7)    What are the names of the counties in order from west to east?
Hancock County, Harrison County, and Jackson County.

Q8)    What does this map show you about the Gulf Coast?



Q9)    Describe the spatial distribution of features.
See Map above.



Q10)    How might these be affected by a large storm surge?
    Most all maps reveal the major vulnerability of this geographic area which is the low lying areas that make up the south coast states. When viewing the map that shows     Interstate 10, it becomes clear that it acts as a rough demarcation line.



Q12)    Record the sum, which represents the number of pixels that were flooded.
1,383,223.

Q13)    What does the graph tell you about the greatest impact of the storm surge?  Everything south of Interstate 10 will be in great need of relief and various services. We can also see that Interstate 10 will be very important way to bring in relief and take residents out.


Q14)    Describe the distribution of the flooded areas and how the flood might affect the long-term sustainability of the region.
    It seems evident to some one like myself who does not have an economic stake in the region that for long term sustainability development must be curtailed in the lowland     and flood prone areas. The floodedlc layer provided very specific areas of damage.



As you can clearly see above (even thought this map is small) that all the Hospitals are located in areas that were severely flooded. This should reinforce the idea that Hospitals need to have strict building codes so they may endure severe catastrophic damage in hurricanes and still be able to deliver medical services.

Hancock County Hospitals

Harrison County Hospitals