Natural Hazards and Disaster Management

Biography

Melinda Laituri is a professor of geography at Colorado State University in Ecosystem Science and Sustainability. Laituri received her PhD from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona in geography. Her dissertation research focused on environmental equity and groundwater resources in the American Southwest and the US-Mexico border. Dr. Laituri accepted a post doc at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and shifted to a lecturer position. She is a Fulbright Scholar and spent 2010 in Botswana. She is a Rachel Carson Fellow at the Environment and Society Unit at the Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich, where she conducted comparative research of major rivers. She is a Jefferson Science Fellow and was assigned to the Humanitarian Information Unit of the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues where she continues as the Principal Investigator on the Secondary Cities Initiative. She has been a Visiting Scientist at Harvard University affiliated with the Center for Geographic Analysis. Laituri is the Director of the Geospatial Centroid @ CSU (gis.colostate.edu) that provides information and support for GIS activities, education, and outreach at her institution and in Colorado. Laituri is a former National Science Foundation program officer in Geography and Spatial Sciences. Laituri’s research interests are diverse. She has worked with indigenous peoples throughout the world on issues related to natural resource management, disaster adaptation, and water resource issues using geographic information systems (GIS) that utilize cultural and eco-physical data in research models. A key focus is participatory GIS where indigenous peoples develop spatial information and maps essential for their management of their own resources.

Research Interest

Internet and geospatial technologies of disaster management, gender and water issues, and cross-cultural environmental histories of river basin management.