The chapter from your book is matched with a journal paper that focused on GIS for emergency management situations that include preparedness components. Your written deliverable for this week’s lesson (beyond what you wrote for the class participation section) is to produce a brief (no more than 400 words) critical assessment of the paper by Lochhead and Hedley. The critical assessment should begin with a one-two sentence summary of the authors’ goals in the project reported. Then, in 2-4 paragraphs, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work reported. Consider the following issues:
- the most important contribution that the paper makes to understanding the role of geospatial data and approaches in emergency management (what do we know now that we did not know before this work?);
- critical aspects of the methods applied and/or decisions made about those methods that make the work something that others should emulate (e.g., things that they considered that, if they had been ignored, would make the conclusions unreliable or invalid);
- flaws that you see in the work reported (these might be in methods developed, in the way they were applied, or in the interpretations that the authors make about the applicability of their results).
Submission Instructions
Please name your document using the following as an example: L4_assign1_firstinitialLastName.doc
Submit your assignment to the Lesson 4 Writing Assignment (L4) Dropbox. See the Course Calendar for specific due dates.
Grading Criteria
For this assignment, I will assign grades with the following rubric. It is worth 4% of your total course grade and will be graded out of 20 points.
Criteria | Description | Possible Points |
---|---|---|
Content and Impact | You make strong and logical arguments and provide analytical insights. Ideas are well organized, clearly communicated and relevant to the prompt. All criteria are accurately addressed. Supporting details are shared, elaborated upon and demonstrate understanding. Examples are provided, and your post includes images or other multimedia that support content. | 15 |
Clarity and Mechanics | Evidence of editing and proofreading are evident. Writing is engaging and well-structured with excellent transitions between sentences and paragraphs. Concepts are integrated in an original manner. | 5 |