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Dr. Susan Cutter
University of South Carolina
Contact Information
Email Susan Cutter
Phone: (803) 777-1590
Fax: (803) 777-4972
Address:
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
Biography
Dr. Susan Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina and the Director of the University's Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute. She received her B.A. from California State University, Hayward and her M.A. and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of Chicago. Her primary research interests are in the area of vulnerability and resilience science-what makes people and the places where they live vulnerable to extreme events, how they prepare for and respond to extreme events, and how this vulnerability and resilience is measured, monitored, and assessed. She has authored or edited twelve books, more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
Dr. Cutter has also led post-event field studies of the role of geographic information technologies in rescue and relief operations in (September 11th World Trade Center attack) and studies of evacuation behavior from Three Mile Island (1979), Hurricane Floyd (1999), and the Graniteville, SC train derailment and chlorine spill (2005). Most recently (2006) she has led a Hurricane Katrina post-event field team to examine the geographic extent of storm surge inundation along the Mississippi and Alabama coastline and its relationship to the social vulnerability of communities. She has provided expert testimony to Congress on hazards and vulnerability and was a member of the US Army Corps of Engineers IPET team evaluating the social impacts of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System in response to Hurricane Katrina. She has authored a Trends and Outlook report for the US Army Corps of Engineers on Natural and Human-Induced Disasters and other Factors Affecting Future Emergency Response and Hazard Management.
Dr. Cutter serves on many national advisory boards and committees the National Research Council, the AAAS, the National Science Foundation, the Natural Hazards Center, and the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. She is a founding member and served on the Executive Committee of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) (2004-2008) (a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence focused on the social and behavioral sciences). Dr. Cutter was recently appointed an executive editor of Environment.
She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1999), and past President of the Association of American Geographers (2000). She is the past President of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) (2008). In 2006, Dr. Cutter was the recipient of the Decade of Behavior Research Award given by a multidisciplinary consortium of more than 50 national and international scientific organizations in the social and behavioral sciences.
