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Chandler, whose father was a photo engraver, studied
these tools as a master’s degree student in TC’s Math,
Science & Technology Department, and he teaches a
course at the College on geospatial technologies. For light
reading, he still absorbs books like The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information, by the political scientist and statistician
Edward Tufte. But he came to his present job via
other interests, as well. While earning a second degree
at the College in Social Studies and Education, he coauthored
a chapter in TC’s nationally acclaimed “Teaching
The Levees” curriculum, which explores civic issues raised
by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Titled “A Sense of
Place, a Sense of Home: Using Geography to Understand
the Levees Catastrophe,” the chapter takes as its starting
point the comment made not long after Katrina by then-
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that “it looks like a
lot of that place could be bulldozed.” It poses the central
question, “Given New Orleans’ geography and history of
neglect of its infrastructure and natural resources, should
the city be rebuilt? And if so, who gets to decide?” In one
exercise, students are provided with an actual Army Corps
of Engineers memo in which the Bush Administration
is cited for insufficiently funding the completion of flood
protection for New Orleans. In another, they grapple with
whether American citizens can be accorded refugee status
in their own country.
Americans have the
expectation that an ambulance
will come within a three-day
period, but it may not come for
three weeks or at all.
Such questions shape Chandler’s current work. Like his
boss, NCDP founding Director Irwin Redlener, Chandler
is particularly concerned with protecting the most vulnerable
populations—children, the very poor and the elderly
—who often face increased risk simply by virtue of where
they live. New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, home to the city’s
poorest citizens, is also in the most low-lying area, making
it a prime target for flooding. In Haiti, the shanty
towns—densely packed with loosely constructed, makeshift
structures—were a death trap waiting to happen. And a
cholera outbreak
occurred after
the earthquake
primarily
because most
of the nation’s
population
lack access to
any kind of
health care services
(and also,
IT CAN HAPPEN HERe Above: The
1918 influenza ward at Camp Funston,
it seems, because Kansas. Bottom: Aerial view of New
of a new strain Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
of the disease
unwittingly brought in by foreign relief workers).
Yet for all the deaths and damage wrought by violent
disasters, Chandler believes that infectious disease—arising
in the wake of these events or as epidemics triggered by
other factors—may pose the greatest threat.
“The world has seen an enormous population increase
over a very short period—there will be nine billion people
on the planet by 2050,” he says. “More and more people
are migrating from the developing to the developed world,
and vice versa, which is accelerating the spread of microbes.
There’s increased urbanization into previously rural areas.
And there are growing concerns about climate change and
how that will impact the breeding patterns of various types
of rodents and insects that carry disease.”
Again, societal inequities increase the threat to the
most vulnerable populations at risk—but they threaten
everyone else, too.
“When any segment of the population goes untreated,
everyone is endangered,” Chandler says. “During the H1N1
outbreak in the United States two years ago, many undocumented
workers were afraid to go to health care facilities
46 T C T O D A Y l s p r i n g 2 0 1 1
Photo (t0p) courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine;
PHOTO (bottom) BY US Army Corps of Engineers