Browsing by Author "Li, Qiuxi"
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Item Integrating drones, participatory mapping and GIS to enhance resiliency for remote villages(Transactions in GIS, 2021-12-15) Li, Qiuxi; Deliberty, TracyIndigenous communities in developing regions are impacted by frequent disasters and the erosion of their culture with the trend of modernization. Additionally, their efforts to reduce risk have been hampered by the fact that these communities lack a sufficiently detailed map of their territories. In the absence of professional surveying instruments and costly high-resolution satellite imagery, this study uses drone-captured imagery, participatory methods, and GIS to produce the first publicly accessible infrastructure and resource data set for indigenous communities in southwest China. The resulting maps enable the data-poor indigenous communities to be aware of their housing fire risk, historical building preservation status, and potential economic resources such as tourist attractions. The maps created are expected to build resiliency in these communities which is of significance to many hard-to-reach communities around the world for disaster prevention, economic planning, and cultural preservation.Item The reconstruction of the Sichuan earthquake: fieldwork observation and examination of the news coverage of the Qiang ethnic group(University of Delaware, 2017) Li, QiuxiThe massive earthquake struck the southwest of China leaving more than 87,000 people dead and millions of homeless. Many of the victims are Qiang, an ethnic minority group in China. In the years since the catastrophe, the Chinese government has undertaken the enormous task of rebuilding homes, infrastructure, industries as well as restoring ethnic culture. Eight years after the earthquake, the author revisited several sites in the quake zone, focusing on the reconstruction work, lives of survivors, and the impacts on Qiang culture. Through comparing the fieldwork observation with media reports, this study aims to unfold a rich image of the lives of people in these reconstructed sites. As a majority of the news coverage focuses on positive coverage of the reconstruction work, the fieldwork result indicated that these affected sites varied on their economic statuses. Moreover, tourism has played a critical role in the economic recovery in these sites. Stimulated by the demand of tourism, places that retain the purest ethnic culture pay more attention to maintain their heritage and cultural practices; while communities assimilated into the majority culture have witnessed a revival of ethnicity as a new source of income. Furthermore, the catastrophe is neither the main cause of rural-urban migration among Qiang people, nor the dying out of the intangible culture of Qiang. It is more likely to be an accelerator of cultural integration process that is already underway in the context of modernization and urbanization. The earthquake, in fact, called unprecedented attention to the endangered Qiang culture and brought an amplified level of respect to the Qiang people.Item Three essays on enhancing resiliency for indigenous communities in China(University of Delaware, 2021) Li, QiuxiWith the widespread use of the idea of resilience across disciplines, it has become a buzzword in today’s world and the meaning has constantly been expanded and updated. Based on the theoretical framework of resilience, this dissertation adopts multiple methodologies in three essays to discuss the enhancement of resilience for China’s indigenous communities that are data-lacking, disaster-prone, poverty-stricken, and whose cultural heritage is at risk. ☐ The first essay uses drone imagery coupled with participatory GIS, to create a series of maps for remote indigenous communities to enhance their disaster, cultural and economic resilience. The study highlights the importance of local residents’ participation in constructing maps and building resiliency. The resulting maps inform members of the communities about their housing fire risk, the preservation status of traditional buildings, as well as tourism assets with historical value. ☐ The second essay combines surveys, interviews, and field observation to investigate the status of traditional villages in Guizhou, China, and how people perceive the competing betterment of cultural preservation, modernization, and disaster risks. The results indicate that the encroaching modernization has changed the cultural landscape of many historically significant villages in this region, and disasters play a catalyst role in accelerating this process. While the desire for a modernized lifestyle has become a prevailing trend among indigenous people, this study calls for a more open-minded and inclusive view of cultural preservation and indigenous people’s rights. ☐ The third essay adopts a revised Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) survey instrument to explore if and to what extent individuals in different communities perceive disaster risk and community resilience differently. The results show that communities with the Traditional Village title are more resilient than those who are not, and the biggest difference between the two groups of villages is the resource availability. However, regardless of the title, indigenous villages in this region are generally facing the difficulty of no successors in the future under the impact of drastic social change. ☐ Throughout the dissertation, I argue that the sustainability of indigenous societies is facing great challenges under the influence of disasters and modernization. It is hoped that more attention can be paid to the transformation and development of indigenous communities, and the term resilience can be translated from a buzzword to actions.