Christopher Burton headshot
Christopher Burton
Department of Geosciences
Affiliate Professor

Research Areas: Human-environmental interactions, natural hazards and disasters, social vulnerability, disaster resilience, modeling risk and vulnerability, GIS, geospatial analysis, global environmental change related hazards.

Address: 2050 Beard Eaves Coliseum
Auburn, AL 36849

Email: cgburton@auburn.edu


Education
Ph.D., Geography, University of South Carolina
2012
M.S., Geography, University of South Carolina
2007
B.S., Geography, California State University, Sacramento
2005


Professional Employment
Assistant Professor, Auburn University
2016 - 2020
Teaching Faculty, Instituto Universitario di Studi Superiori, Pavia, Italy
2012 - 2016
Senior Scientist, Social Vulnerability and Integrated Risk Coordinator, Global Earthquake Model
2011 - 2016


Research and Teaching Interests

Dr. Christopher Burton is a geographer interested in the application of geospatial analysis and modeling techniques to human-environmental interactions. Dr. Burton's interests include the development of methods and metrics that are needed to evaluate baseline conditions for natural hazards vulnerability and resilience to better understand the potential for differential hazard impacts and the ability of populations to recover from damaging hazard events. Dr. Burton’s methods include spatial analysis, data mining, GIS-based modeling, and the integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis. His academic appointment is part of Auburn’s interdisciplinary cluster program in Climate, Human, and Earth System Sciences (CHESS) that is supported by the College of Science and Mathematics, College of Engineering, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, College of Agriculture, and College of Liberal Arts.


Selected Publications

  1. Burton C.G. and Silva V. (2016). Assessing Integrated Earthquake Risk in OpenQuake with an Application to Mainland Portugal. Earthquake Spectra, 32(3): 1383-1403.
  2. Rufat, S., Tate, E. C., Burton C.G. and Sayeed Maroof, A. (2015). Social Vulnerability to Floods: Review of Case Studies and Implications for Measurement. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 14(4): 470–486.
  3. Burton C.G. (2015). A Validation of Metrics for Community Resilience to Natural Hazards and Disasters using the Recovery from Hurricane Katrina as a Case Study. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 150 (1): 67–86.
  4. Burton, C.G., Mitchell, J, T. and Cutter, S.L. (2011). Evaluating Post Katrina Recovery in Mississippi with Repeat Photography. Disasters, 35(3): 488-509.
  5. Cutter, S.L., Burton, C.G. and Emrich, C. (2010). Disaster Resilience Indicators for Benchmarking Baseline Conditions. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 7(1): 1-22.






Last updated: 01/31/2022