Ethical Dilemmas With Landslide Susceptibility
Basic Ethical Procedures
As with any tool these maps and processes can be used in both good and bad ways. Therefore it is important to understand the ethical issues that may arise from our projects. Hopefully to either aviod or minimalize these issues. Unfortunately, sometimes there are things out of your control that affect people not because you were malitious, but do to others using your research in new ways you could never have dreamed of.
As with all things intent, explination, and permission are key factors in any project. Your intent should be to benifit your area instead of negatively impact them in any way shape or form. To make that intent a reality there are percautions that one should take. These include informing people in the study area what you are intending to do and getting feedback from them. Informing them of EVERYTHING you intend to do to gather information and how that information will be used.
Geoethics
Geoethics deals with the ethical, social, and cultural issues that arise out of any sort of study of the Earth’s systems. These could vary from politics, philosophy, geology, or GIS as these all change how we view or use the Earth’s resources either physically or socially. Since our job is to produce a map that is designed to change how people view the area around them, with the aim to specifically warn them about potential landslide hazards, our process falls under geoethics.
What Issues Can Arise From Our Project?
Our project deals with the sensitive issue of land, which is mash-up of economic, political, social, and geographical issues. If we create a model that perdicts that certain landscapes are more susceptible to landslides, it does help better educate those around the area about the dangers, but also opens the doors to other practiices. If cerrtain companies or governmental agencies know that your land is in a susceptible area, there may be certain things that happen like insurance prices go up or taxes may be edited. In addition, the land’s worth may plummet fairly quickly making those people who live there less likely to move or sell their house. Or you could have certain people buy up the cheap land to create cheap apartments that may be not designed to withstand landslides.
The Main crux of the issue is that this information once produced and shared cannot be forgotten and humans will react to it in many different ways. Although most of these examples are were all crafted out of my head, they do happen. The ones that I will focus on in this project is the economic disparity that could be created due to this landslide model. If someone knows an area to be more dangerous it is more likely that those that can will move away, leaving those who cannot afford to move. Or due to the danger it creates cheap land that is converted to cheap apartments, which intices those in that price range to move there. Thus creating a location that prioritizes those will little economic power in an area that is dangerous.
There are also oppertunites for pubilc saftey with these maps, but it is imperative that we think about this as a worst case senario. Dealing with ethical issues means that you should consider every avenue that this could impact others, the worst case senario allows you to plan for those problems. Yes there are oppertunities for great good from the project, just be aware of the great suffering it could cause.