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Associate Professor and
Director of the Center for Natural & Technological Hazards
Office: Orson Spencer Hall (OSH), Room 211B
Phone: (801) 581-7930
Fax: (801) 581-8219


Email: cova@geog.utah.edu

  Education

 
Ph.D., Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999
M.A., Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1995
B.S., Computer and Information Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1986
  Research & Teaching Interests

 
Hazards and emergency management
Transportation and location science
Geographic information systems and science
  Courses

 
GEOG 1400 - Human Geography
GEOG 3140 - Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 3440/5440 - Geography of Disasters and Emergency Management
GEOG 6960 - Seminar: Transportation and hazards [overview]
GEOG 6960 - Seminar: Modeling vulnerability to environmental hazards [overview]
GEOG 6960 - Seminar: Spatial algorithms
  Publications

 
Kobayashi, T., Medina, R., and Cova, T.J. (in press) Visualizing diurnal change in urban areas for emergency management, Professional Geographer.
Cova, T.J., Drews, F.A., Siebeneck, L.K. and Musters, A. (2009) Protective actions in wildfires: evacuate or shelter-in-place? Natural Hazards Review, 10(4): 151-162.
Anguelova, Z., et al. (in press) Integrating fire behavior and pedestrian mobility models to assess potential risk to humans from wildfires within the US-Mexico border zone. Professional Geographer.
Pultar, E., Cova, T.J., Yuan, M., and Goodchild, M.F. (in press) EDGIS: a dynamic GIS based on space-time points. International Journal of Geographical Information Science.
Pultar, E., Raubal, M., Cova, T.J., and Goodchild, M.F. (2009) Dynamic GIS case studies: wildfire evacuation and volunteered geographic information, Transactions in GIS, 13: 85-104.
Cova, T.J., Miller, H.J., Beard, K., Frank, A.U., Goodchild, M.F., Eds. (2008) Geographic Information Science - 5th International Conference (GIScience 2008), Park City, Utah. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 5266, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. [Book site]
Siebeneck, L.K., and Cova, T.J. (2008) An assessment of the return-entry process for Hurricane Rita 2005. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 26(2): 91-111.
Goodchild, M.F., Yuan, M., and Cova, T.J. (2007) Towards a general theory of geographic representation in GIS. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. 21(3): 239-260.
Dennison, P.E., Cova, T.J., and Moritz, M.A. (2007) WUIVAC: a wildland-urban interface evacuation trigger model applied in strategic wildfire scenarios. Natural Hazards, 40, 181-199.
VanLooy, J. and Cova, T.J. (2007) GIS-based indices for comparing airline flight-path vulnerability to volcanoes. Professional Geographer, 59(1): 74-86.
Kim, T.H., and Cova, T.J. (2007) Tweening grammars: deformation rules for representing change between discrete geographic entities. Computers, Environment & Urban Systems, 31(3): 317-336.
Sutton, P.C., Cova, T.J. and Elvidge, C. (2006) Mapping "Exurbia" in the conterminous U.S. using nighttime satellite imagery. Geocarto International, 21(2):39-45.
Kim, T.H., Cova, T.J., and Brunelle, A. (2006) Exploratory map animation for post-event analysis of wildfire protective action recommendations. Natural Hazards Review, 7(1): 1-11.
Cova, T.J., Dennison, P.E., Kim, T.H., and Moritz, M.A. (2005) Setting wildfire evacuation trigger-points using fire spread modeling and GIS. Transactions in GIS, 9(4): 603-617.
Cova, T.J. (2005) Public safety in the urban-wildland interface: Should fire-prone communities have a maximum occupancy? Natural Hazards Review, 6(3): 99-108.
Cova, T.J., Sutton, P.C., and Theobald, D.M. (2004) Exurban change detection in fire-prone areas with nighttime satellite imagery. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 70(11): 1249-1257.
Cova, T.J., and Conger, S. (2004) Transportation hazards. in Handbook of Transportation Engineering, M. Kutz (ed.), McGraw Hill, New York, pp. 17.1-17.24.
Cova, T.J., and Johnson, J.P. (2003) A network flow model for lane-based evacuation routing. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 37(7): 579-604.
Cova, T.J., and Johnson, J.P. (2002) Microsimulation of neighborhood evacuations in the urban-wildland interface. Environment and Planning A, 34(12): 2211-2229. [Video]
Cova, T.J., and Goodchild, M.F. (2002) Extending geographical representation to include fields of spatial objects. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 16(6): 509-532. [Demos]
Cova, T.J., and Church, R.L. (2000) Contiguity constraints for single-region site search problems. Geographical Analysis, 32(4): 306-329.
Church, R.L., and Cova, T.J. (2000) Mapping evacuation risk on transportation networks using a spatial optimization model. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 8(1-6): 321-336.
Cova, T.J., and Church, R.L. (2000) Exploratory spatial optimization in site search: a neighborhood operator approach. Computers, Environment & Urban Systems, 21: 401-419.
Radke, J., Cova, T., Sheridan, M., Troy, A., Lan, M., and Johnson, R. (2000) Application challenges for GIScience: implications for research, education, and policy for risk assessment, emergency preparedness and response. URISA Journal, 12:15-30.
Cova, T.J. (1999) GIS in emergency management. In: Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Applications, and Management, P.A. Longley, M.F. Goodchild, D.J. Maguire, D.W. Rhind (eds.), John Wiley & Sons, New York, pp. 845-858.
Cova, T.J., and Church, R.L. (1997) Modelling community evacuation vulnerability using GIS. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 11(8): 763-784.
  Graduate students

 
Van Drimmelen, Marquessa (2009) Family gathering in emergencies: the 2007 Angora Wildfire. MA thesis, Department of Geography, University of Utah.
Siebeneck, Laura (2007) As assessment of the return-entry process for Hurricane Rita, 2005. MA thesis, Department of Geography, University of Utah. (2008 Jeanne X. Kasperson Award from the AAG Hazards Specialty Group).
Pultar, Eduardo (2007) GISED: a dynamic GIS based on space-time points. MA thesis, Department of Geography, University of Utah. (2007 Best student paper award from the AAG GIS Specialty Group).
Johnson, Justin (2007) Microsimulation of neighborhood-scale evacuations. MA thesis, Department of Geography, University of Utah.
Chang, Weilun (2004) An activity-based approach to modeling wildfire evacuations. MA thesis, Department of Geography, University of Utah.
  2003 SoCal Wildfire Evacuation Animations

 
Grand Prix and Old Fire Evacuations
Cedar and Paradise Fire Evacuations
  Outreach

 
Boxall, B. (2008) A Santa Barbara area canyon's residents are among many Californian's living in harm's way in fire-prone areas. Los Angeles Times, July 31st.
Welch, W.M. et al. (2007) 'Staggering' numbers flee among fear and uncertainty. USA Today, Oct. 24th.
Krasny, M. (2007) Angora Wildfire Panel Discussion , KQED Radio, San Francisco, June 27th.
Cova, T.J. (2006) Concerning Stonegate and Public Safety. North County Times, San Diego, California, Nov. 3.
Wimmer, N. (2004) Growing number of communities pose fire hazard. KSL Channel 5, Salt Lake City, July 22nd, Utah Light/Fire map.
Disaster News Network (2004) The face of evacuation procedures might be changing as a result of lessons learned from last year's fierce wildfires in California in regards to presentation at the Boulder Hazards Workshop in Colorado, July.
Perkins, S. (2004) Night space images show development, Science News, Week of April 3rd, 165 (14): 222 (regarding March 2004 AAG conference presentation in Philadelphia).
Keahey, J. (2003) Canyon fire trap feared. in Salt Lake Tribune, June 23rd (regarding 2002 Cova and Johnson E&P-A article above).
Cova, T.J. (2002) Like a bat out of hell: simulating wildfire evacuations in the urban interface, Wildland Firefighter Magazine, November, 24-29.
Cova, T.J. (2000) Wildfire evacuation. New York Times letter, June 6.
  Other Activities

 
Mentor, Enabling the next generation of hazards researchers (ENGHR)
Editorial Board, The Professional Geographer
Program Committee Chair, GIScience 2008
Director, Center for Natural and Technological Hazards (CNTH)
Past Chair, GIS Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers (AAG)
Campus Delegate, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS)