Dr Gabrielle Thongs

LECTURER

Ext. 82700
Email: Gabrielle.Thongs@sta.uwi.edu

Background

Dr. Gabrielle Thongs is a lecturer at the Department of Geography, where she has been a faculty member since 2017. During this time, she has lectured on a variety of subjects, including but not limited to the natural hazards, urban geography, GIS modelling and climate change adaptation. In addition to a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Surveying and Land Information, she holds an M.Sc. in Planning and Development as well as several certificates in project management and climate change mitigation. Dr. Thongs has authored several publications, successfully led numerous workshops throughout the Caribbean, and taken part in a wide range of research initiatives, namely partnerships with the USAID, UNDP, FAO, CDEMA, and UNDRR. She is also currently the Project Lead for the Clara Lionel Foundation, UCLA, and the Office of Global Affairs and Sustainable Futures project that focuses on building sustainable community resilience.


Research

Along these arcs of her disaster risk management and climate change adaptation research, Dr Thongs was recently appointed as the Lead of The UWI Data for Risk-informed Resilience Building Technical Working Group (DRRB-TWG), member of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for The UWI Disaster Risk Reduction Centre (DRRC), and a member of the Community Resilience Framework (CRF) Committee for CDEMA. She remains the Deputy Chair of the Alumni Gift Giving Committee and a member of the Campus Committee for Community Engagement.
Her ongoing research interests lie in a wide range of thematic areas, including Caribbean case studies in urban resilience, disaster risk reduction, nature-based solutions, and geospatial modelling.


Publications

Selected Publications

Kyle Alexander and Gabrielle Thongs. 2023. Designing a Drought Monitoring System for Caribbean SIDS. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=123290

Gabrielle Thongs. The impact of COVID-19 on Trinidad and Tobago. 2022. European Urban Research Association.
https://eura.org/tag/gabrielle-thongs/

Gahman L, Gabrielle Thongs, Adaeze Greenidge. Disaster, Debt, and 'Underdevelopment': The Cunning of Colonial-Capitalism in the Caribbean. Development (Rome). 2021;64(1-2):112-118. doi: 10.1057/s41301-021-00282-4 . Epub 2021 Mar 17. PMID: 33753966; PMCID: PMC7968552.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7968552/

Thongs, Gabrielle and Kerri Griffith. June 2020. Building Resilient Caribbean Small-Island Developing States through Community-Based Disaster Risk Perceptions. Journal of Caribbean Environmental Sciences and Renewable Energy.
https://cesarejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/QuikEZ_Thongs_etal_...

Gahman, Levi and Gabrielle Thongs. 2020. Colonialism, Climate Change, and the Caribbean: A Political Ecology of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12369

Thongs, Gabrielle and Kerri Griffith. 2019. Developing Urban Resilience through the Evaluation of Landslide Causative Factors. Caribbean Urban Forum Conference.
http://bluespacecaribbean.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Thongs-and-Grif...

Thongs, Gabrielle. 2019. Integrating Risk Perceptions into Flood Risk Management - Trinidad Case study. Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards. Springer International Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-019-03720-2

Jeremy Collymore, Barbara Carby, Peter Rees-Gildea and Gabrielle Thongs. 2017. Rapid Review of the Regional Response in the Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Prepared for the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).
https://www.cdema.org/Rapid_Review_of_the_Regional_Response_-_Irma_and_M...

Levi Gahman and Gabrielle Thongs. 2017. In the Caribbean, colonialism and inequality mean hurricanes hit harder. The Conversation UK.
https://theconversation.com/in-the-caribbean-colonialism-and-inequality-...

Flood Susceptibility Map of Trinidad,
Flood Risk Map of Trinidad,
Landslide Susceptibility Map of Trinidad,
Landslide Multi- Risk Map of Trinidad.
Published by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), Trinidad, 2016.
http://www.odpm.gov.tt/node/318


Teaching

GEOG 2010: Geographical Information Systems          2017 to 2022
GEOG 3113: Remote Sensing and GIS              2016 to 2022
GEOG 3111: Natural Hazards                   2017 to 2021
GEOG 2016: Introduction to Urban Geography          2016 to present
GEOG 3305: Planning, Development & Sustainability         2017 to present
GEOG 3117: Environmental Modelling with GIS          2019 to present
GEOG 2018: Geography Residential Field School         2019 to present
GEOG 3501: Natural Hazards and Disasters          2022 to present
GEOG 3116: Geographies of the Caribbean           2023 to present


Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SD Goal 1: No Poverty
SD Goal 5: Gender Equality
SD Goal 10: Reduced Inequality
SD Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
SD Goal 13: Climate Action
SD Goal 15: Life on Land
SD Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals

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