Dr. Kevin Ash
Assistant Professor
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4231-2112
352-294-6956
Affiliate Member:
Florida Climate Institute
Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience
School of Natural Resources & Environment
Focus Areas
- Focus Area 1: Earth System Science
- Focus Area 5: Catastrophes, Conservation, and Conflict
- Focus Area 6: Sustainability & Global Environmental Change
- Focus Area 7: Geospatial Analysis & Techniques
Research Statement:
I am a human-environment geographer, and my research areas are in environmental hazards and actionable earth system science. Together with Dr. Katy Serafin, I co-lead the Climate Risk and Storm Hazards (CRASH) Lab at the University of Florida. The CRASH Lab research group focuses on risk, vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation for weather and climate hazards and environmental change. We converge physical and human geographic theories and methods to study human-environment interactions, emphasizing risk assessment and communication, decision-support, and policy implications. Our projects focus primarily on locations that experience flood and wind hazards associated with tropical and mid-latitude cyclones, severe thunderstorms, extreme precipitation and streamflow events, and sea level rise.
Recent Courses
My teaching responsibilities are in hazards geography, GIS, geospatial analysis, and GeoAI. In my GIS courses, I teach students how to analyze both socioeconomic and physical geospatial data using ArcGIS Pro, RStudio, and GeoDa. My courses in hazards geography cover key topics such as vulnerability, resilience, risk perception, and decision-making, and include data driven assignments as well.
- GIS 4324/6325 GIS Analysis of Hazard Vulnerability
- GEO 4034/5349 Weather, Climate, & Society
- GEO 2006 Natural Hazards Geography (Gen Ed International & Social Science)
- GIS 4500/5505 Population GIS
Recent Funded Projects
- 2021–2024, A Geospatial Awareness Framework for Weather Warning Communication and Decision Support. Principal Investigator (PI). Funded by the Early Career Faculty Innovators Program, NSF NCAR/UCAR.
- 2023–2024, Composite Red Tide Vulnerability Index (CRTVI): Assessing and communicating socio-economic vulnerability of coastal communities to Red Tide in Florida. Co-PI with UF PI Dr. Christa Court. Funded by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
- 2020–2021, Tornado Sheltering Perceptions and Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic. PI, Funded by NOAA.
- 2017–2020, Tornadoes and Mobile Homes: An Inter-science Approach to Reducing Vulnerabilities and Improving Capacities for the Southeast’s Most Susceptible Population. UF PI, project Co-PI with PI Dr. Stephen Strader (Villanova Univ.). Funded by NOAA.
Recent Publications
Saba, J.A., C.L. Williams, M.E. Egnoto, S.M. Strader, K. Klockow-McClain, and K.D. Ash, 2024. Factors that influenced preferences regarding use of public and private tornado shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 109, 104580.
Qin, C., S. Joslyn, S. Savelli, J. Demuth, R. Morss, and K. Ash, 2024. The Impact of Probabilistic Tornado Warnings on Risk Perceptions and Responses, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 30(1), 206–239.
Seeteram, N.A., K. Ash, B.F. Sanders, J.E. Schubert, and K.J. Mach, 2023. Modes of climate mobility under sea-level rise, Environmental Research Letters, 18, 114015.
Saunders, M.E., K.D. Ash, J.M. Collins, and R.E. Morss, 2023. Construal of Situational Risk and Outcomes—Exploring the Use of Weather Radar Displays with Residents of the Tampa Bay Region, Weather, Climate, and Society, 15(1), 211–226.
Clarke, K., K. Ash, E.S. Coker, T. Sabo-Attwood, and E. Bainomugisha, A Social Vulnerability Index for Air Pollution and its Spatially Varying Relationship to PM2.5 in Uganda, Atmosphere, 13, 1169.
Demuth, J.L, J. Vickery, H. Lazrus, J. Henderson, R.E. Morss, and K.D. Ash, 2022. Rethinking Warning Compliance and Complacency by Examining how People Manage Risk and Vulnerability during Real-world Tornado Threats, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103(6), E1553–E1572.
Yang, E., J. Kim, L. Pennington-Gray, and K. Ash, 2021. Does Tourism Matter in Measuring Community Resilience? Annals of Tourism Research, 89, 103222.
Ash, K.D., M.J. Egnoto, S.M. Strader, W.S. Ashley, D.B. Roueche, K.E. Klockow-McClain, D. Caplen, and M. Dickerson, 2020. Structural Forces: Perception and Vulnerability Factors for Tornado Sheltering Within Mobile and Manufactured Housing in Alabama and Mississippi, Weather, Climate, and Society, 12(3), 453–472.
Strader, S., K. Ash, E. Wagner, and C. Sherrod, 2019. Mobile Home Resident Evacuation Vulnerability and Emergency Medical Service Access during Tornado Events in the Southeast United States, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 38, 101210.
Educational Background
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Advanced Study Program, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), 2017–2018
- Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, 2015–2017
- PhD in Geography, University of South Carolina, 2015
- M.S. in Geography, University of Florida, 2010
- B.A. in Geography, University of Oklahoma, 2004
Current Graduate Students
Recent Graduate Students