Gilbert F. White - Scholarly Contributions

Scholarly Contributions

White's main contributions to society and to scholarship have been classified by Kates (2011) as follows:

• How to bring safe water to all the world’s people as a human right
• How to reduce significantly the global toll of hazard deaths and damages
• How to facilitate peace, through joint water development and management
• How to make geography (in particular) and science (in general) more useful to the world
• How to enable people to coexist with nature and develop sustainably.

Some of White's most notable work involved the identification and classification of adjustment mechanisms for flooding in the United States, perceptions of natural hazards, and choice of natural hazard adjustments (Hinshaw, 2006). White identified adjustments to flooding as being either structural or non-structural. He advocated, where feasible, adaptation to or accommodation of flood hazards rather than the "structural" solutions (dams, levees, and floodwalls, for example) that dominated policy in the early 20th century. Structural adjustments, developed by engineers, are designed to modify flooding hazards so that humans are protected and can continue to live in areas that are periodically subject to flooding (floodplains). White's non-structural adjustments consist of arrangements imposed by a governing body (local, regional, or national) to restrict the use of floodplains, or flexible human adjustments to flood risk that do not involve substantial investment in flood controls (Tobin and Montz, 1997).

In his influential dissertation entitled "Human adjustment to floods," published in 1945 by the University of Chicago Department of Geography, White argued that an overreliance on structural works in the United States had actually increased damage by flooding, rather than decreasing them. He argued famously in this work – deemed by several commentators to be the most important contribution made by a geographer in 20th-century North America (Hinshaw 2006, Kates 2007) – that "Floods are an act of God, but flood losses are largely an act of man". Public confidence in structural works increased occupance of, and building on floodplains. Design standards are sometimes inappropriate, and overconfidence develops, resulting in worse disasters if a flood breaches defences. A recent and relevant example of the impacts of undue confidence in structural works can be seen in Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans, during the summer of 2005. Historically, at least in the USA, works were built to certain design specifications (for example, the 100-year flood, or 1% flood). In instances where the design specifications were exceeded (in the case of a 150-year flood, etc.), they failed, thus causing catastrophic loss in overdeveloped floodplains (White et al., 1958).

White worked under President Johnson in committees that advised the establishment of the National Flood Insurance Policy – although he was not happy when his cautions were ignored and the NFIP was rolled out too quickly.

White also made major contributions to the human occupance of arid lands and the management problems of such settlements, campaigned on the dangers of nuclear weapons, and sat on many committees dealing with water management in developing countries. He oversaw informal brokering of water management conflicts in the Middle East.

Gilbert F. White, along with his former students and colleagues including Robert Kates and Ian Burton, have become some of the most influential scholars of natural and technological hazards.