Dr. Kyle Buck is a lecturer in RSENR and came to UVM from the EPA’s Office of Research and Development where he spent 10 years working on projects ranging from national scale index development to community resilience assessments. His recent research focuses on measuring change in community resilience to environmental hazards using household accessibility and community resource quality. He is the developer of CHAPPIE (Community Hazardscape and Amenity Placement in Provisioning of Improved Endpoints), a spatially explicit framework that goes beyond hazard risk assessment to measure whether communities have resources such as healthcare, schools, emergency infrastructure, and other essential amenities in place to withstand and recover from environmental stressors.
Dr. Buck’s GIS expertise centers on spatial analysis, hazard and resilience modeling, and translating research into accessible planning tools. He is currently validating and operationalizing CHAPPIE through case studies in rural Vermont, working toward a data pipeline that will make the framework usable by regional, state, and local planners.
He enjoys mentoring students on applied projects involving hazard mapping, community resilience, environmental planning, and spatial analysis for public infrastructure or amenity access, particularly projects that bridge research methods with real-world decision-making tools.