Many Tufts faculty and students are using GIS in their research and projects. Explore the different projects and publications throughout various disciplines and applications.
Dr. Bruce Hitchner and Research Technology Specialists are using remote sensing, GeoAI, and Machine Learning to reconstructing large scale Olive Oil and Agricultural Economy of North Africa in the Roman Empire.
One Health & Public Health Research
Tufts researchers widely use GIS in health research to study exposure and risk, the role of the environment in physical activity and health, and access to healthcare.
Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) project at Tufts University
C Bascom-Slack, R Masilamani, C Talmadge
A Project of the Center for Science Education
View the project online: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4f20b012a5b144ee95daa8e4b54672b7
“The Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) project at Tufts University is a powerful platform for student learning and scientific discovery that has potential to address the scientific challenges associated with environmental surveillance of Antibiotic Resistance (AR) and to educate tomorrow’s decision makers about the public health threat of AR and the biological concept of natural selection.”
Spatial access to buprenorphine-waivered prescribers in the HEALing communities study: Enhanced 2-step floating catchment area analyses in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Kentucky
S Shrestha, MR Lindstrom, D Harris, P Rock, S Srinivasan, JC Pustz, R Bayly, TJ Stopka
Published in Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment (2023): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.josat.2023.209077
“The opioid overdose epidemic continues to impact a large swath of the population in the US. Medications for opioid use disorders (MOUD) are an effective resource to combat the epidemic; however, there is limited research on MOUD treatment access that accounts for both supply of and demand for services. We aimed to examine access to buprenorphine prescribers in the HEALing Communities Study (HCS) Wave 2 communities in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Kentucky during 2021, and the association between buprenorphine access and opioid-related incidents, specifically fatal overdoses and opioid-related responses by emergency medical services (EMS).“
Relationships between places of residence, injury, and death: Spatial and statistical analysis of fatal opioid overdoses across Massachusetts
J Pustz, S Srinivasan, MR Larochelle, AY Walley, TJ Stopka
Published in Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology (2022): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2022.100541
“Understanding the factors associated with where people who use opioids live, where their fatal overdoses occur, and where deaths are recorded can improve our knowledge of local risk environments and inform intervention planning. Through geospatial analyses of death certificate data between 2015 and 2017, we found that a majority of opioid-involved fatal overdoses in Massachusetts occurred at home.”
Employment industry and opioid overdose risk: A pre- and post-COVID-19 comparison in Kentucky and Massachusetts 2018–2021
Sumeeta Srinivasan, Shikhar Shrestha, Daniel Harris, Olivia Lewis, Peter Rock, Anita Silwal, Jennifer Pustz, Sehun Oh, Gia Barboza-Salerno, Thomas J. Stopka
Published in Journal of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology (2025): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.josat.2023.209077
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the risk of opioid-related harm, and previous studies suggest a connection between opioid overdose risk and industry of employment. We used descriptive and spatial-statistical tests with opioid overdose data from the vital records offices of Kentucky and Massachusetts to examine opioid overdose rates by employment industry before and after COVID-19 emergency declarations. Both states had consistently high rates of opioid-related overdose mortality for individuals employed in the construction and arts, recreation, food services, and accommodation service industries. Additionally in both states, census tracts with a high percentage of renters and non-Hispanic Black residents were more likely to be located in fatal opioid-related overdose hotspots following the initial surge of COVID-19 cases. In Kentucky, census tracts with higher percentages of employment in the transportation and other services were more likely to be located in an overdose hotspot before and after the COVID-19 emergency declaration, while in Massachusetts the same was true for census tracts with high employment in manufacturing, agriculture, forest, and fisheries, and hunting.
Host population structure and rare dispersal events drive leptospirosis transmission patterns among Rattus norvegicus in Boston, Massachusetts, US
N. Stone, C. Hamond, J. Clegg, R. McDonough, R. Bourgeois, R. Ballard, N. Thornton, M. Nuttall, H. Hertzel, T. Anderson, R. Whealy, S. Timm, A.K. Roberts, V. Barragán, Phipatanakul, J. Leibler, H. Benson, A. Specht, R. White, K. LeCount, T. Furstenau, R. Galloway, N. Hill, J. Madison, i. Fofanov, T. Pearson, J. Sahl, J. Busch, Z. Weiner, J. Nally, D. Wagner, M. Rosenbaum
Published in bioRxiv (2024): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.12.598639v2
“Leptospirosis (caused by pathogenic bacteria in the genus Leptospira) is prevalent worldwide but more common in tropical and subtropical regions. The brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, is an important reservoir of leptospirosis in urban settings. We investigated leptospirosis among brown rats in Boston, Massachusetts and hypothesized that rat dispersal in this urban setting influences the movement, persistence, and diversity of Leptospira. We analyzed DNA from 328 rat kidney samples collected from 17 sites in Boston over a seven-year period (2016–2022); 59 rats representing 12 of 17 sites were positive for Leptospira.”
One map: Using geospatial analysis to understand lead exposure across humans, animals, and the environment in an urban US city
Tatyana J. Kalani , Adam South, Carolyn Talmadge , Jessica Leibler, Chris Whittier a, Marieke Rosenbaum
Published in Journal of One Health (2025): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100341
Environmental lead contamination negatively impacts human, animal, and ecosystem health, yet there is a lack of research in this area that incorporates a One Health framework – examining co-exposures among species through their shared environment. The purpose of this study was to integrate human and animal data with public soil lead levels to better understand lead exposure patterns across species in an urban US city. Over 200 soil samples were collected, analyzed for lead, and mapped in combination with other risk factors pulled from the literature to identify areas of highest risk. Human socio-demographic data, dog, and house sparrow density data were mapped to investigate the association between these variables and soil lead levels. Geospatial analysis software was used to visualize the geospatial distribution of soil lead levels and known risk factors for environmental lead contamination, and a block group risk score was calculated and mapped.
Environmental Science & Natural Resources GIS Research:
Tufts researchers are employing GIS and spatial techniques across enviornmental science and natural resources fields, whether identifying suitable agricultural areas, working with global climate models, identifying and classifying damage from earthquakes, studying land use change, or more.
A geospatial approach to identifying biophysically suitable areas for fruit and vegetable production in the United States
AC McCarthy, S Srinivasan, T Griffin, CJ Peters
Published in Agronomy Journal (2022): https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.21138
“In this project, we developed geospatial models to identify and quantify land suitable for producing F&V crops across the contiguous United States based on biophysical constraints. Suitability was based on key criteria related to land cover and use, topography, soil properties, and climate. We found tremendous potential to expand F&V production at the national level, identifying 333 million hectares of suitable land, 47% of which is currently used for agriculture.“
Challenging the universality of heatwave definitions: gridded temperature discrepancies across climate regions
EC de Perez, J Arrighi, J Marunye
Published in Climatic Change (2023): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03641-x
“As global studies of climate change depict increasingly dire outcomes of extreme heat, there is an urgent need to understand the appropriateness of heatwave defnitions and temperature datasets in diferent parts of the world. We carry out an intercomparison of the CHIRTS gridded station-satellite temperature dataset with three reanalysis products, ERA5, NCEP-DOE Reanalysis 2, and MERRA2, to assess biases in the absolute value of extreme heat events and the distribution of extreme events.”
Imaging Bioturbation in Supratidal Carbonates: Non-Invasive Field Techniques Enhance Neoichnological and Zoogeomorphological Research, San Salvador, The Bahamas
K Kopcznski, I Buynevich, HA Curran, J Caris, J Nyquist
Published in Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana (2017): https://scholarworks.smith.edu/geo_facpubs/51
“A case study in unconsolidated carbonates on San Salvador Island, The Bahamas, utilized high-frequency (800 MHz) georadar imaging to augment existing methodologies (burrow counts and measurements, casting) in brachyuran bioturbation research (Ocypode quadrata and Gecarcinus lateralis), and as part of a new dataset characterizing blue land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) burrows. Non-invasive techniques such as ground-penetrating radar (GPR) can complement traditional field surveys aimed at quantifying mesoscale bioturbation in modern settings. These methods can establish diagnostic features for tracemaker identification and refine existing ichnofacies models.“
Estimating biological capacity for grass-finished ruminant meat production in New England and New York
AM Thorn, MJ Baker, CJ Peters
Published in Agricultural Systems (2021): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.102958
“The Northeastern United States contributes a small share to national meat production. However, increasing interest in local food production and on-going challenges posed by drought and fire on Western rangelands give reason to believe that the importance of Northeastern grass-based ruminant meat could grow in the near future. Using an integrated modeling approach, the present study quantifies current and potential biological capacity for grass-based ruminant meat production in New York and New England”
Development of scenarios for land cover, population density, impervious cover, and conservation in New Hampshire, 2010–2100
AM Thorn, CP Wake, CD Grimm, CR Mitchell, MM Mineau, SV Ollinger
Publsihed in Ecology & Society (2017): https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09733-220419
“Future changes in ecosystem services will depend heavily on changes in land cover and land use, which, in turn, are shaped by human activities. Given the challenges of predicting long-term changes in human behaviors and activities, scenarios provide a framework for simulating the long-term consequences of land-cover change on ecosystem function. As input for process-based models of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem function, we developed scenarios for land cover, population density, and impervious cover for the state of New Hampshire for 2020–2100.”
Pixel-based classification method for earthquake-induced landslide mapping using remotely sensed imagery, geospatial data and temporal change information
A Asadi, LG Baise, M Koch, B Moaveni, S Chatterjee, Y Aimaiti
Published in Natural Hazards (2024): https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-06399-8
“A series of earthquakes occurred in Kumamoto, Japan, in April 2016, which caused numerous landslides. In this study, high-resolution pre-event and post-event optical imagery, plus bi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data are paired with geospatial data to train a pixel-based machine learning classification algorithm using logistic regression to identify landslides occurred because of the Kumamoto earthquakes.”
Urban Planning GIS Research:
In rapidly growing communities, local governments, planners, and citizens frequently call for policies to shape growth in a way that will reduce rates of increase in land consumption, vehicle miles traveled, energy demand, and pressure on water and air quality. Often the goals of various stakeholders within the metropolitan region will conflict. Planners use GIS as an important tool for understanding, visualizing, and quantifying current conditions and recent trends; exploring spatial relationships between transportation, land use, housing, and open space; and visualizing the metropolitan region’s future under different growth scenarios.
Demographic and Built Environment Predictors of Public Transportation Retention and Work-from-Home Changes in Small- to Medium-Sized Massachusetts Cities, 2011–2021
RM Shakespeare, S Srinivasan
Published in Sustainability (2024): https://doi.org/10.3390/su16198620
“Transportation uses substantial energy and is a significant household expense in the United States; public transportation and working from home present opportunities to reduce energy use and increase household affordability. However, during COVID-19, transportation systems reduced service, and nationwide, public transportation use has been declining. Focusing on six small-to-medium-sized “Gateway Cities” in Massachusetts—more affordable cities with lower-than-state-average median income and lower-than-state-average education—that have regional transit systems and are within Boston’s commuter rail area, we analyzed the changes in public transit ridership and work from home.”
Dining Out with Allergies: Examining Boston’s Allergy-Friendly Restaurant Landscape
RM Shakespeare
Published in Gamma Theta Epsilon’s Geography Bulletin (2022): https://www.gammathetaupsilon.org/the-geographical-bulletin/2020s/volume63-1/article2.pdf
“According to a recent national survey, about ten percent of American adults, estimated 26 million, are likely to have food allergies (Gupta, et al. 2019). Food allergies have many psychosocial outcomes for adults, including social isolation, anxiety, and loneliness. Framing restaurants as a site of social engagement, this article seeks to describe the restaurant landscape for adults with food allergies in Boston. Using online user reviews from TripAdvisor and AllergyEats to identify locations of restaurants with mostly positive allergy-related reviews, this paper uses GIS to assess the geographic accessibility of allergy-friendly restaurants for locations across Boston.”
Reductions in traffic-related black carbon and ultrafine particle number concentrations in an urban neighborhood during the COVID-19 pandemic
N Hudda, MC Simon, AP Patton, JL Durant
Published in Science of the Total Environment (2020): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140931
“We investigated changes in traffic-related air pollutant concentrations in an urban area during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in a mixed commercial-residential neighborhood in Somerville (MA, USA), where traffic is the dominant source of air pollution. Measurements were made between March 27 and May 14, 2020, coinciding with a dramatic reduction in traffic (71% drop in car and 46% drop in truck traffic) due to business shutdowns and a statewide stay-at-home advisory.”
A Bayesian updating framework for calibrating the hydrological parameters of road networks using taxi GPS data
X Kong, J Yang, K Xu, B Dong, S Jiang
Published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2023): https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3803-2023
“Hydrological parameters should pass through a careful calibration procedure before being used in a hydrological model that aids decision making. However, significant difficulty is encountered when applying existing calibration methods to regions in which runoff data are inadequate. To achieve accurate hydrological calibration for ungauged road networks, we propose a Bayesian updating framework that calibrates hydrological parameters based on taxi GPS data.”
Examining Passenger Vehicle Miles Traveled and Carbon Emissions in the Boston Metropolitan Area
T Aslanyan, S Jiang
Published in Urban Informatics and Future Cities (2021): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.06677
“With spatial analytic, econometric, and visualization tools, this book chapter investigates greenhouse gas emissions for the on road passenger vehicle transport sector in the Boston metropolitan area in 2014. It compares greenhouse gas emission estimations from both the production-based and consumption based perspectives with two large-scale administrative datasets the vehicle odometer readings (from individual vehicle annual inspection) and the road inventory data (containing roadsegment level geospatial and traffic information).
International Relations GIS Research:
Tufts researchers are at the forefront of humanitarian assistance and international development work and apply GIS to these important fields. Whether helping tell the stories of migrants, thinking about sustainable global economies, exploring international agriculture and food systems, or thinking about affordability, these researchers are pushing the boundaries of GIS work.
The Displacement Series
K Wilson, K Jacobsen
A project of the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Published online (2021): View the StoryMap
“Part of The Journey’s Project: a multimedia storytelling project examining the costs of survival for refugees as they traverse the planet and re-identify home.”
Enabling conditions for an equitable and
sustainable blue economy
AM Cisneros-Montemayor, M Moreno-Baez, G Reygondeau, …, Y Ota
Published in Nature (2021): http://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03327-3
“The future of the global ocean economy is currently envisioned as advancing towards a ‘blue economy’—socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable ocean industries. However, tensions exist within sustainable development approaches, arising from differing perspectives framed around natural capital or social equity. Here we show that there are stark differences in outlook on the capacity for establishing a blue economy, and on its potential outcomes, when social conditions and governance capacity—not just resource availability—are considered, and we highlight limits to establishing multiple overlapping industries.”
Seasonality of Acute Malnutrition in African Drylands: Evidence From 15 Years of SMART Surveys
A Venkat, A Marshak, H Young, EN Naumova
Published in Food and Nutrition Bulletin (2023): https://doi.org/10.1177/03795721231178344
“Reduction of wasting, or low weight-for-height, is a critical target for the Zero Hunger Sustainable Development Goal, yet robust evidence establishing continuous seasonal patterns of wasting is presently lacking. The current consensus of greatest hunger during the preharvest period is based on survey designs and analytical methods, which discretize time frame into preharvest/postharvest, dry/wet, or lean/plenty seasons. We present a spatiotemporally nuanced study of acute malnutrition seasonality in African drylands using a 15-year data set of Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transition surveys (n = 412,370). Climatological similarity was ensured by selecting subnational survey regions with 1 rainy season and by spatially matching each survey to aridity and livelihood zones.”
Cost and affordability of healthy diets across and within countries
A Herforth, Y Bai, A Venkat, K Mahrt, A Ebel, WA Masters
Published by the FAO online (2020): https://www.fao.org/agrifood-economics/publications/detail/en/c/1364162/
“Price and affordability are key barriers to accessing sufficient, safe, nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In this study, the least-cost items available in local markets are identified to estimate the cost of three diet types: energy sufficient, nutrient adequate, and healthy (meeting food-based dietary guidelines). For price and availability the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (ICP) dataset is used, which provides food prices in local currency units (LCU) for 680 foods and non-alcoholic beverages in 170 countries in 2017. In addition, country case studies are developed with national food price datasets in United Republic of Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Ghana and Myanmar.”
Modeling the potential impacts of improved monthly income on child stunting in India: a subnational geospatial perspective
S Kishore, T Thomas, H Sachdev, AV Kurpad, P Webb
Published in BMJ Open (2022): doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055098
“Approximately one-third of the world’s stunted (low height-for-age) preschool-aged children live in India. The success of interventions designed to tackle stunting appears to vary by location and depth of poverty. We developed small-area estimation models to assess the potential impact of increments in household income on stunting across the country. Two nationally representative cross-sectional datasets were used: India’s National Family Health Survey 4 (2015–2016) and the 68th round of the National Sample Survey on consumer expenditure. The two datasets were combined with statistical matching. Gaussian process regressions were used to perform geospatial modelling of ‘stunting’ controlling for household wealth and other covariates.”
Digital Humanities Research and Projects:
Tufts is a leader in the growing geospatial humanities field helping bring alive the stories of the marginalized and investigating questions of equity.
African American Trail Project
K Field, K Greenidge
A project of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University
Published online (2023): https://africanamericantrailproject.tufts.edu/
“The African American Trail Project is a collaborative public history initiative housed at Tufts University. Originally inspired by the scholarship of Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) and driven by faculty and student research, this project maps African American and African-descended public history sites across greater Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. The African American Trail Project aims to develop African American historical memory and intergenerational community, placing present-day struggles for racial justice in the context of greater Boston’s historic African American, Black Native, and diasporic communities.”
Police redistricting reforms and urban governance
D Gordon, A Davis-Pait
Published in Law & Policy (2022): https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12196
“Police redistricting reforms are surprisingly understudied. While many understand redistricting in other realms as a mechanism of social inclusion and exclusion, police redistricting is often overlooked as merely technocratic. We argue that, in fact, police redistricting reforms are substantively and theoretically important because they articulate urban policy amid the pressures of neoliberal governance. Redistricting defines the functions and activities of the police, responds to political and economic pressures, and redistributes resources across racial spaces. To illustrate, we analyze publicly available materials describing 43 police redistricting reforms in 35 major cities in the United States. We find in these reforms an enduring emphasis on the role of the police as emergency service providers. Urban austerity and growth politics inflect redistricting and impact the distribution of police service across the city. While redistricting can theoretically result in more equitable policing, it can also amplify racial inequities by triaging resources toward downtowns and predominantly white neighborhoods, at the expense of police response in communities of color.”
Activism under Fire: The Politics of Non-Violence in Rio de Janeiro’s Gang Territories
A book by Anjuli Fahlberg
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Published by Oxford University Press (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197519325.001.0001
“Rio de Janeiro’s favelas have become among the most well-known of Latin America’s neighborhoods under siege by armed drug gangs and invading militarized police. Since the 1970s, dangerous networks between drug traffickers and corrupt state actors have transformed these poor neighborhoods into sites of armed conflict and political repression, limiting residents’ ability to speak out against violence or demand their democratic rights. Despite these challenges, non-violent politics remains an integral element in Cidade de Deus, one of Rio’s most dangerous and famous favelas. Activism under Fire examines how local activists have adapted their mobilization efforts to this context, protesting against violence, making demands for their rights, and improving the neighborhood without directly endangering their lives.”
The Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG) Redistricting Lab
PI: Moon Duchin
Visit the lab website: https://mggg.org/
“The MGGG Redistricting Lab is a research group at the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, led by PI Moon Duchin, that grew out of an informal research collective called the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group. From 2018-2024, the Lab was based in the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, where we maintain an affiliation. Together with our close collaborators, we have expertise and interests spanning mathematics (geometry, topology, discrete math, dynamics), algorithms, software development, geography, science studies, law, and policy. We research data science interventions – better mechanisms, better models, better metrics – for democracy.”
Engineering GIS Research:
Tufts engineers are using GIS to prototype new sensors for air pollution, investigate green energy solutions, think about flood modeling, and more.
Evaluating the Performance of Low-Cost PM2.5 Sensors in Mobile Settings
P deSouza, A Wang, Y Machida, T Duhl, S Mora, P Kumar, R Kahn, C Ratti, JL Durant, N Hudda
Published in Environmntal Science & Technology (2023): https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c04843
“Low-cost sensors (LCSs) for measuring air pollution areincreasingly being deployed in mobile applications, but questions concerningthe quality of the measurements remain unanswered. For example, what is thebest way to correct LCS data in a mobile setting? Which factors mostsignificantly contribute to differences between mobile LCS data and those ofhigher-quality instruments? Can data from LCSs be used to identify hotspotsand generate generalizable pollutant concentration maps? To help address thesequestions, we deployed low-cost PM2.5 sensors (Alphasense OPC-N3) and aresearch-grade instrument (TSI DustTrak) in a mobile laboratory in Boston, MA, USA.
Hurricane risk assessment of offshore wind turbines
ST Hallowell, AT Myers, SR Arwade, W Pang, P Rawal, EM Hines, …, CM Fontana
Published in Renewable Energy (2018): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2018.02.090
“A barrier to the development of the offshore wind resource along the U.S. Atlantic coast is a lack of quantitative measures of the risk to offshore wind turbines (OWTs) from hurricanes. The research presented in this paper quantifies the risk of failure of OWTs to hurricane-induced wind and waves by developing and implementing a risk assessment framework that is adapted from a well-established framework in performance-based earthquake engineering. Both frameworks involve the convolution of hazard intensity measures (IMs) with engineering demand parameters (EDPs) and damage measures (DMs) to estimate probabilities of damage or failure. The adapted framework in this study is implemented and applied to a hypothetical scenario wherein portions of nine existing Wind Farm Areas (WFAs), spanning the U.S. Atlantic coast, are populated with ∼7000 5 MW OWTs supported by monopiles.”
A data-driven global flood forecasting system for medium to large rivers
W Palash, AS Akanda, S Islam
Published in Scientific Reports (2024): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-59145-w
“Losses from catastrophic foods are driving intense eforts to increase Losses from catastrophic floods are driving intense efforts to increase preparedness and improve response to disastrous flood events by providing early warnings. Yet accurate flood forecasting remains a challenge due to uncertainty in modeling, calibrating, and validating a useful early warning system. This paper presents the Requisitely Simple (ReqSim) flood forecasting system that includes key variables and processes of basin hydrology and atmospheric forcing in a data-driven modeling framework.”