Spatial University Symposium

Wednesday, April 12, 2023 - 5:00 to 8:15 pm

On Wednesday, April 12, 2023, the University of Redlands celebrates spatial learning, research, and community service conducted by students, faculty, administrators, and campus programs. Join us in the Casa Loma Room on the University of Redlands campus or via LIVESTREAM for the following events! 

Register to Attend Virtually by Livestream

Registration is not required for the in-person event. Use the link, above, to register for the symposium livestream.

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2023 Agenda (All Times PDT)

5:00-6:30 PM: Reception and Poster and Story Map Showcase

View the 2023 posters and StoryMaps. Vote for your favorite!

5:30-6:30 PM: Lightning Talks by Students, Faculty, Administrators, and Alumni

Mapping Environmental Justice: Students Map LA Warehouses for Air Quality Policy. Dr. Daniel Klooster, Professor of Environmental Studies

With support from the Center for Spatial Studies, Professor Klooster developed a mapping exercise to support learning in an undergraduate Environmental Justice class. Working with a local environmental organization we used ESRI’s Social Analyst, enhanced with additional environmental data and the locations of warehouses, to map the environmental justice implications of warehouses, which are an indirect source of air pollution from truck and automobile emissions. Students applied an academic framework to make claims about the distribution of warehouses, learned to use Social Analyst, and used it to map correlations of social variables, environmental variables, and warehouse locations. Resulting maps informed debates about an Air Quality Management District proposed regulation. Student quotes and maps based on this work appeared in local and international news outlets, including the Guardian and National Public Radio.

An Innovative GIS Solution for the Hotel Industry. Tiffany Keller, 2023, School of Business and Society

The hotel industry generates nearly $1 trillion in annual revenue globally. Today, a huge part of the industry’s success can be attributed to embracing and implementing information technology as part of their overall business strategy. Hotels currently use an enterprise approach, with the help of Enterprise Resource Planning software and Decision Support Systems. These track customer’s preferences gaining insight into their typical stay which in turn increases retention and loyalty. This is an ideal foundation for my proposed GIS solution. The idea is to create maps using GIS technology and embed into hotels existing platforms, enable guests to use location intelligence to improve their stay, and help hotels gather enhanced data to improve guests’ experience. We pair AGOL with customer loyalty programs.

Mapping the Green Books. Dr. Kathy Feeley, Interim CAS Dean, Professor of History; Dr. John Glover, Professor, Department of History; Lisa Benvenuti, Spatial Research Manager, Center for Spatial Studies

After having transcribed 24 (1937 - 1966) Green Books, with over 68,000 entries, Dr. Kathy Feeley, Interim CAS Dean, Professor of History, and Dr. John Glover, Professor, Department of History, are getting close to being able to teach ‘Mapping the Green Books’, HIST 227. We will describe how the mapping was done and how this will be used to help students understand the historical geography of racism and segregation as well as the growth of Black businesses and communities.

Spatial Patterns and Socioeconomic Influences on Mobile Internet Use in the United States. Owen Giron, Master's in Business Analytics (MSBA), 2023; Dr. Avijit Sarkar, School of Business and Society; Dr. James Pick, School of Business and Society

This lightning talk provides insights and analyzes spatial patterns and disparities of mobile internet use in U.S counties. This research showcases how mobile internet is being used for personal and business purposes and how it affects the digital divide in the United States. Furthermore, this study breaks down how mobile internet use is different in rural, micropolitan, and metropolitan areas. There are 10 dependent variables for personal use and 6 dependent variables for business use of mobile internet technologies. Disparities in mobile internet use are studied using geospatial and statistical methods. This helps uncover clusters and outliers of mobile internet use as well as demographic, socioeconomic, affordability, and other factors that impact mobile internet use. The methods and tools utilized in this study include SPSS to run OLS regressions and k-means cluster analysis for the dependent variables. OLS regressions were also run on Esri ArcGIS Pro to understand the associations of mobile internet use dependent variables with demographic and socioeconomic indicators through a spatial lens. Spatial autocorrelation analysis run in ArcGIS Pro reveals the extent of spatial randomness among the data. We find that there are significant factors influencing mobile technologies and noticeable differences on how mobile technologies are being used between rural, micropolitan, and metropolitan areas.

Drone Mapping the SURF Garden. Delia Wahby, Environmental Studies, Spatial Studies Minor, 2023; William Wagner, Spatial Instruction Manager, Center for Spatial Studies

Delia Wahby, a senior at UOR and Will Wagner, the GIS Manager at UOR describe how the school's drones were used to provide the most current orthographic imagery for Delia's project about the SURF Garden on the UOR campus.

R-Map: Campus GIS Projects. Nathan Strout, Director of Spatial Technology, Center for Spatial Studies

The University of Redlands uses GIS to help make the university a better place for our students and employees. This presentation will discuss some of the ways GIS is integrated into everyday operations of the university.

A Location-centric Approach to Climate Action and Corporate Social Responsibility. Thomas A. Horan, Dean, School of Business and Society

Organizations in many sectors and industries are developing forward-thinking strategies to combat climate change, protect endangered ecosystems, diversify their workforce, and ensure the prioritization of human rights across their value chains. This presentation will propose a conceptual model of the use of location intelligence to shape Climate Action and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies in the private sector. The model positions location as a unifying organizational lens using which firms can examine their environmental footprints, evaluate labor practices, diversity and equity in their supply chains, and measure impacts of philanthropic initiatives. The model showcases how location intelligence can help organizations describe, predict, and prescribe CSR interventions, ultimately guiding strategic choices that boost business value. Case studies drawn from a recent book (Spatial Business: Competing and Leading with Location Analytics, Esri Press, 2022) on the use of location intelligence to shape CSR strategy will be presented along with implications for practice. Cases will highlight ways in which organizations can deploy a location-centric approach to communicate the value of CSR initiatives to stakeholders, creating shared value, enhancing transparency, building trust, measuring outcomes, and connecting them to key business priorities.

 

6:30 – 6:45 PM: Welcome: Adrienne McCormick, Provost

6:45 – 7:15 PM: Presentation of Awards and Honors: 

Presentation of the Center for Spatial Business Student Excellence Awards 
  • Fang Ren, Professor, School of Business and Society, University of Redlands, Redlands, CA
Presentation of the Tomlinson Prize for Excellence in GIS
  • Krista Newkirk, President, University of Redlands
  • Jack Dangermond, Founder and President of Esri, Redlands, CA
Presentation of the Poster & StoryMap Awards
  • Steve Moore, Director of the Center for Spatial Studies, Director of Sponsored Programs, IRB Administrative Coordinator, University of Redlands, Redlands, CA

Keynote: 7:15-8:15 PM, with introduction by Steven Moore, Director of the Center for Spatial Studies & Director of Sponsored Programs. 

Jen Headshot small.jpg

Mapping the Color Lines: Segregation & Community Formation in the Inland Empire. Jennifer Tilton - University of Redlands

How can we map the history of racism in the Inland Empire? How can we map historic civil rights struggles or communities that have been erased by freeways or commercial development? A People’s History of the Inland Empire is a digital archiving and mapping project that aims to make the history of communities of color more visible in the region and to create maps that help us think about the ways our past shapes our communities today. We have built a georeferenced digital archive and mapped historic census data from the early 20th century so that we can document historic patterns of racial segregation and bring historic communities to life. We will use these maps to show the contested social process of building racial segregation and how communities formed and fought for racial justice within those color lines. We will invite IE students, scholars, and residents to use some of these newly published maps to explore the history of their own communities. 

Jennifer Tilton is a professor of Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Redlands. Her Ph.D. is in American Culture and Anthropology from the University of Michigan and her work combines geography, history and anthropology to explore how race gets built into space, politics and public policy in the U.S. She works with the Bridges That Carried Us Over Project to support a community-led effort to document Black history in the Inland Empire and is one of the leaders of a People’s History of the I.E. a collaboration with Catherine Gudis at University of California at Riverside which works with students and community leaders to build digital archives, historic census maps, georeferenced archives, and StoryMaps that make visible historic communities of color and patterns of segregation in the Inland Empire. Visit the Bridges Project and People’s History StoryMaps and https://omeka.ucr.edu/collections/s/peopleshistoryie/page/welcome

Funding for mapping provided through a National Endowment for the Humanities-Social Science Research Council Sustaining Humanities Infrastructure Program, and the Relevancy & History Project partnership between University of California and California State Parks.