New Research Grants Received to Study Accessibility and Safety Issues

With co-PI Michael Duncan from FSU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, I have been awarded a grant from FSU’s University Transportation Center (ASAP) to examine accessibility issues in the context of aging populations.  Among our activities, we will be developing GIS-based models of multi-modal accessibility.

I will also be collaborating on two other ASAP-funded projects with Eren Ozguven and Lisa Spainhour (College of Engineering) looking at disaster relief issues and roundabout safety dynamics, respectively.

 

Advisee wins AAG HMGSG 2013 travel award

FSU Geography graduate student Brittany Wood received a competitive graduate student travel award based on her Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting abstract entitled ‘Accessibility to SNAP Accepting Retail Food Locations.’  Brittany’s abstract was selected for funding by the AAG’s Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group, and the award will be given to her during their 2013 business meeting in Los Angeles.  Brittany successfully defended her Master’s thesis prospectus in October 2012, and her AAG abstract is related to her ongoing thesis work looking at food deserts and accessibility.

Healthy food accessibility paper to be presented at the 2013 Transportation Research Board meeting

With the program now posted, here is a link to a new paper which will be presented at the Transportation Research Board  (TRB) Annual Meeting (Washington, DC) in January of 2013. This multi-authored paper led by Dr. Michael Widener (University of Cincinnati) describes a new approach to measuring people’s accessibility to healthy food options in urban environments, controlling for selected activity constraints.

Commuting during the Great Recession – A presentation at the Transportation Research Board meeting 2013

With the program now posted, here is a link to our new paper which will be presented at the Transportation Research Board  (TRB) Annual Meeting (Washington, DC) in January of 2013. Coauthored with FSU graduate student Daniel Schleith, this paper reports on a spatial and temporal analysis of commuting patterns using a new U.S. Census data source. The study period covers the years of the Great Recession and explores transportation trends during the economic downturn.

(Brief) report from GIScience 2012

Just now getting the chance to report on my trip to Columbus, OH for GIScience 2012 two weeks ago.  It was a very busy event, as I was a part of three papers scheduled on the program. It was also nice visiting Columbus after having lived there about 10 years ago, and seeing how much it had changed.  Overall, a great conference (e.g., we were well fed!) and looking forward to future meetings.