Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly at the forefront of advancing equity and social justice, offering powerful tools to uncover disparities, inform policy, and improve access to essential services. This session brings together four diverse yet interconnected presentations that demonstrate how spatial analysis can drive more equitable outcomes across transportation, healthcare, and public investment.
Attendees will explore how GIS is being used to identify transportation barriers to public health resources in both urban and rural communities, revealing critical gaps that impact quality of life. The session will also examine spatial methods for evaluating the distribution and accessibility of primary healthcare services in rapidly growing urban environments. Expanding into mobility systems, presenters will showcase how emerging techniques like graph neural networks can model and predict imbalances in bike-share systems, helping ensure equitable access to shared transportation options. Finally, the session will highlight how GIS can support equity-focused decision-making by quantifying the societal return on investment (ROI) of policies and programs, demonstrating that socially just initiatives can also deliver measurable economic benefits.
Together, these presentations illustrate the breadth of GIS applications in addressing systemic inequities and emphasize the role of spatial thinking in creating more just, accessible, and data-driven communities.
Keywords: transportation, social justice, equity, healthcare, planning, mobility analytics, non-driving transportation, return on investment
Using GIS for Planning the Location of Primary Healthcare centers in Jeddah City: A vector and raster-based approach
Abdulkader Murad, Ph.D., Professor, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Estimating Imbalance and Wait Times in the Boston Bluebikes System Using Graph Neural Networks
Abdullahi Bello, PhD Student and Research Assistant, Northeastern University Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Brighton, MA - USA
Using GIS to Determine Societal ROI from Applying Equity & Social Justice Focused Policies and Programs
Greg Babinski, MA, GISP, EthicalGEO Fellow, GIS Management Consultant, GIS Management Consulting Services LLC, Edmonds, WA – USA
Improving Transportation for Non-Drivers of Wisconsin
David Buehler, GISP, GIS Solutions Specialist, WisDOT, Wisconsin Rapids, WI – USA
Nyla Thursday, MS, GIS Data Specialist, WisDOT, Madison, WI – USA
