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Using GIS to Assess the Environmental Justice Consequences of Transportation System Changes
Author(s) -
Chakraborty Jayajit,
Schweitzer Lisa A.,
Forkenbrock David J.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
transactions in gis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9671
pISSN - 1361-1682
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9671.00020
Subject(s) - environmental justice , geographic information system , environmental planning , noise pollution , geography , environmental resource management , transport engineering , air pollution , computer science , environmental science , engineering , cartography , political science , ecology , artificial intelligence , law , noise reduction , biology
Although environmental justice research has typically focused on locations of industrial toxic releases or waste sites, recent developments in GIS and environmental modeling provide a foundation for developing measures designed to evaluate the consequences of transportation system changes. In this paper, we develop and demonstrate a workable GIS‐based approach that can be used to assess the impacts of a transportation system change on minorites and low‐income residents. We focus specifically on two adverse affects: vehicle‐generated air pollution and noise. The buffer analysis capabilities of GIS provide a preliminary assessment of environmental justice. We integrate existing environmental pollution models with GIS software to identify the specific locations where noise and air pollution standards could be violated because of the proposed system change. A comparison of the geographic boundaries of these areas with the racial and economic characteristics of the underlying population obtained from block level census data provides a basis for evaluating disproportionate impacts. An existing urban arterial in Waterloo, Iowa, is used to illustrate the methods developed in this research.