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I-GUIDE is empowering diverse communities to produce data-intensive solutions to society’s resilience and sustainability challenges.

Bathymetric Model Development

Average Annual Elevation of Great Salt Lake

Mean soil moisture content

I-GUIDE Webinar Series

AAG 2023 Symposium

Summer School 2023

I-GUIDE Virtual AHM 2023

AGU 2022

Convergence Curriculum

Geospatial Knowledge Hypercube

Aging Dams

GeoEthics

We are I-GUIDE

Vision:
Digital discovery and innovation
through harnessing the geospatial data revolution

Mission:
Transform convergence and geospatial sciences
for holistic sustainability solutions

Overcoming Scientific and Societal Challenges

Uniting Interdisciplinary Knowledge to Solve Real-World Problems! By fostering collaboration and providing access to advanced geospatial data capabilities, I-GUIDE is tackling fundamental scientific and societal challenges with innovative solutions.

  • Aging Dam
  • Convergence Curriculum
  • Geospatial Knowledge Hypercube
  • GeoEthics

Vulnerability Analysis for Aging Dam Infrastructure

U.S. dams are threatened by age-induced fragility and increased hydrologic stresses due to climate change. In many cases, communities and infrastructure below the dams have also increased dramatically over time, increasing the exposure to dam failure. Given that there are over 90,000 such dams in the United States, a traditional approach to dam risk assessment is challenging to implement. Our I-GUIDE project is taking an integrated approach to the application of “big data” sources so that a national or portfolio risk assessment of these assets can be attempted for the first time. This includes a spatially specific analysis of the climate changes of concern, of what is likely to be impacted if the dams fail, of the cascading effects of those failures on the national economy and other critical infrastructure elements, and the potential resilience of the infrastructure systems given the governance at different levels. The application of machine learning tools, statistical inference, natural language processing and the geo-hypercube together with traditional physics based and economics models are illustrated.

Concha Larrauri, P., Lall, U., & Hariri-Ardebili, M. A. (2023). Needs for Portfolio Risk Assessment of Aging Dams in the United States. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 149(3), 04022083.

Geospatial Data Science Convergence Curriculum

The Convergence Curriculum for Geospatial Data Science is an integrative framework to prepare next-generation students and current-generation scholars and professionals to tackle complex, convergent problems. This multi-tiered curriculum starts with 5 Foundational Knowledge Threads to establish a common basis for individuals coming from diverse backgrounds. Individual learners begin to integrate skills, knowledge, methods, and technologies as they move up through Knowledge Connections and Knowledge Frames. The pinnacle of the curriculum is Knowledge Convergence, which combines previous competencies with existing domain knowledge. Each component in the curriculum will be available at varying depths: 3 sentences, 3 slides, a 3-hour module, or a 3-week unit. This configuration allows individuals to adapt their experiences to match their learning pathways and needs.

Geospatial Knowledge Hypercube

Today there are massive volumes of text data, including for example news reports, research papers, and social media. Geospatial knowledge hypercube is defined as a multi-scale structure for integrating text data with heterogeneous geospatial data to discover latent connections and relationships through combining a variety of weakly supervised machine learning approaches. The hypercube lays a foundation for many knowledge discovery applications, such as recognizing geospatial entities and inferring geospatial relationships.

GeoEthics

Geoethics promotes appropriate practices to shape responsible and sustainable relationships between human activities and Earth systems, bringing attention to the implications that researchers’ work may have on society. Promoting geoethics also requires fostering a positive relationship between the scientific community and the public. One critical concern of geoethics regards the use of geospatial data for AI applications. Large volumes of geospatial data are generated in multiple ways, including sensors from satellites, aircraft, and scientific instruments; geolocation-based data services; social media; and government surveys. Access, aggregation, and use of these and other data sources can promise many societal benefits, such as responding to humanitarian disasters response, and predicting and mitigating risks from aging infrastructure such as dams. However, using these data also raises thorny ethical issues, including transparency and accountability, privacy, bias and discrimination, and data and model quality. Even when appropriate safeguards are in place, it is still possible for unintended ethical harms to result. Geospatial data researchers, and those who use these researchers’ outputs, such as policymakers, must strive to mitigate the risk of these harms as they strive to solve major societal issues.

File:Bansky one nation under cctv.jpg - Wikimedia Commons. (2023, February 16). Retrieved from https://acommons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bansky_one_nation_under_cctv.jpg

NEWS AND UPDATES

Winter 2024 Newsletter
Winter 2024 Newsletter

Posted 2 months ago

Announcing the 2024 Community Champions!
Announcing the 2024 Community Champions!

Posted 2 months ago

2024 Summer School Application is Now Open!
2024 Summer School Application is Now Open!

Posted 2 months ago

Ramya Kumaran Ascender Profile
Ramya Kumaran Ascender Profile

Posted 3 months ago

Fall 2023 Newsletter
Fall 2023 Newsletter

Posted 5 months ago

Zhaonan Wang – Geospatial Insights: AI, Academia, and the Road Ahead
Zhaonan Wang – Geospatial Insights: AI, Academia, and the Road Ahead

Posted 6 months ago

Summer 2023 Newsletter
Summer 2023 Newsletter

Posted 6 months ago

Hodo Orok – From Chemistry to Climate: A Journey of Resilience and Communication
Hodo Orok – From Chemistry to Climate: A Journey of Resilience and Communication

Posted 6 months ago

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