Episode 12: The Role of Data in Environmental Justice

Are you familiar with “environmental justice”? It’s all about equitable access to environmental amenities and the equitable distribution of pollution, and has its roots in the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

In this episode, Robin Rotman and Amber Spriggs join Dr Genevieve Hayes to discuss the environmental justice movement and how open access GIS-based tools are being used to achieve environmental justice in the USA today.

Guest Bio

Robin Rotman is an Assistant Professor of Energy and Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is also a qualified lawyer, focussing on energy, environmental, and natural resource issues, and is a Counsel at Van Ness Feldman, a law firm in Washington DC.

Amber Spriggs is a civil engineering Masters student at the University of Missouri-Columbia with a research focus on hydrology, hydraulic engineering, GIS-based risk assessment, and flood insurance policy.

Talking Points

• What is environmental justice?
• Why the environmental justice movement and the American Civil Rights movement are one and the same.
• The role of data and analytics in achieving environmental justice both now and when the term was first coined.
• Examples of how spatial data analysis has been used to achieve environmental justice.
• How similar techniques could potentially be used to achieve positive outcomes for the community in other ways.
• The role of data and analytics in legal proceedings relating to environmental justice.

Links

• Connect with Robin on LinkedIn
• Connect with Amber on LinkedIn
• EJScreen
• Connect with Genevieve on LinkedIn
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