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Measuring Nationwide Park Access

Keith Spangler, an environmental scientist and Boston University's School of Public Health uses BU computers housed at the MGHPCC to perform spatial data processing of access to parks and health resources.

Where people live is one of the greatest determinants of public health: Is there clean air and water? Are there green spaces nearby? Are there medical facilities and grocery stores within easy reach? Emerging research has looked particularly at whether people live within easy access to health-beneficial locations, such as parks, doctors' offices, and grocery stores. But calculating proximity "access" distances between hundreds of thousands of population points and the locations of interest is computationally intensive and costly using commercial network analyst products. In this project, researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health, worked with BU IS&T to develop an open-source computational infrastructure to enable calculations of walking and driving route "service areas" in a collaborative, scalable computing environment.

Keith Spangler, PhD
Research Scientist, Environmental Health, BUSPH

Research projects

Accelerating Rendering Power
Exact Gravitational Lensing by Rotating Black Holes
The Institute for Experiential AI
Volcanic Eruptions Impact on Stratospheric Chemistry & Ozone
Pulling Back the Quantum Curtain on ‘Weyl Fermions’
Evolution of Viral Infectious Disease
The Kempner Institute - Unlocking Intelligence
Network Attached FPGAs in the OCT
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