Proximity Analysis of Public Schools and Major Sources of Pollution within Chicago, Illinois

This project aimed to quantify environmental inequities between different racial groups within the city of Chicago through conducting and improving upon the proximity analysis technique for hazard identification. Improvements were made upon commonly used methods for population selection and pollution identification. In addition to these improvements this work established clear guidelines for interpretation of statistical variation between proximities to sources of pollution amongst populations and introduced a new summary indicator, the Cumulative proximity burden CPB score, which was developed as a tool to be used in public participatory GIS settings to assist community organizations in communicating environmental disparities and in situations where stakeholders may have varied educational, and specialized backgrounds.