FACT: A FRAMEWORK TO COMPREHENSIVELY EVALUATE, DISTRIBUTE AND CATALOG GEOSPATIAL DATA SOURCES USED IN THE STUDY OF THE FOOD ENVIRONMENT

It is difficult to comprehensively explain the nexus at food-needy regions, spending patterns, health outcomes and explanatory factors behind them. Quantitative methods explore numerical relationships between food availability, food access and food utilization. They help, though not fully explain it using a variety of metrics such as proximity, race/ethnicity, poverty status and access to transportation, among other things. A Geographic Information System (GIS) serves as a powerful tool to examine quantitative spatial relationships that exist between and among the various agents within the food environment. These agents may include source locations (where people are traveling from) and destinations (where people are traveling to) in order to procure all forms of food, both healthy and unhealthy, as well as those aforementioned socio-economic variables. However, little work has been performed to measure the quality of data used in these analyses. This project presents a framework to quantitatively assess, evaluate, deliver and catalog GIS data sources used in food environment research. The results can have a profound impact on the spatial representation of food deserts and food swamps versus those who are truly food-needy. This problem symbolizes a need for expanding the use of geospatial, information and statistical technologies to relatable social phenomena that disproportionately affects underrepresented segments of the population. These underrepresented populations compose a large portion of the student body at the proposed research institution and this work will facilitate statistical and information literacy, as well as the soft skills and field training necessary to be successful in the workforce.