Campus Lighting Improvement Project: Student Safety

[Full Workflow Document] At William & Mary, I currently serve as the president of the first and only student chapter of The Society for Conservation GIS. We were asked by the University Architect and the Data Science Division of the Student Assembly to address student concerns regarding insufficient campus lighting. Thus, I sought to use Survey123 and GPX tracker apps to collect citizen science data from students and faculty, in order to determine areas of highest priority.

Over the course of several months, I detailed a unique workflow teaching people (with no prior GIS experience) how to:

• Mark waypoints of interest (areas around campus that have low/no/broken lighting)

• Upload GPX files from a mobile app to ArcGIS Pro

• Create and analyze heat maps to make deliverables

These maps were ultimately shared with the William & Mary Campus Safety Team and Budget Office, who used our data to determine where to construct new street lighting, as well as where to concentrate their policing efforts. This project is a great exercise in how GIS and citizen science can be used to communicate with policymakers and improve communities.