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The GIS Lab offers collaboration on projects partnering with students, faculty, staff, and the broader Vanderbilt community providing support for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) initiatives across a wide range of disciplines.
We aim to empower our community to explore spatial data, conduct analyses, and visualize information in ways that enhance research and learning. On this page, you’ll find a showcase of our projects, highlighting interdisciplinary work and creativity. Whether you’re seeking collaboration or simply curious about our contributions, we invite you to explore some projects that reflect our commitment to advancing knowledge and solving real-world challenges through GIS technology.
Project Examples
The Nashville Refugee Project
In collaboration with the GIS Lab, Jonathan Rattner (Professor at Vanderbilt), and Vanderbilt Institute for Spatial Research (VISR) the Nashville International Center for Empowerment (NICE) initiated the Nashville Refugee Project to map the journeys of refugees who have resettled in Nashville. The project uses a StoryMap to combine film interviews with interactive maps, guiding viewers through refugees’ journeys and the diverse paths they’ve taken to reach Nashville. The project is ongoing, with plans to expand through additional funding and refugee involvement. The goal is for refugees to take ownership of the project, adding new stories and enhancing the platform.
The Geophysical Investigation and Geospatial Storytelling of the William Edmondson Homesite
During 2023-2025, the Friends of William Edmondson Homesite Park & Gardens collaborated with the GIS Lab, Vanderbilt Institute for Spatial Research (VISR), and Victoria Hensley (Mellon Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science) to locate William Edmondson’s homesite using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). GPR revealed the homesite beneath a basketball court. A 3D model and StoryMap were created to showcase the site, as well as Edmondson’s life and artistic legacy. The StoryMap will evolve with input from the Friends of William Edmondson Homesite Park & Gardens and Edgehill neighborhood.
The Environmental Justice Project for Grundy County
In 2019, residents of Grundy County, TN, raised concerns about cancer clusters in their community. They reached out to Vanderbilt University researchers and formed the Grundy County Cancer Research Organization to investigate potential environmental causes. This collaboration was driven by the community's desire to understand the patterns they were observing and seek scientific explanations. The project used GIS to map environmental factors such as water quality, terrain, and potential pollutants to identify correlations with the cancer clusters. Researchers collaborated with the community to gather data and analyze potential environmental causes. The data was integrated into an interactive web mapping platform, enabling the community to visualize the patterns and engage in the research process. Currently, local high school students from the Vanderbilt School for Science and Math (SSMV) are involved in updating and enhancing the web maps, ensuring the project’s continued development and local engagement.
Student Projects
Urban Forestry GIS: The Edgehill Arboretum
Created through a Buchanan Library Fellow Project, students in this fellowship worked with the Friends of the William Edmondson Homesite Park & Gardens who have planted trees in the seven-acre greenspace, establishing a Level 1 Arboretum certified by the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council. Helping to take the arboretum status to a Level 2 certification, students geo-located the trees using GPS and field mapping techniques. As well as providing a robust, easy-to-maintain, and user-friendly public-facing online database and education platform to engage the community on this precious urban greenspace and historic site.
On Tour with Dizzy: A mapping journey through the John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie Middle East Tour Scrapbooks
Created through a Buchanan Library Fellow Project, students continued a mapping project of the Middle East Tour scrapbooks (part of the John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie collection through the NMAAM-Vanderbilt University Collections Initiative) using ArcGIS StoryMaps, historic maps, primary source material, and other source material to visually communicate the historical context in American surrounding this tour, the musicians and tour life, and Dizzy’s contribution as a band leader.
Battle of Nashville GIS
Created through two Buchanan Library Fellow Projects, this project provided students with the opportunity to create a series of dynamic narrative StoryMaps projects: interactive, GIS-based visual tools that combine information on many individual locations into a single visual product, telling the exciting stories of Civil War Nashville. The projects map the important sites of the Battle of Nashville including the historic homes that were present. Students’ mapped locations were gathered from a variety of sources including information from photos, oral histories, period maps, and articles. Fellows worked with mentors to compile historical research and organize available photos, articles, and maps of important locations within Civil War Nashville as well as the geospatial data collection.
Mapping Frankenstein
Created through a Buchanan Library Fellow Project, students puts Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus in a circuit of communications, providing fellows with the opportunity to engage with the nineteenth-century development of a network of turnpike roads and its wider cultural impact. This fellowship aimed to trace Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein along the turnpike, the Holyhead Road that Thomas Telford (1795-1834), constructed during the 1810s between London and Dublin. Frankenstein’s and the Monster’s sense of place will be reconstructed digitally by interactive technology to connect symbols or sites of memory in the broadest sense, including buildings, historical figures, monuments, landscapes, toll houses and features of Telford’s Holyhead Road surviving at the time of the survey, including the Menai Bridge.
GIS Lab Supported Publications
Geospatial Discovery and Collaboration: Vanderbilt's GIS Lab, Western Association of Map Libraries Information Bulletin, 2025
Participatory Mapping of Holistic Youth Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study, Sustainability, 2024
Bridging the childhood epilepsy treatment gap in northern Nigeria (BRIDGE): Rationale and design of pre-clinical trial studies, Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, 2019
Geospatial distribution and characteristics of eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorder clinics in the United States, Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology, 2019