A wide variety of papers and documents, peer-reviewed and otherwise, have been published over the years which provide important demonstations of and insights to the use of geospatial technologies. Some of the papers relate directly to the use of such technologies within human rights activities, and some represent potential future applications and enhancements.
Slippery Business: Race, Class, and Legal Determinants of Penalties Against Petroleum Refineries
This study examines whether petroleum refineries that violate environmental laws in Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities tend to receive smaller fines than those refineries in White and affluent communities. The sample consists of all petroleum refinery facilities fined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 1998 and 1999 for violating the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and/or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (N = 60). The mean penalty for noncompliance is much lower in Black than in White census tracts ($108,563 vs. $341,590) and in low-income than in high-income census tracts ($259,784 vs. $334,267). Multivariate analysis (more)…
Socioeconomic inequity in hazardous facility location and enforcement in New Jersey
This study examines the spatial distribution and enforcement of air polluting facilities in the state of New Jersey, as listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?s Aerometric Information Retrieval System. Results show that air-polluting facilities tend to concentrate near minority neighborhoods, although this relationship is partially explained by factors of population density, manufacturing employment, and land use. Other results suggest that facilities in areas with a relatively high percentage of minority population tend to have a weaker record of environmental enforcement as compared to other facilities. Of the socioeconomic variables considered, employment in manufacturing appears to be the most strongly (more)…
Spatial and temporal patterns in civil violence: Guatemala, 1977?1986
Civil violence is a complex and often horrific phenomenon whose characteristics have varied by era, setting, and circumstance. Its objective analysis has rarely been feasible at spatial and temporal scales great enough and resolutions fine enough to reveal patterns useful in prevention, intervention, or adjudication. An extraordinary data set simultaneously meeting scale and resolution criteria was collected during conflict in Guatemala from 1977 through 1986. Reported here is its spatial-temporal analysis; reported as well is a putatively novel method for estimating power-law exponents from aggregate data. Analysis showed that the relationship between ethnic mix and killing was smooth yet highly (more)…
Spatial Inequality and the Distribution of Industrial Toxic Releases: Evidence from the 1990 TRI
Investigates environmental justice activists’ claims that pollution is unevenly distributed across communities in the USA. Examines 3 possible explanations: racial discrimination, economic stratification, and urban ecology. Uses the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 1990 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), a data set that contains information on permitted and accidental releases of over 300 toxic chemicals from manufacturing facilities. Combines this information with county-level data from the 1990 US Census and the 1990 County Business Patterns. Finds that activists’ claims are supported. Results suggest that processes such as urbanization and industrial location, which are often treated as control variables, may best be regarded (more)…
Spatiotemporal perspectives on air pollution and environmental justice in Hamilton, Canada, 1985-1996
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The air is always cleaner on the other side: Race, space, and ambient air toxics exposures in California
Environmental justice advocates have recently focused attention on cumulative exposure in minority neighborhoods due to multiple sources of pollution. This article uses U.S. EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for 1996 to examine environmental inequality in California, a state that has been a recent innovator in environmental justice policy. We first estimate potential lifetime cancer risks from mobile and stationary sources. We then consider the distribution of these risks using both simple comparisons and a multivariate model in which we control for income, land use, and other explanatory factors, as well as spatial correlation. We find large racial disparities in (more)…
The creation and consequences of international refugees: politics, military and geography
Worldwide, the number and the occurrence of events that create international refugees have been increasing dramatically for at least the past 50 yr. Analysis of the distribution of the causes and location of refugees has revealed that refugees more often result from military actions than natural disasters. In many instances, the creation of international refugees is a conscious political and military policy, a practice that seems to be increasing. More importantly, some geographic areas seem to be continuing “core areas’ of such practices. Finally, regardless of their cause, refugees present specific problems to national control of population and territory.
The Demography of Large-Scale Human Rights Atrocities: Integrating demographic statistical analysis into post-conflict historical clarification in Timor-Leste
During 1975, Timor-Leste transitioned from being a colony of Portugal to being occupied by Indonesia. The occupation was characterized by large-scale political violence, including selective and indiscriminate killings, forced migration, famine-related deaths, tortures and acts of ill-treatment. The authors, formerly advisers to the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR, by its Portuguese acronym), estimated the pattern and magnitude of excess mortality and forced migration during the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste between 1975 and 1999. These estimates were based on a combination of qualitative testimony data, a census of public graveyards and a Retrospective Mortality Survey. The data corroborate the (more)…
The distribution and enforcement of air polluting facilities in New Jersey
This study examines the spatial distribution and enforcement of air polluting facilities in the state of New Jersey, as listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Aerometric Information Retrieval System. Results show that air-polluting facilities tend to concentrate near minority neighborhoods, although this relationship is partially explained by factors of population density, manufacturing employment, and land use. Other results suggest that facilities in areas with a relatively high percentage of minority population tend to have a weaker record of environmental enforcement as compared to other facilities. Of the socioeconomic variables considered, employment in manufacturing appears to be the most strongly (more)…
The distribution of environmental equity: Exploring spatial nonstationarity in multivariate models of air toxic releases
Conventional multivariate regression can hide important local variations in the relationships among independent and dependent variables in models of environmental equity. Geographically weighted regression (GWR), in combination with choropleth mapping, can reveal this spatial nonstationarity and shed light on its form. We use GWR, in combination with conventional univariate and multivariate statistics, to model the density of air toxic releases in New Jersey, as listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The GWR analysis shows that the relationships among race, class, employment, urban concentration, and land use with air toxic release density in New Jersey vary (more)…
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