Emily Zhou's Portfolio

Hi there! My name is Emily and I graduated from Middlebury College with a major in Geography and minors in Japanese and Computer Science. I am currently a City Planning student at University of Pennsylvania, concentrating in Smart Cities and Urban Spatial Analytics.

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Emily’s World of Geography

My current academic and research work mainly focus on using GIS, geospatial machine learning, and cartographic design to study urban resource accessibility, community health and vulnerability, as well as smart cities technology implementation.

Lake Qiandao Lake, Chun’an, China

GIS for Public Policy Analytics

In Fall 2023, I have applied geospatial machine learning techniques in the urban planning and public policy realm. All of these projects are aimed towards developing models to efficiently allocate limited resources across space. Use cases for these models include transportation planning, housing, public health, criminal justice, and beyond.

Open Source GIScience Analyses

I have expanded my experience in geospatial analysis through learning advanced spatial statistics and reproducing studies using open source geospatial software. In Fall 2021, I reproduced three health and hazards spatial analysis studies using open source R or Python code and completed a reproducible study on urban resource accessibility using Postgre SQL.

New England Planning with Mock Mapping Charrettes

In Winter 2021, I worked with Middlebury alumni Ben Meader, current director of Rhumb Line Maps to practice solving real planning issues in New England. I created a series of maps and visual studies on public transport access, habitat conservation, and residential development, etc. and presented in 4 mock stakeholder meetings.

Cartography and Architectural Studies

I honed my skills in design through studying architecture with Middlebury alumni Alix Pauchet in Winter 2021 and cartography with Professor Jeff Howarth in Spring 2021.

Data Visualization Projects

I also applied my interest and expertise in spatial data analysis and visualization to various project works in Geography, Computer Science, and Math that cover topics ranging from public health, geopolitics, generative art, and more!

GIS Research on Reproducibility and Replicability in Geographical Science

In summer 2022, I worked as a GIS research assistant for Middlebury College professor Joseph Holler and ASU Professor Peter Kedron to reproduce spatial health geography papers. In the past two years, we have:

Remote Sensing Research on Congo Basin Forest Change

Since Spring 2022, I have worked with Middlebury College Professor Niwaeli Kimambo and Phd candidate Sarah Tolbert at University of Wisconsin Madison on managing spatial database that record study sites and metadata of included journals in comparing the drivers of deforestation versus degradation.

This is an ongoing work. Final results will be shared soon, but for now you can view the project layers here.

Reflections on Geospatial Research