Expertise

Our Strengths

The Polis Center supports community development and quality-of-life efforts, natural disaster resiliency, and population health management using geospatial technologies to integrate, manage, and visualize the rapidly growing information on the places where we live and work. We do this through place-based research, analysis, collaborations, and advanced information technologies. We help communities and organizations build capacity, provide actionable information, and develop knowledge platforms.

Our Geoinformatics work plays a critical role in supporting natural disaster mitigation for greater resiliency and responsiveness to climate change and its social, health, and economic repercussions. We reinforce community efforts to prevent or reduce losses from natural disasters by combining geospatial analysis, modeling, and outreach activities. Polis Center crisis informatics initiatives support disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery activities. The center designs and develops information systems through which to explore the interconnectedness of people, place, community, information, and technology. It also designs and implements research to evaluate the physical, social, and economic impacts of hazards.

The Community Informatics area creates community intelligence to support the decision-making process with and for nonprofits, community-based organizations, and government. We build solutions grounded in data, research, and community process. Our work includes building community information systems and decision-support tools; transforming data to extend its utility; developing and analyzing community data to understand social issues and how they affect communities; bringing academic research to practical applications; fostering data literacy; and building capacity in others to use information for decision-making.

The Community Health Informatics team collaborates with the public health, healthcare, social service, government, and academic sectors to enhance the use of place-based information for improving health and resiliency in Indiana and beyond. We build local capacity to understand and address population health and its social and environmental determinants through community research and analysis, collaboration, and application of advanced information technologies. Our research supports and advances community health improvement planning, population health management, public health intervention, and patient-centered decision-support.

Learn more below.