CREATING SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS

Reducing Urban Heat with Trees

In partnership with the City of Los Angeles, an SSI-led research team is using advanced mapping technology, air quality measurements and landscape visualizations to develop the most effective tree canopy in neighborhoods around the USC Health Sciences and University Park campuses. The initiative provides decisionmakers with data-driven and community-informed insights into where, how many and what type of new trees will maximize health and equity benefits to residents in tree-poor areas of South and East Los Angeles. The project leadership includes the USC Dornsife Public Exchange and SSI faculty affiliates Esther Margulies, USC School of Architecture, and William Berelson, USC Dornsife Department of Earth Sciences.

SSI student researchers under the direction of John P. Wilson and Beau MacDonald have included Rachel Ablondi, Naman Casas, Eileen Chen, Charles Curtin, Jackson FitzGerald, Jillian Gorman, Erik Huisman, Emma Johnson, Runzi Kang, Carolyn Koh, Joan Lee, Alyssa Ng and Seher Randhawa. The student research teams won the 2021, 2022 and 2023 USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy first prize award and the 2022 and 2023 USC Sustainability second prize award.

Achieving Climate Neutrality at USC

2025: the year by which USC President Carol Folt intends the university to be climate neutral. In support of the university’s Assignment: Earth initiative, SSI faculty, staff and students with the USC Office of Sustainability have launched the USC Sustainability Data Hub for members of the USC community to engage with sustainability data and build out sustainability solutions. Elisabeth Sedano, assistant professor (teaching) of spatial sciences, and Laura C. Loyola, assistant professor (teaching) of spatial sciences, with John P. Wilson and Beau MacDonald, lead undergraduate student researchers in expanding the data hub that SSI hosts. The 2021-2022 student team of Rachel Ablondi, Nicole Carrera, Anna Curtis, Kelley Green, Carolyn Koh and Jessica Zhang won the 2022 USC Provost’s Undergraduate Research Symposium Digital Media first prize and 2022 USC Sustainability first prize award.

Planning for a Livable Region

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the largest metropolitan planning organization in the nation, is responsible for developing long-range transportation plans and sustainable community strategies for Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. Since 2020, SSI student researchers have been contributing to SCAG’s GIS-based projects, providing spatial database management, geoprocessing, data analysis and mapping.

Protecting a Fragile Environment

Jason T. Knowles, adjunct associate professor of the practice and CEO/founder of GeoAcuity, joins SSI students every semester at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center (WMSC) near Two Harbors, Catalina Island, to demonstrate novel unmanned aerial systems capabilities and to support specialty data collections, such as kelp mapping and underwater bathymetry. Since 2017 SSI researchers have been assembling a comprehensive data collection of the WMSC campus. Maintained in the Open GeoData Hub by the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, SSI and GeoAcuity, these free resources show the capabilities of cutting-edge technologies. They document environmental impacts on the island and how its ecologies are changing over time.