GIS for racial justice
Address racial inequities with location intelligence
National, state, and local governments can use GIS to understand, address, and eliminate the gaps that create disparities in their jurisdictions.
Community organizations can use mapping and analysis tools to clearly identify issues, communicate their missions, and show progress.
Businesses can use location intelligence to understand when, where, and how they can reduce burdens and create benefits for people of color.
Engage communities and partners through storytelling; crowdsourcing; and sharing initiative-focused content that increases awareness, understanding, and collaboration on the topic of racial inequities and efforts toward racial justice.
Apply a racial-equity lens through maps and spatial analysis to reveal and understand inequities in experiences and outcomes within your community. Locate populations of concern, identify barriers to equality, and support informed and equitable decision-making.
Design and plan equitable allocations of resources, alleviating burdens on communities of color. Enhance the delivery of services for racially equitable outcomes by using maps and spatial analysis and collecting the right location, demographic, and operational data needed to support racial justice.
Manage and analyze the performance of initiatives and services to understand and measure meaningful impact. Leverage decision-making tools to visualize racial inequities at a glance so that you can adapt strategies and operations accordingly.
Esri Blog
The Mapping Prejudice Project has uncovered 20,000 racially restrictive deeds in Minneapolis, and researchers have mapped the ongoing impacts.
ArcGIS Blog
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is shedding light on racial disparities, and inequitable community conditions surrounding COVID-19 are evolving rapidly. For example, racial and economic inequalities are emerging in testing and treatment. Use ArcGIS Dashboards to see racial inequities at a glance and adapt as the situation develops.
Esri Blog
The Trust for Public Land is a nonprofit organization that uses GIS in its partnerships with cities to transform vacant land into parks. Analysis with GIS helps factor equity.
Esri Blog
Location technology helps deliver civil legal aid to legally vulnerable populations—finding marginalized communities that are likely to be overlooked, and securing funding after a disaster strikes.
Story map
The African American Trail Project is a citywide network and community-based archive housed at Tufts University. The project maps African American public history sites while developing collaborative, community-based public history projects across greater Boston, Massachusetts. It aims to develop African American historical memory and intergenerational community.
ArcUser
We are seeing a shift toward using GIS technology to reduce disparities and social inequalities. The issues we hear on the news—homelessness, income inequality, unemployment, opioid abuse, blight, community policing, access to public transit, food deserts—all point to the social issues we should be applying data and analysis to solve.
Esri Blog
California's new Fair Maps Act has taken cues from the Dolores Huerta Foundation to make certain that district maps match the demographic makeup of a community. Maps provide a common ground to display divisions that are unfair to Latino and Sikh populations.
Esri Blog
The Presbyterian Church USA documented the breakdown of civil society in Central America and used a story map to educate members about migrants' perilous journey. Church leaders turned to storytelling with maps to relay details others weren't discussing, relate the human condition, and advocate for the migrants.
Join others in the GIS for Equity and Social Justice community on GeoNet to connect, collaborate, and share best practices on these topics. Ask questions or share your expertise.
For urgent GIS help responding to racial inequity, request support from Esri's Disaster Response Program.
Request response assistance
The nonprofit program provides access to the tools you need to bring location intelligence to your organization.
Request help for nonprofits
