Geospatial Institute Research
Geospatial@SLU has a variety of primary areas of research, designed to be inclusive of a variety of disciplines and challenges.
Research Areas
Geospatial@SLU allows for researchers from a variety of disciplines to develop strategic collaborations. The synergistic impact of Geospatial@SLU offers great energy and insights for broadening current research efforts beyond what has individually been accomplished.
As geospatial science is a continually growing field, researchers at SLU are using emerging and adaptive technological opportunities to respond to grand research challenges. The foundation of geospatial research at SLU is utilizing emerging and adaptive technology including remote sensing, artificial intelligence/machine learning, unmanned aerial systems, cloud and edge computing, software development, social media, and smartphone technology.
Related to our foundation, Geospatial@SLU has developed thematic research areas. We have selected these areas due to their consistency to current faculty expertise and current geospatial science utilities.
Our primary areas of research include the following:
- Biology and Bioinformatics
- Climate Change
- Disaster Preparedness and Response
- Economic Development and Social Instability
- Food, Water and Human Insecurity
- GeoEthics
- Public Health
- Transportation and Supply Chain
These research themes are purposefully broad and intended to be inclusive of diverse areas of interest. Geospatial@SLU will establish and recruit faculty colleagues to participate in the research efforts by developing and collaborating on research proposals, reviewing internal research funding requests, and participate in grant writing days.
Impact
One of the distinguishing features of Geospatial@SLU is that its foundation is built on SLU鈥檚 mission 鈥� the pursuit of Truth for the service of humanity 鈥� and the Jesuit Tradition, which fosters a culture of excellence in teaching, research, and service and calls us to pursue justice, improve the human condition and reflect on moral and ethical issues.
Building on this rich tradition, Geospatial@SLU is in a unique position to work and collaborate with industry, government agencies, and community organizations in unique ways to advance the corpus of academic and applied research, expand the research capacity, and create ethical leaders that work or will work in the expanding geospatial fields.
Built on this solid foundation, Geospatial@SLU will evolve into a top geospatial program and premier resource and partner for research, training and innovation nationwide.
Benefits from Geospatial@SLU will include:
- Dynamic and relevant curriculum
- New and updated degree programs
- Consistent and sustainable growth
- New research teams and world-class cyberinfrastructure
Outcomes from Geospatial@SLU will include:
- Top national geospatial center
- Core contributor to St. Louis regional development
- Collaborative expertise to respond to previously unanswerable questions
- Coordinated geospatial services across SLU schools and departments
- Academic industry partner of choice throughout the St. Louis region
Research Labs
Des Peres Hall, Room 209
3694 West Pine Mall
Saint Louis, Missouri 63108
Learn more:
The lab has more than half a million dollars of computing, storage, and imaging equipment including:
- High-end GPU computing. 3 dual graphical processing unit (GPU), High Performance Computing (HPC) workstations (Intel Xeon Platinum 24 Core (96 threads), 3.7GHz, nVidia Quadro P6000 GPU, 512GB RAM, 60TB solid state hard drive); 15 state-of-the-art workstations (64GB RAM, 1TB Solid State Boot Drive, 20TB storage); and 40 TB network server storage (NAS).
- Other equipment, including: 10 unmanned aerial systems (UASs), a hand-held PSR-3500 full-range (350 nm -2500 nm, 3 nm spectral resolution) spectroradiometer from Spectral Evolution (Lawrence, MA), two UAS hyperspectral cameras (~3 nm spectral resolution) including BaySpec OCI-F-1000 Hyperspectral camera (BaySpec Inc., San Jose, CA) and Headwall Nano Hyperspectral camera (Headwall Photonics, Inc., Fitchburg, MA); mulstipsectral cameras (MicaSense RedEdge and a Parrot Sequoia); a FLIR Vue Pro R thermal camera, and a ICI 8640 P-Series thermal camera (Infrared Camera Inc., Beaumont, TX); and HDL-32 LiDAR from Phoenix LiDAR Systems.
- Software tools, including the latest version of ArcGIS, Trimble GPS, HydroLight-EcoLight V.5.3 (HE53), MODTRAN/ATCOR atmospheric correction tool, and ENVI+IDL with all modules (SARscape, Photogrammetry and FLASH).
Morrissey Hall, Rm 1900
This lab has 3 computers running Windows 7. The computers in these labs contain the following software:
- 7-Zip
- Analyst鈥檚 Notebook
- eCognition Developer
- ESRI: ArcPro, ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcScience, ArcGlobe, ArcPad, and ArcGIS Explorer
- GeoDA, GeoDaSpace, PCI Geomatica
- MS-Office Suite
- QGIS
- STATA, SPSS, R, Python
- Trimble Pathfinder Office
- Web Browsers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome
The Geospatial Health Lab at Saint Louis University is located in Salus Center, Room 318, this lab's research topics include: incorporating health systems and geospatial information systems to respond to health needs; drug use and overdose patterns, sexual health, HIV infection prevention and care, and mapping health resources, including food access.