In today’s data-driven world, understanding where things happen is just as important as understanding what is happening. From tracking supply chain networks to optimizing service delivery, geospatial data is becoming an essential tool for researchers and practitioners alike.

Join us on May 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. GMT for an engaging and practical session in CARISCA’s Training Series designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of geospatial modeling using accessible tools.

So much of the data we encounter today has a geospatial identifier—a variable indicating where on the map the datapoint is tagged. Being able to work with this type of data unlocks a range of friendly and helpful analytics techniques — making maps, calculating distances between two facilities, checking to see what facilities are in what regions, and so on.

With this workshop, using only free and open-access software (R programming language), we will cover the basics of geospatial modeling: reading in geospatial datasets, cleaning geospatial datasets, and parsing them. The outcome of the workshop is being able to work with geospatial data in R, including making maps.

About the Speaker

Mark Brennan is an Assistant Professor in the Rutgers School of Business. Mark works on the operational dimensions of inequality: showing how supply chains reproduce inequality, and strengthening operations through applied projects, field research, and nationwide econometric studies. Focusing on the essential operations that keep people fed, housed, and healthy, he is working to broaden operation management’s empirical evidence base, link ideas in supply chain and urban planning, and share this thinking in popular media including New Jersey newspapers. Before Rutgers, Mark led the UN’s food stamps retail operation in Somalia, did analytics for Boston’s public ambulance service, and ran studies for USAID and FEMA. Mark was born and raised in Central Jersey. He got his PhD from MIT, and before that, he studied applied math on a Mitchell Scholarship and earned a BA at Johns Hopkins University.

This session is ideal for anyone looking to build practical, hands-on skills in data analysis and visualization, particularly within supply chain and development contexts.