Yale to Launch Center for Geospatial Solutions

Yale will create a new Center for Geospatial Solutions (YCGS) to enhance the university’s research, training, and engagement infrastructure in the rapidly evolving areas of geospatial science, data, and analysis, university leaders have announced.

Geospatial methods have a wide range of practical applications, including the potential to help address global challenges such as human displacement related to climate change and more accurately forecast economic activity. YCGS will draw upon this potential to help the university community amplify its mission and its work in a variety of fields, including economics, public health, and environmental science, said Yale Provost Scott Strobel.

YCGS will be led by inaugural co-directors Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment and director of the Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, and Costas Arkolakis, professor of economics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The center will offer new advanced geospatial research support for faculty and students, while integrating and leveraging existing geospatial support that is currently distributed across campus. It will also lead in strengthening geospatial data science course offerings, develop advanced training programs, and foster interdisciplinary research collaborations and partnerships with industry to enhance knowledge and training infrastructure.

“Addressing the challenges and opportunities of our modern world requires a wide range of experts working in concert,” Strobel. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will heighten our ability to collaborate in this way at Yale. It will help us engage powerful new tools and modes to improve our teaching and research and, by extension, the global communities we serve. We are fortunate to have Professor Seto and Professor Arkolakis to lead us in this important work.”