Geospatial Approaches for Environmental Justice: A Critical Review

Environmental justice (EJ) research is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with the unequal distribution of environmental burdens and benefits across different sociodemographic identities (e.g., race, class). While considerations of space and time with respect to environmental exposures and health outcomes have always been central to EJ, the state of the science on geospatial methods, measures, and technologies is rapidly advancing, as are their applications in research. We find that geospatial technologies have extended researchers' abilities to more precisely link the spatial extents of environmental exposures to when and where people live, work, and play. Geospatial data are also useful in analyzing systemic oppression and structural racism as root causes of environmental injustice via metrics of segregation and redlining. This review provides an overview of how geospatial methods and technologies are being applied to EJ research for (<i>a</i>) population identification, (<i>b</i>) exposure assessment, (<i>c</i>) outcome ascertainment, and (<i>d</i>) research translation.