MASS VACCINATIONS: In 2020 the COVID-19 Pandemic shutdown the world with lockdowns implemented of different levels of severity and for different durations. Making vaccinations accessible was vital for ensuring mass vaccination campaigns were successful in reaching populations and ensuring countries could return to normal and travel across borders could resume.  To achieve this identifying where vaccination centers were located was vital along with modeling accessibility using local transportation modes.  To accomplish this we

• examined accessibility by bicycle, a common mode of transportation in the Netherlands, and 

• explored the spatial distribution of vaccination centers using different vaccination strategies (50%,  70%, 85%)

See Al-Huraibi et al for details.

MOBILITY: The emergence of new diseases and the re-emergence of old diseases are an increasing challenge. Recent years have seen the swift movement of West Nile virus (WNV) across the continental US; resurgence of dengue in the Americas; outbreaks of malaria in Europe as well as chikungunya in Europe, the Caribbean with local transmission reported in Florida. An integral part of defining how diseases are spread comes from understanding human movement and connectivity between landscapes. However, collecting human movement data is inherently difficult. I use novel data sources to 

• look at activity space, movement patterns and connectivity between places at a local, regional and international scales and at different time intervals (hourly, daily, monthly, seasonal, etc). 

• Twitter data (see publications Blanford et al., 2015; Blanford & Kioko, 2025)

• News sources (see publications Tomaszewski, et al., 2011)

• Open data sources such as Bike Share Data as a proxy for understanding movement patterns within urban areas (see publications Blanford, et al., 2020).

PERCEPTION OF EVENTS: Of particular interest is whether a person’s geographical location and the relevant content of their message can be mined to answer critically important questions about how a person perceives the risk associated with an event. The data collected may include an individual’s reaction to a threat, their spatial displacement from the threat and their general perception of the level of danger the threat poses. So, how can we leverage social media as a vehicle to understand perceptions of risk and to possibly stimulate appropriate citizen response to official advisories and warnings associated an event such as a  natural disaster. As a step towards addressing this question, we have been using social media data, specifically Twitter, to 

• understand people’s reactions leading up to, during and after an event using content-analysis and 

• assessing how effectively information is disseminated during an event by analyzing the public’s response to official NWS messages sent via Twitter (see publications Blanford et al, 2014).

• assessing sentiment during an event such as the Women's March 2017 (see publications Felmlee et al., 2020)

• SensePlace3: forages place-time-attribute information from the Twitterverse to support crisis management (see publications; see VAST Test of Time Award).

Sources

Book - Chapter 8. Accessibility Methods: Spatial accessibility to health services and essential healthcare in Blanford, J.I. (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

• 2025 Blanford, J.I. and Kioko, K. (accepted) A multidimensional space-time geospatial analysis for examining the spatial trends of vector-borne diseases: 20 years of malaria in Kenya. Acta Tropica. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001706X25003092

• 2025 Al-Huraibi, A., Amer, S., Blanford, J.I. (2025) Efficient allocation of vaccination centers to maximize coverage using common modes of transportation such as the bicycle. Geospatial Health

• 2023 Al-Huraibi, A., Amer, S., Blanford, J.I. (2023) Cycling to get my vaccination: how accessible are COVID-19 vaccination centers in the Netherlands? AGILE: GIScience Series, 4, 16, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5194/agile-giss-4-16-2023.

• 2020 Blanford, J.I. and MGIS Geog 586 Students (listed in alphabetical order T. Belcher, T. Black, E. Derner, J. Dunham, E. Galvan Campanero, M. Gority, R. Jones, B. Kaley, J. Kuli, R. Ligon, E. Mandal, T. Quink, J. Shinsky, M. Sodek, N. Teigland, S. Turner) (2020) Pedal Power: Explorers and commuters of New York Citi Bikesharing scheme. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0232957

• 2020 Felmlee, D., Blanford, J.I., Matthews, S., MacEachren, A.M. (2020) The Geography of Sentiment towards the Women’s March of 2017. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0233994

• 2020 Green, B. and Blanford, J.I. (2020) Estimating populations in refugee camps: a toolkit using remotely sensed data. Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Pp 2197- 2206

• 2018 Donkersely, P., Blanford, J.I., Queiroz, R.B., Silva, F.W.S., Carvalho, C.M., Al-Sadi, A.M. Elliot, S. (2018) Witch’s Broom Disease of Lime (Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia): identifying high-risk areas by climatic mapping. Journal of Economic Entomology

• 2018 Pfau, L. and Blanford J.I. (2018) Enhancing wilderness search and rescue through the use of geospatial data and technology. The Professional Geographer. 70(3):434-442 

• 2017 Taber, E., Hutchinson, M.L., Smithwick, E.A., Blanford, J.I. (2017) A decade of colonization: the spread of the Asian Tiger Mosquito in Pennsylvania and implications for disease risk. Journal of Vector Ecology. 42(1):3-12 

• 2016 Logan, J., Jolly, A., and Blanford, J.I. (2016) The Sociospatial Network: Risk and the role of place in the transmission of infectious diseases. PLoS One 11(2):e0146915 

• 2015 Blanford, J.I., Huang, Z., Savelyev, A. and MacEachren, A.M. (2015) Geo-located tweets. Enhancing mobility maps and capturing cross-border movement. PLoS One 10(6): e0129202. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129202 

• 2014 Blanford, J.I., Bernhardt, J., Savelyev, A., Wong-Parodi, G., Carleton, A.M., Titley, D.W. and MacEachren, A.M. (2014) Tweeting and Tornadoes. 11th International ISCRAM Conference. State College, Pennsylvania, USA. 

• 2012 Blanford, J.I., Kumar, S., Luo, W. and MacEachren, A.M. (2012) It’s a long, long walk: accessibility to hospitals, maternity and integrated health centers in Niger. International Journal of Health Geographics. 11:24

• 2011 Tomaszewski, B., Blanford, J.I., Ross, K., Pezanowski, S. & MacEachren A.M. (2011) Supporting Geographically-aware WebDocument Foraging and Sensemaking. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.35:192-207