GIS for Racial Equity & Social Justice: Overview

Location intelligence can help build a more equitable and just world where a person's race or ethnicity does not impact their outcomes. Mapping and GIS can provide insight into patterns of inequality and bring communities together around a common understanding to drive change.

Governments, nonprofits, and businesses can leverage GIS to identify, operationalize, and monitor progress and engagement on racial equity initiatives with their communities and constituents.

GIS supports best practices for engaging communities and stakeholders to achieve racial equity and justice. This cyclical workflow is comprised of several stages:

• Engage Communities and Partners on topics of inequity to increase awareness, understanding, and collaboration.
• Map and Analyze Inequities to understand inequities in experiences and outcomes within your community.
• Operationalize Positive Practices to design and plan equitable allocations of resources, alleviating burdens on communities of color.
• Manage Performance for Racial Equity to understand and measure meaningful impact.

Racial equity cannot be achieved in a vacuum. To ensure true equitable change, engage communities throughout the process to maintain alignment on mission, objectives, methodology, and outcomes of racial equity initiatives.

You can learn more about GIS for racial equity, get data, and see more examples of GIS advancing racial equity on the  GIS for Racial Equity and Social Justice  site. 

Fill out the form online to speak with a member of Esri’s racial equity team.