John Wilson

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LLB Hons, BSc Hons, MSc, University of Canterbury, New Zealand PhD, Geography, University of Toronto, Canada

Dr. John Wilson is an internationally recognized leader in research on spatial perspectives about human health, sustainability and the environment. John and the professional staff, visiting scholars, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate research students affiliated with the Wilson Map Lab provide spatial analytics and models to help inform how we can build healthier communities and more resilient and sustainable rural and urban landscapes. These projects make extensive use of BIM, GIS, GPS, and a variety of remote sensing technology platforms. He is the editor-in-chief of Transactions in GIS (Wiley/Blackwell) and the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge project sponsored by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

Dr. Wilson is the founding Director of the Spatial Sciences Institute in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He is also a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; School of Architecture; the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering; and the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine at USC. He also serves as the Co-Director of the Climate and Health Working Group, the Exposure Sciences Research Core and the External Factors Facility Core in the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and the Center for Knowledge-Powered Interdisciplinary Data Science. He also serves as the Spatial Sciences Lead, Clinical Research Informatics, Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute and is a Professor in the Institute for Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research that is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.

His most recent book, Environmental Applications of Digital Terrain Modeling (Wiley/Blackwell) describes the use of DEMs, land surface parameters, land surface objects and landforms in environmental projects. The book also serves as a reference text for environmental scientists in related fields, such as landscape architecture and urbanism, who wish to integrate these digital terrain workflows and outputs into their own specialized work environments. He has published more than 130 book chapters and refereed journal articles on a variety of topics connected with geodesign, geographic information science, hydrology, landscape ecology, population and public health, and spatial data science in a career spanning nearly four decades. His upcoming book focuses on spatial data science.