51ÔÚÏß

Bio

Dr. Barnali Dixon is a Professor at School of Geosciences and contribute to Geography and Environmental Science and Policy programs. Dr. Barnali Dixon is the Director of the Geospatial Analytics Lab (G-SAL) and also the Executive Director and PI for the Initiative on Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (iCAR) at USF. Her research focuses on the development and application of Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) integrated with Geospatial Technologies and geocomputation for modeling and managing land-water interfaces in the context of extreme weather events and climate change (including sea level rise) with an emphasis on contaminate transport and vulnerability assessment.

Dr. Dixon is particularly interested in modeling land-water interface under climate change in the context of planning, adaptation and resilience with a particular emphasis on human dimension analysis. Her current projects include analysis of contamination levels in the coastal waters of 51ÔÚÏß using GIS, and an integrative analysis of biophysical and socio-economic vulnerability to coastal flooding, coastal adaptation and resilience. Her recently completed project funded by AT&T included the development of an integrated Community Resiliency Information System (CRIS). Her current NSF-funded project is called ‘’.

Both G-SAL and iCAR offers opportunities for students to be involved in cutting-edge interdisciplinary research (funded and non-funded).

She is particularly interested in the development of transdisciplinary and spatially explicit models using Artificial Intelligence tools (AI) such as fuzzy logic, Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machine, Relevance Vector Machine, Random Forest and other machine learning algorithms and soft computing techniques. She is considered one of the leaders in the subfield of geocomputation, where geospatial technologies intersect with machine learning and soft computing tools. She has collaborated with researchers from Argentina, China, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand and Turkey. She has published over 50 refereed publications and received over $3.5 million in grants and contracts. She authored the book, "GIS and Geocomputation for Water Resources Science and Engineering" (Wiley), which was recognized since 2019 on a list of and  by Book Authority. Her recent book titled ‘Interdisciplinary Environmental Solutions: Using geospatial technologies for bridging disciplines, scale and data’ is in press with Springer/Palgrave International Publishing. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Specialist Award (to work with Thailand’s space center GISTDA) and Outstanding Mentor Award from the 51ÔÚÏß Society of Geographers. She received a Master's degree in Geosciences and a Ph.D. in Environmental Dynamics from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, 2001.

Research

Specialty Area

GIS, Geocomputation, Integrated Water Resources Modeling and Coastal Resilience