Florida State University launches Spatial Data Science Center
Florida State University launches Spatial Data Science Center
Florida State University has formally launched the Spatial Data Science Center (SDSC) within the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, creating a campus hub for interdisciplinary teams working on society’s most pressing challenges. The center, anchored by Krafft Professor of Spatial Data Science A. Stewart Fotheringham, brings together researchers who specialize in geospatial analytics, GeoAI, public health, transportation, and environmental resilience.
“The center’s investments in spatial data science will yield powerful insights into the health of our people and planet… the time for a major social science big data initiative at FSU is now.”
— Tim Chapin, Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy
Advancing flagship research
The SDSC is already leading several large-scale initiatives:
- Election analytics: processing voting behavior for more than 200,000 U.S. precincts across the 2020 and 2024 elections to better understand local dynamics.
- Explainable GeoAI: developing transparent machine learning models that show why spatial predictions are made, improving trust and adoption.
- MGWR innovation: optimizing the multiscale geographically weighted regression framework so it can run efficiently on standard laptops while working with massive datasets.
Collaboration across campus and beyond
The center is intentionally collaborative—engaging faculty and students from health, transportation, sociology, political science, urban planning, economics, and other disciplines. Graduate researchers are core to the SDSC’s mission, with new dedicated workspace in the Bellamy Building and plans for a campuswide spatial data science forum in February 2026.
SDSC welcomes partnerships with FSU units, government agencies, nonprofits, and industry. Faculty and practitioners interested in collaborating can reach out via cosspp.fsu.edu/sdsc or contact Director Stewart Fotheringham at stewart.fotheringham@fsu.edu.
Story adapted from reporting by Rebecca Sage and Rachel Lechwar for FSU News.