HELP DESK
Help Desk hours
are Mondays 3 - 4 pm and Fridays 11 am - 12 pm
Need help with maps? Considering geospatial analyses to enhance your research design? What patterns might you find if you were to geolocate your survey results and look at related population demographics? Are you looking for GIS (geographic information science) data for a Story Map?
The Spatial Sciences Institute encourages you to bring us your questions about maps, data visualization, spatial data acquisition, geospatial modeling, spatial sampling strategies, GIS, web mapping and applications, and related inquiries.
We offer a drop-in Spatial Sciences Help Desk for all USC faculty, staff, and students two hours a week. We’re located on the first floor of the Allan Hancock Foundation building in AHF 146. We offer professional guidance: we’ll discuss your project with you, answer questions, give feedback and suggestions, recommend data and software alternatives, and help you develop the framework for geospatial success.
USC Spatial is an interdisciplinary bridge across shared interests and common ground. Additional geospatial services we offer are fee-based and will vary according to need; these may include complete project support or help with scope of work or proposal development.
As examples of our many productive collaborations within USC, we work with researchers from the USC Dornsife Departments of Biological Sciences, Earth Sciences, History, and Sociology; the USC School of Architecture; the USC Viterbi School of Engineering along with the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT); the Gould School of Law; and Keck School of Medicine of USC's Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). We also partner with other educational institutions, non-profits, mission-based for-profits and government agencies.
We apply a spatial perspective to a diverse array of research. We investigate environmental systems; air pollution and water quality; sustainability; human health, social vulnerability, behavior, migration, crime, and cultural institutions; transportation, planning, and development; location and network optimization; and numerous other topics – over space, place and time. SSI trains interdisciplinary scholars at all levels; offers proprietary GIS and remote sensing software to USC students at no cost or discounted prices; and provides USC faculty and staff with opportunities to purchase software at a discounted campus site license price. How may we assist you?
Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to drop by during these help desk hours and/or to leave a message at spatial_support@usc.edu to propose a date and time to meet with the USC Spatial professional staff.
Thank you!