Dr. Barnali Dixon is a Professor at School of Geosciences and contributes to the Geography and Environmental Science and Policy programs. Dr. 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 for water contamination and vulnerability, with a particular focus on terrestrial source and aquatic sinks in the context of extreme weather events and climate change (including sea level rise). Dr. Dixon models land-water interface under climate change in the context of planning, adaptation and resilience with a particular emphasis on human dimension. Her current projects include analysis of contamination levels in the coastal waters of Florida using GIS, and an integrative analysis of biophysical and socio-economic vulnerability to coastal flooding, coastal adaptation and resilience. Her current AT&T funded project includes development of an integrated Community Resiliency Information System (CRIS). Both G-SAL and iCAR offers opportunities for students to be involved in cutting-edge interdisciplinary research (funded and non-funded).

Dr. Dixon 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 $1.5 million in grants and contracts. She authored the book, GIS and Geocomputation for Water Resources Science and Engineering (Wiley), which was recognized on the 2019 list of 100 Best GIS Books by Book Authority https://bookauthority.org/books/best-gis-books. She is working on her second book titled Interdisciplinary Environmental Solutions: Using geospatial technologies for bridging disciplines, scale and data (Springer 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 Florida Society of Geographers. She received a Ph.D. in Environmental Dynamics from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, 2001.