Tennessee Community Water System (CWS) Estimated Service Area Boundary (ESAB) Digitization Process

The Tennessee Community Water System (CWS) Estimated Service Area Boundary (ESAB) Digitization Process is a state-sponsored research project. For this project, DWJL members partnered with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), and the Tennessee Association of Utility Districts (TAUD) to visualize and analyze community water systems throughout Tennessee. The DWJL has employed both QGIS and ArcMap to digitize community water systems from TDEC field offices. These digitization processes will enable the DWJL, TDH, TDEC, and TAUD to implement data geovisualization strategies to analyze these data to inform drinking water policy, environmental health policy, and emergency preparedness for extreme weather in Tennessee.

Research Assistants: Marie Caiola (Lead)

Faculty Advisors: Dr. Yolanda J. McDonald

Student Alumni: Austin Fernandez,Minoli Fernando, Rachel Flores, Ashley Kim, Aakash Manapat,, Meena Muthusubramanian, Adrienne Parks, & Dmitry Semenov

Academic Publications:

• Ding, K.J., Hornberger, G.M., Hill, E.L., and McDonald, Y.J. (2022). Where you drink water: An assessment of the Tennessee, USA public water supply. Water, 14(16), 2562.

Presentations:

• Kim, A., Manapat, A., Caballero, M. D., Semenov, D., McDonald. Y. J. So Exactly Where Are Community Water Systems Located? (paper: presenter). Organized by Anderson, K. M. and McDonald, Y. J.; Discussant: VanDerslice, J. American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, April 2021, Virtual.
• Anderson, K. M. and McDonald, Y. J. Unmasking Differences: How Using the Correct Unit of Analysis in Geospatial Drinking Water Research Has the Potential to Reveal Community-Level Differences, (paper: presenter). Applied Geography Annual Conference, October 2020, Virtual.

Public Scholarship:

• Caiola, M. and Anderson, K. M. on behalf of the Vanderbilt Drinking Water Justice Lab (March 2022). Tennessee Community Water System Estimated Service Area Boundary Project [Presentation]. Annual Tennessee Association of Utility Districts Technology Conference, Knoxville, TN.

Theoretical Frameworks: 

• The Drinking Water Disparities Framework (Balasz & Ray, 2014)
• The Framework of the Components of Drinking Water Infrastructure (VanDerslice, 2011)