Rob Edsall is a specialist in geographic information technology and applications, including geographic information systems, cartography and geospatial visualization, and spatial data analysis. As the manager of INL’s partnerships with CISA’s National Risk Management Center, he provides thought leadership on risk and resilience to CISA’s primary critical infrastructure risk analysis organization.
Dr. Edsall joined the lab in 2015 after spending 15 years as a professor of geography at Arizona State University, the University of Minnesota, and Idaho State University. He is the author of over two dozen peer-reviewed publications in geography, earth science, and meteorology journals and books. His academic research specializes in geo-visual analytics, statistical data visualization, and spatial analysis and their applications to climate science, public health, social and behavioral studies, and many other fields. He has presented at over sixty academic and industry conferences and has decades of experience in creating graphic, written, and data products for academic, government, and private-sector projects.
Since joining the lab, Dr. Edsall has led projects on regional and sector-specific resilience, serving as lead researcher and author on studies of supply chains, water treatment, fuel pipelines, and natural and human hazard characterizations. He oversees teams developing novel approaches for visualization and analysis of infrastructure networks, and develops designs for the representation of complex, multivariate, and spatially dense assets and systems. He takes pride in cultivating relationships with decision makers and analysts in the public and private sector by listening to their particular needs and priorities, communicating the value and impact of the methods and ideas developed at the lab, and bridging their knowledge gaps with lab capabilities and solutions.