A Case Study on Assessment of Environmental Justice using GIS in Franklin County, Ohio, USA

Environmental justice is a growing concern in the United States. This study is an attempt to assess if fairness exists when it comes to the population of Franklin County concerning the location of industries based on environmental laws. Industries in Franklin County are taken into consideration and the areas surrounding it to assess the concern of environmental justice using tools in geographic information systems (GIS). This study concentrates on Franklin County as it is one of the most populated counties in Ohio as of 2019. Eleven major cities and industrial facilities are selected in Franklin County. A 4-mile buffer zone is considered around each city using ArcGIS to find the number of industries surrounding them. Pollution is gauged with the count of industries in the considered buffer zones. This study assumes that the number of industries is directly proportional to pollution. Minority and low-income data are extracted from the US Census Bureau. The number of minorities and low-income populations in the considered buffer zone is found using ArcMap. Minority population and income brackets of the population in a buffer zone are compared to the extent of industrial facilities in the same buffer zone. Statistical analysis is performed on the samples to find the correlation between the extent of industrial facilities and minorities to assess Environmental Justice. Another buffer is created using a 14-mile radius (with the centroid of the Franklin County as center) is created using EJSCREEN version 2019 to compare environmental indicators and demographic indicators with the NAAQs standard pollutants. A comparative analysis is performed to evaluate the results. The results indicate that there is no significant correlation between the minority population and industries in the selected 4-mile buffer zones. This approach can apply to any small geographic areas such as counties, zip codes, and census tracts to assess environmental justice.