Jeremy Mennis

Associate Professor

Office: 329 Gladfelter Hall
Tel: 215 204 4748

E-mail:
jmennis@temple.edu

Areas of Expertise:

1. Geographic information science and systems: spatio-temporal databases, spatial analysis, geographic data mining
2. Environmental justice, urban ecology, and population modeling
3. Neighborhood and social contextual effects on human behavior (particularly concerning mental health, adolescent substance use, and crime)

Education:

2001 Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Geography
1997 M.S., Portland State University, Geography
1992 B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz, Environmental Geology

Courses:

GUS 0821: Digital Mapping

GUS 3062/4062: Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems
GUS 4065/5065: Applications in GIS/GIS II

GUS 5159: Geographic Inquiry

Research:

I am a geographic information scientist with research interests in how spatial information is represented and analyzed. Recently, I have become involved in projects revolving around modeling contextual neighborhood and social network effects on human behavioral outcomes, particularly outcomes related to mental health, adolescent substance use, and juvenile drug offense delinquency and recidivism. The growing prominence of contextual effects research provides a great opportunity for a scholar like myself, who has a background in social science and expertise in geographic information science and spatial analysis. I have sought out other researchers in applied domains such as Psychology, Psychiatry, and Criminal Justice with whom to work, in order to make substantial contributions to the literature in these areas. Complementarily, I seek to leverage these new domains as testing places to advance geographic information science theory and methodology.

My research has been funded by NASA, NIJ, NSF, and NIH, as well as internal grants from Temple University.

Service Activities:

I currently serve on the Board of Directors of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and on the editorial boards of the following peer-reviewed journals: Annals of the AAG, Geography Compass, Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) Journal, and Journal of Spatial Information Science.  I formerly served as Chair of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group (GISSSG), and as Academic Councilor of the AAG Cartography Specialty Group.

Current Research Projects:

Spatial Data Mining Juvenile Delinquency and Recidivism

This project, initially funded by a two year grant from NIJ to Temple University (P. Harris, P.I.), concerns modeling the likelihood of juvenile delinquency and recidivism by integrating characteristics of the individual juvenile, the neighborhood within which the juvenile resides, and the program to which the juvenile delinquent has been assigned. The project utilizes a data set of over 40,000 records of all delinquency cases assigned to a court-ordered program by the Family Court of Philadelphia, 1996-2004.

Social Ecology of Adolescent Substance Use

This project is funded by NIH/NIDA (M. Mason, P.I.). It addresses the influence of adolescents’ social networks and activity spaces (i.e. where the adolescent lives and spends their work and leisure time) on substance use.  We obtained data on the daily activities, social networks, and psychological characteristics of a sample of 301 adolescents from a public health facility in Philadelphia, PA for this research.

Neighborhood Effects on Mental Health Outcomes
This project has been funded by two small internal grants from the College of Liberal Arts and the Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University. The aim of the project is to understand place influences treatment continuity and the likelihood of rehospitalization for dually-diagnosed patients - those with both a mental illness and substance abuse diagnosis.

Past Research Projects:

Spatio-Temporal GIS (Multidimensional Map Algebra)

Multidimensional Map Algebra (MMA) is a data processing language for 2D, 2D+time, 3D, and 4D spatial and spatio-temporal raster data that extends conventional map algebra.  The aim is to develop algorithims that can facilitate research in a number of scientific spatio-temporal computing applications, such as the analysis of time series of satellite imagery and geocomputational simulation output.  This research was funded by NASA grant #NAG5-12598.

Spatial Analysis of Environmental Justice

Environmental justice is the principle that all people have equal protection under environmental laws and the right to participate in environmental decision-making in their community.  I am interested in the quantitative analysis of race, class, and other socioeconomic characteristics as they relate to indicators of environmental risk, particularly toxins produced from industrial and commercial activity.  Recent research has focused on the distribution of air toxic releases in New Jersey, as well as on racial equity in actions taken by agencies responsible for enforcing environmental policies.

Dasymetric Mapping and Areal Interpolation

The process of dasymetric mapping is the transformation of data from a set of arbitrary source zones to a dasymetric map via the overlay of the source zones with an ancillary data set.  This research addresses the design, implementation, validation, and application of a new ‘intelligent’ dasymetric mapping  (IDM) technique that supports a variety of methods for characterizing the relationship between the ancillary data and underlying statistical surface. 

Publications:

1. Mennis, J., Harris, P., Obradovic, Z., Izenman, A., Grunwald, H., and Lockwood, B., in press. The effects of neighborhood characteristics and spatial spillover on urban juvenile delinquency and recidivism. The Professional Geographer.
2. Mennis, J. and Mason, M.J., in press. The influence of people and places on adolescent substance use: Integrating activity space and social network data for analyzing health behavior. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
3. Grunwald, H., Lockwood, B., Harris, P., and Mennis, J., in press. Influences of neighborhood context, individual prior history and parenting behavior on recidivism among juvenile offenders. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
4. Mason, M., Valente, T., Coatsworth, J.D., Mennis, J., Lawrence, F., and Zelenak, P, in press. Place-based social network quality and correlates of substance use among urban adolescents. Journal of Adolescence.
5. Mennis, J., in press. Reflection Essay: Donna J. Peuquet’s “A Conceptual Framework and Comparison of Spatial Data Models”. In Classics in Cartography: Reflections on the Most Influential Articles from the Journal Cartographica (eds. M. Dodge and J.W. Crampton), Wiley, Chichester, UK.
6. Mason, M., Korpela, K. Coatsworth, J.D., Mennis, J., Valente, T., Lawrence, F. Pate, P., and Pomponio, A., 2010. Patterns of place-based self-regulatory experiences and associated mental health of urban adolescents. Journal of Community Psychology, 38(2): 155-171.
7. Mason, M.J. and Mennis, J., 2010. An exploratory study of the effects of neighborhood characteristics on adolescent substance use. Addiction Research and Theory, 18(1): 33-50.
8. Mennis, J., 2010. Multidimensional map algebra: design and implementation of a spatio-temporal GIS processing language. Transactions in GIS, 14(1): 1-21.
9. Guo, D. and Mennis, J., 2009. Spatial data mining and geographic knowledge discovery – An introduction. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 33(6): 403-408. [Note: Order of authorship is mistakenly reversed in publication]
10. Mason, M.J., Mennis, J., Coatsworth, D.J., Valente, T., Lawrence, F., and Pate, P., 2009. The relationship of place to substance use and perceptions of risk and safety in urban adolescents. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29: 485-492.
11. Stahler, G., Mennis, J., Cotlar, R, and Baron, D., 2009. The influence of the neighborhood environment on treatment continuity and rehospitalization for dually diagnosed patients discharged from acute inpatient care. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 166(11): 1258-1268. [Note: This article was the featured article in this issue, was the subject of an editorial by C. Latkin appearing in the same issue (p. 1207-1208) and was the subject of an article by M. Moran appearing in Psychiatric News (Vol. 44, p. 20-27), newspaper of the American Psychiatric Association.]
12. Mennis, J., 2009. Dasymetric mapping for small area population estimation. Geography Compass, 3(2): 727-745.
13. Stahler, G., Mazzella, S., Mennis, J., Chakravorty, S., Rengert, G., Spiga, R., 2009. The effect of individual, program, and neighborhood variables on continuity of treatment among dually diagnosed individuals.  In Y. Thomas, D. Richardson, & I. Cheung (Eds.). Geography and Drug Addiction. New York:  Springer Press, pp. 345-362 (expected publication date December, 2008). (Note: this book chapter is a reprint of Stahler et al. [2007], listed above)
14. Mennis, J., 2009. Representation – Mapping. In The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Volume 1 (eds. R. Kitchin and N. Thrift), pp. 357-363, Oxford: Elsevier.
15. Harris, P., Mennis, J., Obradovic, Z., Izenman, A., Grunwald, H., Lockwood, B., Jupin J., and Chisholm, L., 2009. Investigating the Simultaneous Effects of Individual, Neighborhood, and Program Effects on Juvenile Recidivism Using GIS and Spatial Statistics. Research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.
16. Mennis, J., 2008. Review of Local Models for Spatial Analysis. Transactions in GIS, 12(5): 647-649.
17. Stahler, G., Mazzella, S., Mennis, J., Chakravorty, S., Rengert, G., and Spiga, R., 2007. The effect of individual, program, and neighborhood variables on continuity of treatment among dually diagnosed individuals. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 87: 54-62.
18. Mennis, J. and Hultgren, T., 2006. Intelligent dasymetric mapping and its application to areal interpolation. Cartography and Geographic Information Science: 33(3): 179-194.
19. Mennis, J., 2006. Exploring the influence of ENSO on African vegetation variability using multidimensional map algebra. GIScience and Remote Sensing (formerly Mapping Sciences and Remote Sensing): 43(4): 352-376.
20. Mennis, J. and Hultgren*, T., 2006. ‘Intelligent’ dasymetric mapping and its comparison with other areal interpolation techniques. In Proceedings of AutoCarto 2006, June 26-28, Vancouver, WA (CD).
21. Mennis, J., 2006. Mapping the results of geographically weighted regression. The Cartographic Journal, 43(2): 171-179.
22. Mennis, J., 2006. Socioeconomic-vegetation relationships in urban, residential land: the case of Denver, Colorado. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 72(8): 911-921.
23. Mennis, J., 2005. The distribution and enforcement of air polluting facilities in New Jersey. The Professional Geographer, 57(3): 411-422.
24. Mennis, J.L. and Jordan*, L., 2005. The distribution of environmental equity: exploring spatial nonstationarity in multivariate models of air toxic releases. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(2): 249-268.
25. Mennis, J. and Hultgren*, T., 2005. Dasymetric mapping for disaggregating coarse resolution population data. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Cartographic Conference, July 11-16, A Coruña, Spain (CD).
26. Mennis, J., 2005. Spatial and temporal vegetation variability in Africa: an application of temporal map algebra. In Proceedings of the 2005 ASPRS Annual Conference, March 7-11, Baltimore, MD.
27. Mennis, J., Leong*, J., and Khanna*, R., 2005. Multidimensional map algebra. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Geocomputation, August 1-3, Ann Arbor, MI (CD).
28. Mennis, J., Viger*, R., and Tomlin, C.D., 2005. Cubic map algebra functions for spatio-temporal analysis. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 32(1): 17-32.
29. Mennis, J. and Liu*, J.W., 2005. Mining association rules in spatio-temporal data: an analysis of urban socioeconomic and land cover change. Transactions in GIS, 9(1): 13-18.
30. Mennis, J. and Viger*, R., 2004. Analyzing time series of satellite imagery using temporal map algebra. In Proceedings of the 2004 ASPRS Annual Conference, May 23-27, Denver, CO.
31. Mennis, J.L., 2003. Derivation and implementation of a semantic GIS data model informed by principles of cognition. Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems, 27: 455-479.
32. Mennis, J. and Liu*, J.W., 2003. Mining association rules in spatio-temporal data. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geocomputation, September 8-10, Southampton, UK (CD) (note: a revised version of this article was published in Transactions in GIS, as listed above)
33. Mennis, J. and Peuquet, D.J., 2003. The role of knowledge representation in geographic knowledge discovery: a case study. Transactions in GIS, 7(3): 371-391.
34. Mennis, J., 2003. Visualization and database support for geographic meta-mining. White Paper, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Geographic Visualization and Knowledge Discovery Workshop, November 18-20, Lansdowne, VA.
35. Mennis, J., 2003. Who lives near hazardous facilities? GIS and environmental risk and justice. Public Health GIS News and Information, May (No. 52):  12-15.
36. Mennis, J., 2003. Generating surface models of population using dasymetric mapping. The Professional Geographer, 55(1): 31-42.
37. Mennis, J., 2002. Socioeconomic disadvantage and environmentally hazardous facility location in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Geographer, XL(2): 113-124.
38. Mennis, J., 2002. Using geographic information systems to create and analyze statistical surfaces of population and risk for environmental justice analysis. Social Science Quarterly, 83(1): 281-297.           
39. Mennis, J., 2001. Exploring relationships between ENSO and vegetation vigour in the south-east USA using AVHRR data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 22(16): 3077-3092.
40. Mennis, J.L. and Fountain, A.G., 2001. A spatio-temporal GIS database for monitoring alpine glacier change. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 67(8): 967-97.
41. Mennis, J.L., Peuquet, D.J., and Qian, L., 2000. A conceptual framework for incorporating cognitive principles into geographical database representation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 14(6): 501-520.
42. Mennis, J.L., Peuquet, D.J., and Guo, D., 2000. A semantic GIS database model for the exploration of spatio-temporal environmental data. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling (GIS/EM4): Problems, Prospects, and Research Needs (B.O. Parks, K.M. Clarke, and M.P. Crane, editors), September 2-8, 2000, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (WWW and CD).
43. Mennis, J.L., 2000. Human cognition as a foundation for GIS database representation. In: Graduate Student Research Papers, UCGIS Summer Assembly, June 21-24, 2000, Welches, OR. Leesburg, VA: University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, pp. 4.1-4.17.
44. Edsall, R.M., Harrower, M., and Mennis, J.L., 2000. Tools for visualizing properties of periodicity in spatial and temporal geographic data. Computers and Geosciences, 26(1): 109-118.
45. Mennis, J.L., 1999. Methodological issues in GIS-based environmental justice research. In: Proceedings of Environmental Problem Solving with Geographic Information Systems: A National Conference, September 22-24, 1999, Cincinnati, OH. Washington D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (CD).
46. Mennis, J.L., 1999. Using GIS, spatial statistics, and visualization to investigate environmental justice. In: Proceedings of the Joint Statistical Meetings 1999: Statistical Science at the Interface, Section on Statistical Graphics, August 8-12, 1999, Baltimore, MD. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association (CD).