Biography

Daniel P. Johnson (Dan) is an associate professor of geography at Indiana University Indianapolis and director of academic research at The Polis Center.

A health geographer and spatial epidemiologist, his research combines spatial statistics with modern geospatial AI. His work spans three areas: urban environmental health risk modeling, with a focus on extreme heat and air quality; spatial-temporal disease surveillance; and geospatial AI built on Earth observation data. He develops statistical methods to map spatial risk and measure uncertainty and increasingly pairs these methods with advanced machine learning and satellite-based Earth observation to monitor environmental conditions. His early studies of heat vulnerability and urban heat exposure across U.S. metropolitan areas remain widely cited in environmental health and environmental justice research.

At The Polis Center, Johnson leads the center’s academic research mission, including a campuswide faculty fellows program, the integration of novel geospatial datasets into the SAVI platform, and efforts to position The Polis Center as a regional hub for community informatics and geospatial science.

Academic interests