Colby Gray

I am an urban and environmental planner focused on Midwestern issues, with a current research emphasis on infrastructure systems. My work explores how publicly available GIS data can be used to develop frameworks and dashboards that communicate long-term infrastructure maintenance liabilities in clear and accessible ways. I am particularly interested in commuter patterns, range and threshold theory, and the visualization of emergent nodal distribution patterns in commercial land use.

More broadly, I work to develop tools and analytical frameworks that help communities establish local planning priorities and make informed infrastructure maintenance decisions.

I am also interested in strengthening GIS pedagogy so that students and practitioners can more easily explore environmental planning issues through geospatial tools. My teaching focuses on helping learners get up to speed quickly with GIS-based analysis and begin working with real datasets related to infrastructure, land use, and regional systems.