This presentation showcases how QGIS can serve as a powerful, central platform for advancing community resilience research through spatial analysis. We demonstrate a novel approach to operationalizing the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) at fine spatial scales, enabling practitioners to move beyond coarse, aggregated assessments and instead uncover meaningful, place-based disparities within rural communities.
While the CCF is traditionally applied across seven domains—built, natural, human, social, political, cultural, and financial capital—this project introduces the concept of spatial capital as a critical, integrative dimension. By leveraging QGIS as the analytical hub, we reveal how geography itself—through proximity, connectivity, and infrastructure—fundamentally shapes access to opportunity. This spatial lens transforms how community assets are understood, shifting the focus from simple presence to real-world accessibility.
Drawing on rural case studies from the Midwestern United States, this work integrates open geospatial data with socioeconomic indicators to build a flexible, customizable and reproducible workflow centered in QGIS. The presentation highlights how QGIS enables the synthesis of diverse data sources and analytical techniques into a cohesive, scalable process. Attendees will see how spatial patterns of access emerge when community assets are analyzed in relation to transportation networks, physical barriers, and the lived realities of rural environments.
This approach positions QGIS not just as a mapping tool, but as a platform for spatial thinking and discovery. Through compelling visualizations and case examples, we illustrate how subtle infrastructural features—such as rail corridors, disconnected street networks, or uneven service distributions—can produce significant inequities in access, even within small communities. These insights underscore the importance of embedding spatial analysis into community development practice.
The session will also reflect on the opportunities and challenges of working with open data, including issues of data quality and consistency, and how QGIS can be used to navigate and mitigate these limitations through user defined configurations and modeling. By emphasizing transparency, adaptability, and accessibility, this workflow is designed to be used by researchers, planners, and community stakeholders alike.
Attendees will leave with a fresh perspective on how QGIS can be leveraged to support informed, data-driven decision-making. This presentation offers an engaging and forward-looking case study that repositions spatial analysis as a core component of community resilience—introducing spatial capital as a compelling new way to understand and map access and resources.