Olivia Redmond's GIS Portfolio

This portfolio brings together my work as a geographer, environmental thinker, and creative mapmaker. Each project reflects my curiosity about weather, climate, and the environments people live in, and my commitment to using GIS as a tool for clarity, connection, and understanding.

Across these maps and analyses, I explore how landscapes shape human experience and how environmental change influences the places people call home. My work spans coastal flood risk mapping, climate interpolation, terrain based route modeling, historical tornado analysis, sea level rise visualization, and suitability studies for recreation and conservation. Though each project is grounded in its own data and methods, they are united by a focus on the relationship between geography and humanity.

I use GIS to illuminate the patterns hidden in environmental systems. In Virginia, I mapped seasonal temperature gradients through geostatistical interpolation, revealing how weather shifts between mountains and coast. Along the shoreline of Jamaica Beach on Galveston Island, I created a flood risk map that combines elevation, FEMA hazard data, coastal hydrology, and building footprints to show where storm surge, tides, and heavy rainfall pose the greatest risks to homes and streets. Building on that work, I modeled sea level rise impacts for the wider Galveston region, visualizing future inundation under multiple scenarios. This map highlights how rising water, subsidence, and storm surge threaten vulnerable neighborhoods and shows how climate driven coastal change intersects with the daily lives of people who live near the Gulf.

In the Darién Gap, I modeled least cost paths across dense rainforest and wetlands to understand how terrain and hydrology guide potential corridors through one of the most inaccessible regions in the world. My tornado outbreak analysis traced the paths of two historic super outbreaks and revealed how atmospheric events increasingly interact with metropolitan areas. In the Cuyamaca and Laguna Mountains, I built topographic and weighted suitability maps to identify potential campground sites and show how elevation, vegetation, and terrain ruggedness influence outdoor access.

Technically, my work ranges from raster calculation, hydrologic and terrain modeling, geostatistical interpolation, cost distance analysis, remote map server integration, FEMA hazard interpretation, sea level rise visualization, and multi criteria suitability modeling. Creatively, I focus on clear and intuitive cartography that helps viewers understand complex environmental conditions through visual storytelling.

Most importantly, my portfolio reflects my belief that geography can help people navigate a changing world. Every dataset, every surface, and every map is ultimately connected back to people—their safety, comfort, resilience, and relationship with place. My goal is to create work that supports better decisions, sparks curiosity, and gives purpose to the stories maps can tell.