HEGIS is located within the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota but has researchers from many different departments.

We conduct research, education, and outreach centered on advancing Geographic Information Science (GISc) approaches to understanding human, natural, and human-environment systems.

See our research page for a closer look at our projects or our publications. Also see the people page for individuals.

In terms of facilities, the HEGIS Lab is equipped with five Dell Precision Workstations, a high-performance computing node, and a full suite of analytical software. We have a full-time computer support specialist who maintains the HEGIS lab and other departmental labs with which HEGIS is associated, including:

1. The Geographic Analysis and Mapping Lab (GAML) contains 30 high-end PCs typically replaced on a three-year cycle. 
2. The Advanced GIS Lab contains 10 high-end PCs and 2 UNIX workstations, plus a variety of peripheral devices, typically replaced on a three-year cycle.
3. The Borchert Map Library has a well-equipped lab for cartographic and GIS work.
4. The Minnesota Population Center servers are housed in the Social Science Research Facility (SSRF), a fully supported computational cluster consisting of fifteen server-class machines and seven terabytes of RAID storage with highly automated tape backups, and off-site fire- and water-proof vault storage.