"Persistent Homology for Resource Coverage: A Case Study of Access to Polling Sites"

One of my paper was published in final form last week. Here are some details.

Title: Persistent Homology for Resource Coverage: A Case Study of Access to Polling Sites

Authors: Abigail Hickok, Benjamin Jarman, Michael Johnson, Jiajie Luo, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: It is important to choose the geographical distributions of public resources in a fair and equitable manner. However, it is complicated to quantify the equity of such a distribution; important factors include distances to resource sites, availability of transportation, and ease of travel. We use persistent homology, which is a tool from topological data analysis, to study the availability and coverage of polling sites. The information from persistent homology allows us to infer holes in a distribution of polling sites. We analyze and compare the coverage of polling sites in Los Angeles County and five cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Jacksonville, New York City, and Salt Lake City), and we conclude that computation of persistent homology appears to be a reasonable approach to analyzing resource coverage.