Services | Center for Geographic Analysis

How We Can Help

The CGA team is available to help support every stage of spatial research at Harvard, including analysis queries, idea and question refinement, data procurement, generation, or analysis, visualization, proposal writing, project consulting, software development, platform development, publication, and code documentation.

We offer the following services to the Harvard community:

Help Desk: We are available to help with technical problems encountered with GIS software. We aim to respond to all queries within one business day. Use our Contact Us form if you need help. The CGA's FAQ page provides information on how to access services such as geocoding, downloading US Census data with Social Explorer, and more.

Spatial Data: We curate a range of spatial datasets and can also help advise on the appropriate data for particular research applications, as well as location and access to requisite data.

Consultation Services: We provide short-term support in the form of advice, strategizing, and service on overcoming bottlenecks in your research project. This service is free for the first hour of consultation (per project) and is available to faculty, research associates, post-docs, grad students, visiting scholars, staff members, and undergraduates (e.g., for senior thesis) who are working on research that will be published (including dissertations). After the first hour, we charge a fee of $100/hour for Harvard affiliates using Harvard University controlled internal funding or a personal fund. To be eligible for the $100/hour rate, payment must be from a Harvard account (33-digit code) or a personal account of a valid Harvard ID holder. Work paid for by external funding sources is $200/hour. If payment presents a challenge, contact us and we’ll always see what we can do!

We aim to respond to consulting help requests within two business days. Specifically, we can help with the following:

Dynamic and static mapping/cartographic design and implementation (both print and digital)
Locating or generating appropriate data
Research project planning: incorporating spatial analysis and perspectives into initial study design and tools
Spatial data management: organization, sharing, curating, and secure storage
Generating research-ready spatial data: processing, cleaning, and wrangling
Research programming (e.g., R, Python, KNIME)
Research code organization (e.g., Git, GitHub)
Applying GeoAI, GenAI, data science and machine learning for complex spatial analysis
Designing solutions for spatial big data problems which cannot be handled by traditional GIS technologies
Scaling geospatial applications on High-Performance Compute Cluster (FASRC) and cloud (NERC) computing environments
Using Spatial databases (PostGIS, Heavy) to perform large scale complex analysis on big data
Visualizing large geospatial data at high speed using GPU based databases and other tools.

When a project requirement such as data development, conversion, processing, platform development, or platform hosting can be more efficiently procured outside Harvard, the CGA may be able to recommend vendors, help write a vendor contract, and help manage that vendor contract.

Limitations: Please note, we do not provide support for coursework, dual purpose research (i.e., coursework that informs a publication), or consulting research/work.

Acknowledging us: To help us track the impact of our services, we ask that you include a short acknowledgement in your publications and/or talks. You may wish to amend the following text to reflect the type of support you received (e.g., programming support).

“<Support type> was provided by spatial research specialist <consultant names>, at the Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University."

We also encourage you to email your publication titles directly to contact@help.cga.harvard.edu, so we can include them in our list of research output!

Collaborative Research: CGA team members are also available for more extended support and collaboration over the entire course of a research project. In these cases, one or more of our team is typically embedded on a project, from start to completion or for specific work packages or processes. Where proposals for external research funding are concerned, bringing us in early can help ensure spatial methods, data, and questions are state-of-the-field, innovative, and feasible.

We aim to respond to collaboration requests within two business days.

Specifically, we have expertise in the following:

Grant proposal conceptualization, writing, and response to reviews
Data sourcing, management, organization and cleaning
Descriptive analysis and data visualization
Spatial model estimation and post-estimation
Writing reproducible, version controlled code (e.g., R, Python, KNIME)
Interactive platform development and research dissemination
Drafting methods and results sections for written research outputs
Book manuscript support, including map creation and data analysis support.

In return for this extended support, we ask two things:

Authorship: The CGA team member who performs the work will receive author credit on all resulting research outputs (e.g., publications, talks, posters, documents, etc.).
Compensation: CGA will receive compensation for time spent working on the project at a rate of $100 per hour ($200 for externally-funded projects) or will be budgeted for directly in the project. The latter is ideal and ensures staffing capacity throughout the entire duration of projects!

Selection Process: Given our limited team size and demands for our services, collaborative projects are selectively chosen, based on time, expertise, feasibility, and alignment to CGA priorities.

Limitations: Please note, we cannot collaborate on research projects where the primary output is a sole-authored work (e.g., a dissertation or thesis).

Software: We manage site licenses for the ArcGIS suite, ERDAS Imagine, TerrSet, ENVI, FME and other products. We can also recommend open source spatial analysis tools and make available a variety of tools and code samples that were developed by CGA.

Hardware: We manage a number of handheld GPS units that can be checked out by Harvard affiliates for their research, and a large format plotter for poster printing. We also provide support with the acquisition and use of hardware and spatial tools/services on FAS Research Computing (FASRC) and New England Research Cloud (NERC).