by

This thesis explores geographic information systems (GIS) as a means of addressing issues of environmental equity. Specifically, this thesis attempts to develop a GIS methodology to assist the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in program evaluation based on equity criteria and in employing equity criteria for future program planning. The EPA Region 1, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) program was evaluated to determine if the allocation of EPA resources, in the form of facility inspections, is consistent with the distribution of facilities across different types of communities (e.g. rich communities, poor communities, communities of color). The thesis focuses on Massachusetts counties and the results are compared to other environmental equity studies conducted on a nationwide basis. The level of data aggregation used to identify particular community types was varied and results show that this variation impacted the degree of equity/inequity observed. The general techniques presented in this thesis could be modified and adapted fo