Submitted by Joseph Shapiro on
This research studies questions of how the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act is designed. About 150,000 U.S. public water systems provide drinking water to different parts of the U.S. How clean is the water these systems provide? What are consequences of polluted and low-quality water for health and well-being of U.S. families? How equal is water quality across different social groups? How has federal regulation and support affected these systems and these environmental and health outcomes?
Research assistance is sought with obtaining and setting up a number of datasets for many U.S. states. We are compiling data on drinking water quality, attributes of drinking water providers, drinking water sources, and related data. This includes geographic information systems (GIS) shapefiles, standard databases, and other formatted info.
The student should have (1) excellent written and spoken communication skills, (2) comfort cold-calling, emailing, and corresponding with government officials in U.S. states to obtain and clarify data, (3) superb organizational skills to manage many large databases.
Experience with ArcMap and any statistical package (e.g., Stata) would be useful though is not required.