Publications

Sep, 2026

ORNL Report

The ORNL ADDRESS Geocoder: Deployment, Quality Assessment, and Lessons Learned from Multi-State Cancer Registry and Pennsylvania Radon Residential Address Geocoding.

The Automated Determination of Detailed Regional and Exact Spatial Segments geocoder, developed at ORNL, was applied to standardize geocoding of multi-state cancer registry residential history data for the NCI Cancer Outcomes and Neighborhood Environmental Correlations Tracker (CONNECT) project and the PA geocoding assessment of residential addresses associated with indoor…

Sep, 2026

Journal

High-resolution modeling of indoor radon exposure with uncertainty quantification in Utah

Indoor radon accounts for 37% of population-level exposure to ionizing radiation in the United States. However, radon metrics are typically reported at coarse spatial scales, potentially obscuring meaningful local variation. We developed a high-resolution modeling framework to estimate indoor radon concentrations across Utah while explicitly quantifying predictive uncertai…

Aug, 2026

ORNL Report

C-HER Metadata Overview: Approach, Standards, and Rigor for the Centralized Health and Exposomic Resource

The Centralized Health and Exposomic Resource (C-HER) unifies environmental, demographic, geographic, and health-related data for exposomic research. The source data differ in format, geographic coverage, time period, resolution, terminology, and documentation. We use a common metadata framework to describe those differences and to record how each data resource has been pr…

Aug, 2026

Journal

Quantifying mean, variability, and uncertainty in indoor radon exposure in Pennsylvania using random forest and quantile regression forest models

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that poses a serious health risk as the primary cause of lung cancer in non-smokers. Despite the well-known adverse association with health outcomes, current radon exposure assessments are limited to county-level or average-level estimates, which fail to capture regional variability. This study uses Machine Learning models, in…

Jun, 2026

Journal

Investigating the opioid epidemic across the United States: Associations between county-level characteristics and overdose mortalit

The opioid crisis remains a critical public health challenge in the United States. Despite national efforts that reduced opioid prescribing by nearly 44% between 2011 and 2021, opioid overdose deaths more than tripled during the same period. This alarming trend reflects a major shift in the crisis, with illegal opioids now driving the majority of overdose deaths instead of…

Jan, 2026

ORNL Report

National Cancer Institute Exposomic Linkage Protocol

Sep, 2024

Journal

Evaluation of Digital Nautical Chart data for confirmation and expansion of GeoNames data

This work examines how Digital Nautical Chart (DNC) data may contribute to the evolution and refinement of GeoNames data for near-shore features. GeoNames features are point data with one or more possible place names. DNC Earth Cover Text (ECRText) objects are map labels positioned nearby their real word counterpart. ECRText feature map position strikes a compromise betwee…

Jul, 2024

Journal

Environmental determinants of health: Measuring multiple physical environmental exposures at the United States census tract level

Physical environment plays a key role in determining human health risks. Exposure to toxins, weather extremes, degraded air and water quality, high levels of noise and limited accessibility to green areas can negatively affect health. Furthermore, adverse environmental exposures are often correlated with each other and with socioeconomic status, thereby compounding disadva…

Mar, 2024

Journal

A dataset of recorded electricity outages by United States county 2014–2022

In this Data Descriptor, we present county-level electricity outage estimates at 15-minute intervals from 2014 to 2022. By 2022 92% of customers in the 50 US States, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico are represented. These data have been produced by the Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information (EAGLE-ITM), a geographic information system and data visualizati…

Mar, 2024

Journal

Evaluating county-level lung cancer incidence from environmental radiation exposure, PM2.5, and other exposures with regression and machine learning models

Characterizing the interplay between exposures shaping the human exposome is vital for uncovering the etiology of complex diseases. For example, cancer risk is modified by a range of multifactorial external environmental exposures. Environmental, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors all shape lung cancer risk. However, epidemiological studies of radon aimed at identifying…