About

Camille Barchers is a faculty member at the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on how planners and the field of planning are adapting to new technology. Specifically, she examines how information communication technology can be used by planning agencies to create opportunities for community engagement and how planners can utilize new data and data sources to conduct long-range planning for resilience and equity. From a methodological perspective, Barchers is interested in using content analysis to examine datasets such as Twitter and employs experimental approaches to understand how different methods of engagement and communication influence human behaviors within planning challenges. Recently, her work has involved studying how transit agencies across the United States used Twitter to communicate with riders during the pandemic and how planning agencies used online platforms to engage with communities. While her work is centered on planning and community engagement, her methodological and theoretical interests are interdisciplinary, and she collaborates with scholars whose work intersects with community engagement and communication technology.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Business
• Sociology
• Environmental health
• Transport engineering
• Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence
• Medicine
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Advertising
• Psychology
• Marketing
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Internet privacy
• Public relations
• World Wide Web
• Socioeconomics

Selected publications

• What Does the Job Market Want From Planners? Using Online Job Descriptions to Measure the Demand for Planning Skills Identity

  Journal of the American Planning Association · 2025-07-02

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Resilience in multilayer transportation infrastructure networks: a review and conceptual framework for equity-based assessment

  Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure · 2024-04-22 · 8 citations

  review

  This paper presents a comprehensive review of resilience concepts, methodologies, metrics, and modeling techniques, and identifies key research gaps. These include the lack of multilayer network representations of transportation infrastructures when quantifying resilience, and insufficient metrics for assessing equitable outcomes. To address these gaps, we propose a conceptual multilayer framework for transporttaion infrastructure networks and develop equitable resilience metrics that incorporate socioeconomic and demographic variables. Using Pioneer Valley as a case study, we apply our framework to assess the resilience of transportation networks and demonstrate its utility in guiding resource allocation to enhance both the physical robustness and social equity of infrastructure. Our findings show that this approach significantly contributes to more informed and inclusive decision-making, fostering the development of resilient and equitable urban environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Transit communication via Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic

  Environment and Planning B Urban Analytics and City Science · 2022 · 6 citations

  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology

  Transit providers have used social media (e.g., Twitter) as a powerful platform to shape public perception and provide essential information, especially during times of disruption and disaster. This work examines how transit agencies used Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic to communicate with riders and how the content and general activity influence rider interaction and Twitter handle popularity. We analyzed 654,345 tweets generated by the top 40 transit agencies in the US, based on Vehicles Operated in Annual Maximum Service (VOM), from January 2020 to August 2021. We developed an analysis framework, using advanced machine learning and natural language processing models, to understand how agencies' tweeting patterns are associated with rider interaction outcomes during the pandemic. From the transit agency perspective, we find smaller agencies tend to generate a higher percentage of COVID-related tweets and some agencies are more repetitive than their peers. Six topics (i.e., face covering, essential service appreciation, free resources, social distancing, cleaning, and service updates) were identified in the COVID-related tweets. From the followers' interaction perspective, most agencies gained followers after the start of the pandemic (i.e., March 2020). The percentage of follower gains is positively correlated with the percentage of COVID-related tweets, tweets replying to followers, and tweets using outlinks. The average like counts per COVID-related tweet is positively correlated with the percentage of COVID-related tweets and negatively correlated with the percentage of tweets discussing social distancing and agency repetitiveness. This work can inform transportation planners and transit agencies on how to use Twitter to effectively communicate with riders to improve public perception of health and safety as it relates to transit ridership during delays and long-term disruptions such as those created by the COVID-19 public health crisis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The relationship between municipal highway expenditures and socio-demographic status: Are safety investments equitably distributed?

  Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives · 2021 · 10 citations

  • Business
  • Geography
  • Socioeconomics

  Different population groups have varying transportation needs based on their region type, socio-economic, and socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, municipal highway funding allocation methods do not typically consider these differences. Throughout the United States, municipal highway funding allocation is based upon fixed formulas that often only account for highway mileage and/or population size rather than equal benefits and funding outcomes across different population groups. This potentially creates an inequitable funding allocation process leading to safety and accessibility disparities between different population groups. This research investigates the extent to which the distribution of resources is not equal when evaluated by population group. Specifically, the relationship between municipal highway expenditures and poverty levels, population aged 65 years and older, race, and remoteness is investigated using data from the states of New York and Massachusetts. Using linear regression techniques, several models were developed that relate municipal highway expenditures with the socio-economic and socio-demographic characteristics of municipalities. The results revealed that there are clear municipal highway expenditure disparities between different population groups. Municipalities that have higher poverty levels experience a lower highway expenditure rate per local mile. Further, municipalities located in remote areas far from large metropolitan regions experience a disproportionately lower highway expenditure rate per local mile. Moreover, the results of this study indicate the need to consider how funding methods can address social differences.

  PublisherDOI

• Equitable resource allocation for municipal safety: A data envelopment analysis

  Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment · 2021 · 13 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Transit-oriented Development on Housing Value Resilience: Evidence from the City of Atlanta

  Journal of Planning Education and Research · 2018-07-17 · 4 citations

  article

  This research examines whether transit-oriented development (TOD) contributes to housing value resilience in Atlanta, Georgia. We developed two spatial hedonic models using property sale records to examine whether being located in TOD areas contributes to the resilience of housing prices during and after the Great Recession, compared to being located in transit-adjacent development areas. Our results suggest that there is a growing demand for TOD properties in recent years, which contributes to maintaining and faster regaining property values in TOD areas. Our results support future investment in TOD areas and also suggest challenges to incorporating affordable housing in TOD designs.

  PublisherDOI

• How Should Urban Planners Be Trained to Handle Big Data?

  Springer geography · 2016-10-07 · 22 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Moving beyond operations: Leveraging big data for urban planning decisions

  Annual Conference on Computers · 2015-01-01 · 14 citations

  article
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Wenwen Zhang

  2 shared

• Yong‐Sung Lee

  University of California, Davis

  2 shared

• Alyssa Ryan

  University of Arizona

  2 shared

• Eleni Christofa

  2 shared

• Fangru Wang

  Changchun University of Science and Technology

  2 shared

• Michael Knödler

  2 shared

• Steven P. French

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  1 shared

• Wenwen Zhang

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  1 shared

Labs

• Computational Social Science InstitutePI

  The lab focuses on computational social science research.

Education

• PhD, School of City & Regional Planning

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  2019

• Master of Regional Planning (M.R.P), City and Regional Planning

  Cornell University

  2007

• Bachelor of Science, International Agriculture & Rural Development

  Cornell University

  2005

• Bachelor of Science, Natural Resources

  Cornell University

  2005