The Polis Center

The Polis Center

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Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Contact:
Sharon Kandris, Executive Director

The Polis Center at IUPUI works with its partners to measure and actively improve community health, wellbeing, and resilience.  It is an applied research center in the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at IUPUI with staff dedicated to researching and applying data and advanced information technologies, especially GIS, to help organizations “bring things into perspective.”  Our strengths are in community and place-based research, analysis, and collaborations. We create actionable information and apply informatics to design creative solutions with our partners to address pressing community issues, build data literacy, design better programs, and impact policy. 

SAVI Community Information System (SAVI)

The SAVI Community Information System (www.savi.org) began in 1995 as a joint project of The Polis Center at IUPUI and United Way of Central Indiana to support human services planning. Its mission now is to help organizations and researchers make data-informed decisions by 1) providing reliable, geographically precise data about communities; 2) creating actionable information; 3) developing tools for data analysis; and 4) building capacity of nonprofit and community-based organizations (CBOs) to use data effectively.

SAVI (Social Assets and Vulnerabilities Indicators) contains over 14,000 indicators on social, economic, and physical conditions of Central Indiana communities developed from over 70 data providers and makes the data freely available through a web site (www.savi.org). Users have the ability to view data profiles, search, map, and analyze over 20 years of data about 2,000 defined areas in the 11-county Indianapolis MSA, including but not limited to neighborhoods, school districts, ZIP codes, townships, and numerous other geographies. SAVI also builds capacity of nonprofit and community based organizations to use data effectively for strategic planning, community assessments, program planning, evaluation, grant development, research, service area assessment, needs assessment, heath services evaluation, and so much more. 

SAVI is a program of The Polis Center with several community partners, including United Way of Central Indiana, WFYI Public Media, Marion County Public Health Department, City of Indianapolis, and IUPUI.

Matt Dietrich
Senior Research Analyst
Marc McAleavey
Community Analysis Program Manager
Sharon Kandris
Sharon Kandris
Executive Director