Kevin Haynes
I design spatial data systems that enable institutions to understand, coordinate, and operate within their physical environments.
I serve as the Geospatial Information Officer for the University of South Carolina, where I lead enterprise geospatial infrastructure, governance, and coordination across the university system. I also teach Web GIS and introductory geospatial courses in the Department of Geography and founded the Gamecock Geospatial Initiative — a community of practice connecting faculty, staff, and students through shared spatial systems.
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Full Bio
I didn't start in technology. I studied philosophy — specifically professional and applied ethics — which proved foundational to how I approach systems. Ethics teaches you to think carefully about systems: who they serve, what they assume, and what they fail to see. That habit of questioning followed me into public administration, international development, and eventually into geography and GIS.
I spent a year at the University of Hyderabad in India, studying the historical growth of one of the world's fastest-urbanizing cities. Watching a megacity negotiate its own transformation in real time shaped how I think about spatial data, institutional power, and decision-making. My thesis mapped four centuries of Hyderabad's urban morphology, but the deeper lesson was about how organizations use — or fail to use — information about the places where they operate.
After graduate school, I joined the South Carolina Army National Guard as a GIS analyst and, within months, found myself building the geospatial decision-support system that would coordinate the state's pandemic response. It integrated data from the National Guard, DHEC, the Emergency Management Division, and hospital systems across South Carolina and served as the primary decision interface for Guard leadership for more than 300 consecutive days. The system supported testing site selection, vaccination planning, hospital surge management, and the allocation of $1.9 billion in emergency resources across 46 counties. I later moved into Environmental GIS, directing operations across more than 20,000 acres of military training land in the Cowasee Basin and developing the spatial frameworks that allowed military readiness and environmental protection to operate as aligned priorities under the Department of Defense REPI program.
In 2024, I moved to the University of South Carolina to build an institution-wide spatial data infrastructure as the university's first Geospatial Information Officer. The work has involved organizational realignment, the establishment of USC's first geospatial data governance framework, executive sponsorship and recurring institutional funding, and the construction of an enterprise platform now used across nearly every major operational unit on campus. I also teach in the Department of Geography (GEOG 105 and GEOG 310) and contribute as an instructor for the Geospatial Professional Network's Virtual GIS Leadership Academy.
I write and speak about geospatial work as an institutional practice — about how spatial data systems are built, governed, and trusted within complex organizations. The common thread across military, government, and higher education is the same problem: institutions operating without a shared spatial understanding of their own environment — their assets, their risks, and their overlapping operations.
I build the systems that provide that understanding.