Sachi Tushar Chinchay

BorderSense: AI-Powered Environmental Risk Visualization for the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

BorderSense is an interdisciplinary project that uses artificial intelligence to visualize
and analyze environmental risks impacting border communities and migrants in the Sonoran
region. As climate pressures intensify, extreme heat, limited water access, and landscape
changes significantly affect human mobility and safety. This project combines computer
science, environmental humanities, and ethical analysis to explore how AI can illuminate these
challenges. Using open-source satellite data and machine learning models, BorderSense will
generate heat maps showing temperature trends, vegetation loss, and terrain difficulty across
migration pathways. A creative multimedia output—an interactive web visualization
accompanied by narrative explanations—will contextualize the data through a humanistic lens,
highlighting how environmental conditions shape lived border experiences. The project’s
creative component will integrate textual storytelling and visual design to make technical
findings accessible to broader audiences.

This project strengthens Sachi's academic and career trajectory in AI, data science, and socially 
responsible technology. It allows her to apply her machine learning and visualization skills to an 
issue of cultural, ethical, and humanitarian importance. By transforming technical data into meaningful 
visual narratives, Sachi aims to raise awareness about environmental inequalities in the borderlands 
and contribute a tool that educators, students, or community partners can utilize. The project supports 
Sachi's long-term goal of building technologies that improve human well-being and deepen public 
understanding of complex social challenges.