GeoForAll UrbanScience CityAnalytics

Welcome to "Geo for All" Urban Science and City Analytics Thematic

Chairs: Chris Pettit (Australia) and Patrick Hogan (USA)

With the "Geo for All" Urban Science and City Analytics  thematic group established, the chairs of this are now the contact points for any new initiatives or ideas. All members can use the maillist, geoforall-urbanscience@lists.osgeo.org (one it is working), to collaborate. All ideas are welcome.

All participants should support the 'Open Cities Guiding Principles' detailed below. Thanks to Cameron Shorter for this.

Open Cities - Guiding Principles


 * All material created is made available for all under an Open License
 * All material is of sufficient quality that it can be built upon by others in the network
 * All participants aim to reuse, extend, invent material (in that order)

Note that it is desirable to maintain one core platform with an open API for functionalities, than have competing platforms. But before we get to that 'Linux' place, we can benefit from collegial and healthy competition, with the best features ending up in the core platform.

Who in our network is doing what related to this theme?


 * Tom Mueller, California University of Pennsylvania, http://www.calu.edu/academics/faculty/thomas-mueller.aspx
 * Similar to Charlie, I want to build educational exercises and service learning opportunities for my students.


 * Jim Miller, University of Kansas, Computer Science, http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/
 * Using NASA World Wind for several open source geo-visualization efforts, including Lidar and multivariate scalar and vector field visualization.


 * Ant Beck, University of Nottingham Research Fellow, https://www.linkedin.com/in/antbeck
 * Currently transitioning into CityAnalytics looking at city wide entropy based energy management simulations. Have aspirations for an open, big data environment.


 * Phillip Davis, GeoAcademy, https://www.linkedin.com/pub/phillip-davis/9/59/b7b
 * The GeoAcademy is using QGIS 2.8 to provide Massively Open Online Courses through the Canvas Network to students around the globe for free. We currently enroll 4,000 students in our March 2015 cohort.


 * Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, https://www.linkedin.com/in/phogan
 * Building open source virtual globe technology meant to stimulate innovative solutions managing geospatial data, whether open or proprietary.


 * Antoni Perez-Navarro, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonipereznavarro
 * Currently working in indoor positioning systems. Previously have developed the Context Aware Recommender System.


 * Charlie Schweik and Alexander (Sasha) Stepanov, http://eco.umass.edu/people/faculty/schweik-charles-m/
 * University of Massachusetts Amherst. Trying to build educational service learning opportunities for students on advanced GIS using our campus as a "testbed."


 * Giuseppe Conti, https://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti
 * Trilogis Srl, Italy. Working on a project for indoor and outdoor interoperable services (www.i-locate.eu) involving different cities, hospitals, museums as "testbed"


 * Evangelos Mitsakis, https://www.linkedin.com/pub/evangelos-mitsakis/6/62/938
 * Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - Hellenic Institute of Transport, Greece. Working on climate change adaptation, urban resilience and smart cities, focusing on intelligent transport and mobility.


 * GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation, Arizona State University, https://geodacenter.asu.edu/
 * Applications of free and open-source spatial analytics and decision support systems to urban modeling and scenario planning (but who do we contact?)


 * Maria A Brovelli, Politecnico di Milano, http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli
 * Applications of free and open-source spatial analytics to Urban Context and its Development

Key research questions

Urban Science / City Analytics: Road Map


 * We owe this 'first cut' for our CitySmart app to OGC Smart Cities Spatial Information Framework
 * http://gisuser.com/2015/02/ogc-smart-cities-spatial-information-framework-white-paper-announced/
 * We also heap praise upon Brandt Melick, Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA for putting this idea for a CitySmart app into action! We need to help more cities step forward like this, leading by example!
 * http://www.nsdinow.org/SDI_Now_02/Technical_Support.html


 *  'CitySmart' app categories (feel free to expand):
 * 1) Urban Planning
 * 2) Location Services
 * 3) Intelligent Transportation
 * 4) Health and Medical Services
 * 5) Emergency Services
 * 6) Environmental Protection
 * 7) Intelligent Buildings
 * 8) Public Safety and Security
 * 9) Utilities - Smart Grid, Smart Water, Sanitation, etc.
 * 10) Indoor positioning (added by Antoni Perez)
 * 11) Context aware recommender systems (added by Antoni Perez)


 * Data sharing – Municipalities need to be able to share information with site developers, site constraint specialists (environmental scientists, planners and engineers), utility service providers and regulators. The following information is requested on a regular basis for a wide variety of location based solutions, namely (ESRI products, Autodesk products and standard office products such as Excel, Access, etc.).  These data sets most often include, in order of importance:
 * 1) Imagery (3-inch pixel is preferred, 1 foot pixel is less preferred, 1 meter is getting much less preferred)
 * 2) Cadastral Information (parcel polygons, Rights of Way (ROW), property ownership, assessment and taxation information and property class)
 * 3) Address Information (house number, street name, City, zip, site location (coordinates) and zoning information)
 * 4) Jurisdictional boundaries (incorporated areas, city limits, county boundaries, etc.), urban growth boundaries, public safety response areas
 * 5) Elevation Information: DEM’s (raster), DTM’s (vector), contours and spot elevation points, as well as mass points and break lines
 * 6) Waterways and protected areas: wetlands, fish-bearing streams, endangered species habitat, well-head protection zones, etc.
 * 7) Facilities a.k.a. utilities: waste-water, storm-water, transportation systems, power, drinking water, etc. who owns the facility, who maintains the facility, etc.
 * 8) Structures/facilities: bridges, building foot prints, complexes, monuments, etc.
 * 9) Documents: reference material, procedures, regulations, metadata, etc.
 * 10) Lidar everyone wants, yet few understand how, to put Lidar to good use. Springfield is spoiled with 8 points per meter, but 2-4 points per meter is still of good value.


 * Biggest challenges - raw data made useable, data dating, accurate georeference conversion, unit conversion (metric to standard), data storage, data security, firewalls, standardized metadata, etc.


 * Urban Planning and Site Review – Municipalities need to evaluate the impact of proposed development activity on existing development and on the natural environment. This typically includes estimating how much cut and fill is being proposed, how proposed land alteration impacts surface drainage, how proposed structures will connect to city services (waste-water, storm-water, drinking-water, power, etc.), how steep the roads will be (slope for fire trucks), how close to wetlands and other protected waters of the state. These data most often include, in order of importance:
 * Imagery
 * Cadastral
 * Elevation
 * Facilities (structures and utilities)
 * Waterways

Technologies in our network available for addressing these needs
 * NASA World Wind (Java, iOS and Android, Web version on its way), http://goworldwind.org/
 * GeoMoose
 * QGIS
 * Android
 * i-locate, http://i-locate.eu/
 * PySAL.org and GeoDa (https://geodacenter.asu.edu/software)

Potential Partners
 * GeoAcademy, http://discoverspatial.com/(Phil Davis)
 * University of Massachusetts at Amherst, http://eco.umass.edu/people/faculty/schweik-charles-m/
 * IBM Smarter Cities, http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_cities/overview/
 * Master programme in Sustainable Cities at Aalborg University Copenhagen, http://sustainablecities.aau.dk/
 * ISET Building Urban Resilience to Climate Change, http://i-s-e-t.org/resources/working-papers/building-resilience.html
 * 100 Resilient Cities Challenge, http://www.100resilientcities.org/pages/100-resilient-cities-challenge
 * Global Resilience Partnership Seeks New Ideas on Resilience in Africa, Southeast Asia
 * http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/global-resilience-partnership-seeks-new
 * http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/blog/2015/02/17/grp-teams-announced/

Resources


 * Future Cities, UK Ordnance Survey
 * https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/thinking/future-cities/


 * Climate Adaptation Guidebook for Municipalities
 * http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/documents/10180/14193/FY13-0119+Climate+Adaptation+toolkit+lowres.pdf


 * How Cities Can Battle Climate Change with Resiliency Planning
 * http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/09/cities-can-battle-climate-change-resiliency-planning/


 * ISET Working Paper 3: Planning for Urban Climate Resilience
 * http://i-s-e-t.org/resources/working-papers/climate-resilience-paper-3.html


 * Resilience: A Bridging Concept or a Dead End?
 * “Reframing” Resilience: Challenges for Planning Theory and Practice
 * Interacting Traps: Resilience Assessment of a Pasture Management System in Northern Afghanistan
 * Urban Resilience: What Does it Mean in Planning Practice?
 * Resilience as a Useful Concept for Climate Change Adaptation?
 * The Politics of Resilience for Planning: A Cautionary Note
 * http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2012.677124


 * Aging City Infrastructure Management:
 * http://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/


 * Lessons from Sandy - Federal Policies to Build Climate-Resilient Coastal Regions
 * http://resilient-cities.iclei.org/resilient-cities-hub-site/resilience-resource-point/resilience-library/urban-resilience-planning/


 * General background info:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_city
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_transport
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_living


 * Wow! A rural town in Italy >100% sustainable energy:
 * http://reregions.blogspot.com/2010/03/varese-ligure-italy.html


 * Local Grocery
 * http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/2004-01-08/mondragons-eroski-mass-retailer
 * http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/mondragon-worker-cooperatives-decide-how-to-ride-out-a-downturn


 * Local Agriculture & Industrial Equipment
 * http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-index/
 * http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski