GeoForAll UrbanScience CityAnalytics

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Welcome to "Geo for All" Urban Science and City Analytics: 'CitySmart App Road Map'

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

All members can use the maillist to collaborate, geoforall-urbanscience@lists.osgeo.org (once it is working!). All ideas are welcome.

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

Open Cities - Guiding Principles (need a reference for this please)

  • All material created is made available for all under an Open License
  • All material is carefully designed (modular componentry) so that it can be built upon by others
  • All participants aim to reuse, extend and invent material (in that order)

Note that it is desirable to maintain one core platform architected with an open API for functionalities (menu system), than to have competing platforms. But before we get to that rarefied 'Linux' place, we benefit from collegial and healthy competition, with the best features of each ending up in the collective's decision for the core platform finale.


Who in our network is doing what related to this theme? Please let us know by adding yourself to this list.

  • Chris Pettit, University of Melbourne, https://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-pettit/16/190/4B0
    • Coordinates the implementation of eResearch tools to support urban researchers across Australia under the auspices of the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN)
  • 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 over 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.
  • 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 at GeoDa do we contact?)


Key research questions

  1. How can we transform existing cities or create new cities that are sustainable, productive and resilient?
  2. What is the role and opportunities for big (and small) data, analytics, modelling and visualisation tools and techniques for shaping our cites?
  3. How can we use open data and tools to empower citizens, community groups, planners, policy and decision-makers to work together in solving the problems facing our cities and to envision sustainable urban futures?


Urban Science / City Analytics: Road Map


  • '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.


  • 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


Potential Partners


Reference Material

  • 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
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