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's Who Here?

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?)
  • Xinyue Ye, Computational Social Science Lab, Kent State University, http://www.xinyueye.com/
    • My research focus is open source space-time analysis method development and its socio-economic application, especially on economic inequality, urban development, crime, and social media.


Global Drivers for OSGEO Solutions


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

  • We also heap a world of praise upon Brandt Melick, Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA for putting this CitySmart app idea into action! We need to help more cities step forward like this, lead by example! This directly supports both the European INSPIRE Directive and the US NSDI Executive Order:


  • 'CitySmart' App Themes/Data-type (feel free to expand):
  1. INSPIRE Data Specifications, http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/2/list/7
  2. Urban Planning, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning
  3. Intelligent Transportation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_transportation_system
  4. Health & Medical Services, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care
  5. Public Safety & Emergency Services, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_service
  6. Environmental Protection, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_protection
  7. Intelligent Buildings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_automation
  8. Utilities: Smart Grid, Smart Water, Sanitation, etc., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid
  9. Location-Based Services, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service
  10. Indoor Positioning System (added by Antoni Perez Navarro), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_positioning_system
  11. Context-aware Recommender Systems (added by Antoni Perez Navarro), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommender_system


  • 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 MSFT Office products such as Excel, Access, etc.). These data sets most often include:
  1. INSPIRE Data Models, http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/2/list/datamodels
  2. Imagery (3-inch pixel is preferred, 1 foot pixel is less preferred, 1 meter is getting much less preferred)
  3. Cadastral Information (parcel polygons, Rights of Way (ROW), property ownership, assessment and taxation information and property class)
  4. Address Information (house number, street name, City, zip, site location (coordinates) and zoning information)
  5. Jurisdictional boundaries (incorporated areas, city limits, county boundaries, etc.), urban growth boundaries, public safety response areas
  6. Elevation Information: DEM’s (raster), DTM’s (vector), contours and spot elevation points, as well as mass points and break lines
  7. Waterways and protected areas: wetlands, fish-bearing streams, endangered species habitat, well-head protection zones, etc.
  8. Facilities a.k.a. utilities: waste-water, storm-water, transportation systems, power, drinking water, etc. who owns the facility, who maintains the facility, etc.
  9. Structures/facilities: bridges, building foot prints, complexes, monuments, etc.
  10. Documents: reference material, procedures, regulations, metadata, etc.
  11. Lidar, everyone wants it, yet few understand how to put Lidar to good use. Ask Brandt Melick of Springfield, they are spoiled with 8 points per meter, but 2-4 points per meter is still of good value.


  • Challenges - there are many, here are just a few: raw data made useable, data dating, accurate georeference conversion, unit conversion (metric to standard), data storage, data security, firewalls, standardized metadata, etc.


  • Use-Case: 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:

Technologies Available In Our Network


Potential Partners


Road Map Challenge

The Task

Develop a Road Map, the Requirements Doc, for what this Urban Science - City Analytics , CitySmart app looks like. The Road Map (Requirements Doc) will likely be based on information in the 'framework' documents above. This Road Map needs to allow for some early successes so we can get buy-in from 'real' municipalities to work with us and thereby keep value-added precisely on target. Then we need a cadre of software development teams (or individuals) providing their solution in response to the Road Map. As we collectively together evaluate these ‘solutions,’ some will be asked to mashup until in the end we have one OSGEO/FOSS4G/GeoForAll CitySmart app. This app will have an open API for the menu system, for drag-n-drop of functionalities, allowing each city to tailor the CitySmart app for their use. The world community can continually optimize old functionalities and design new ones, whether proprietary or FOSSy.


Who Will Do This?

Whoever wants to! We can ask an academic or other organization to first help us with the Road Map (remember that Requirements Doc?), such as those listed as Prospective Partners. All are welcome!


Why Do This?

Because we can and more importantly, it’s because there is a world full of need, much of which is identical no matter what urban location you are in. How about an OSGEO Challenge with a NASA crystal bull for the award, just like the Europa Challenge, http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/, and of course NASA T-shirts. We need YOU (whoever you are) to design the requirements doc for the Urban Science - City Analytics, a CitySmart app.

First we need the Road Map! We will rank these and the number one vote getter will get the crystal bull, after they mashup the best of what they consider of value from all the ‘other’ Road Maps. We will ask the Region and Theme Chairs to do the voting. http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll.

Road Map Done, Then What?

The next challenge, the OSGEO CitySmart Challenge, will be for any and all comers to build an app according to the Road Map, one that will put a fresh smile on the face of every municipality! And something the whole world can be proud of together, while experiencing the benefits of living in a smarter city. The City of Springfield Oregon has already shown us the path, http://www.nsdinow.org/SDI_Now_02/Technical_Support.html. Are we ready?

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