Frontlines Highlights How USAID Implements Geospatial Technology

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The June/July 2011 edition of USAID’s Frontlines advocates the use of Geospatial Technology in humanitarian causes. These four articles describe how GIS and Remote Sensing are being applied in the US’ international development efforts:

Open Geospatial Consortium 3D Management Group to Host Second 3D Summit

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The Open Geospatial Consortium, a non-profit dedicated to leading the way for standardizing geospatial and location based services, is hosting its 2nd 3D summit September 20, 2011 in Boulder, Colorado. Abstracts for presentations are due Friday, August 12, 2011. Other important dates are as follows:

  • 12 August 2011: Abstract submissions for Lightning Talks and Video Presentations
  • 12 August 2011: Notification on accepted contributions
  • August 2011: Program Announcement
  • August 2011: Registration Available
  • 12 September 2011: Final Video Submissions
  • 20 September 2011: 3D Summit 2011 at the OGC Technical Committee Meeting


Racial Change in the Hartford Region, 1900 – 2010: An Animated Time-Slider Map

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This is the third in a series of posts on web-based maps developed by the University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) for the On The Line project.
Digital maps enable the ability to display dynamic changes to social phenomena in places throughout time. Hartford, throughout the 20th Century, saw dramatic shifts in the racial composition in both the city and county as a whole. Early in the century, the region’s population was predominantly white. During the middle of the century, the region began to diversify. This transformation began in the urban core and moved its way to the suburbs. This is portrayed in On The Line’s Racial Change in the Hartford Region (1900-2010) Animated Time-Slider Map. You can see this progression by simply dragging the time-slider to different years!
Here at MAGIC, we created a series of cartographic layers of Hartford County showing racial distribution based on the decennial census. These layers, from 1900 to 2010, demonstrate two things. The first is the increase of the non-white population in Hartford County throughout the 20th century. The second item, which is less noticeable, is the increasing detail in which the Census Bureau gathered racial data throughout the century. Early in the century, race was distinguished by “White” versus “Non-White” or “Negro”. By 1980, the Census was (and still is) gathering more detailed racial data – by including additional race and ethnicities such as Hispanics and Asians. This map also includes “pop up” labels that include percentages by race and ethnicity and total population figures. These labels can be viewed by clicking on any location on the map.
With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, MAGIC created this and other interactive maps with Jack Dougherty of Trinity College for the On The Line project. This and other maps are freely accessible in a public history web-book, titled On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs, which tells the story of schooling and housing boundary lines that have divided metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut over the past century, as well as the struggles of ordinary families and civil rights activists who have sought to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines.
Technical Detail:
The cartographic layers for the Racial Change in the Hartford Region animated time-slider map were created using ESRI’s ArcMap software, then exported as KMZ files using the ArcToolbox conversion tool. To improve the formatting of the individual pop-up balloons, each balloon added custom HTML code to improve the overall display of the data, and then this layer was saved as a KMZ file.
The interactive map utilizes the Google Maps API v3 plus custom javascript code developed by Thomas Bachant and Jean-Pierre Haeberly to create the interface that incorporates each KMZ file by year with a time slider. Each time the time slider is moved, the corresponding KMZ file for that year is added to the map to allow users to visualize the data.
Special Thanks to Thomas Bachant and Jean-Pierre Haeberly for developing the custom javascript code for this map.

Atlas of New South Wales

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A Screenshot of the Atlas of New South Wales

How do you provide a more transparent and open government, an educational resource while utilizing emerging technology? The New South Wales government decided to develop an online atlas that includes Economic, Election, Environment, History and Demographic related information. Click here to check out this savy and information rich GIS application that uses Bing as its basemap!

USDA’s GIS Applications – in The Cloud

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The SNAP Retailer Locator is one of the GIS applications the USDA has developed
ESRI’s July 2011 edition of ArcWatch features this video about the USDA’s implementation of GIS and cloud computing. In the video, Jonathan Albuom – the Chief Information Officer of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service – explains the services and data delivered through the USDA’s GIS applications and the advantages of hosting them in the cloud. The first applications is a retailer locator for SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrion Assistance Program formerly known as the Federal Food Stamp Program. Albuom describes the challenge of creating such a large retailer locator (displaying the 216,000 retailers nationwide and for use by the 43 million Americans enrolled in the program) while having  very limited resources. By hosting the SNAP Retailer Locator in the cloud, the USDA found an economical solution because of the scalability that cloud computing provides. In addition, Albuom discusses Your Food Environment Atlas, which maps food, nutrition and socioeconomic related data throughout the country. Although more GIS-related resources were available for this project, cloud computing is used to ensure the application can handle spikes in traffic. Lastly, the USDA has also developed the Food Desert Locator as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative.This application maps Food Deserts, which are defined as low-income areas that also have a substantial population with poor access to a supermarket or large grocery store.

MEGA GIS

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Recently, CNN featured this article describing the efforts in Iraq to protect the nation’s historic sites. Alongside the Iraq State Board of Antiquities, the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund are developing MEGA-Iraq; MEGA being an acronym for “Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Heritage”. These applications use Google Maps as a base map and layers regarding the historic sites are created by the parties involved. The goal is to help manage these sites of antiquity in addition to limiting the illegal trade of artifacts. MEGA-Jordan (pictured above) is already live and running, and can be visited by clicking here.

UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse – ESRI International User Conference Update

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Are you interested in learning about the latest software, web resources, and announcements from the 2011 ESRI International User Conference?  Join us for the first UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse which will feature Jeff Dunn, UConn Department of Geography Graduate Student and contributor to MAGIC’s Outside the Neatline Blog and Very Spatial Blog, who recently attended the 2011 ESRI International User Conference and ESRI Education User Conference in San Diego, CA. Jeff will highlight several key trends, upcoming software, and web resources that are of interest to the geospatial community.

Presentation topics will focus on the following topics to showcase new developments from 2011 ESRI International User Conference:

1. Updates and advances in ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server 10.1
2. ESRI and Cloud computing 
3. Enhancements and hosted services provided by ESRI’s ArcGIS Online webservice (live demo)
4. ESRI’s Technical Certification Program overview
5. Noteworthy news: Awards given/Presentations/highlights/ new vendor products and services from the exhibition hall
When:
July 28, 2011 from 3:00-4:00pm
Where:
University of Connecticut Homer Babbidge Library Staff Lounge – Plaza Level (see diagram below)
What is the UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse?
The UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse is based on the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) model for sharing ideas related to geospatial technology and research. The UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse will provide participants with an opportunity to learn about geospatial topics in an informal setting that encourages collaboration and conversations between presenters, researchers, students, and the general public with topics being presented in lightning style format (5 minutes maximum presentation per topic) with group discussions immediately following each topic. 
Live Streaming Attendance Option
Can’t make it to this event, but want to watch from your desk? We are offering a live stream of this event using UStream, a free live streaming service. While the live streaming option is not interactive, it’s a great option to participate from your office, home, or from anywhere with an internet connection. If you are interested in attending this meeting virtually, register using this online form. This event will be broadcast live and will be accessible from the UConn Libraries MAGIC UStream page. 
Have an idea for a future UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse Topic?
Do you know of a topic and/or speaker that would be a great topic for a future UConn Geospatial Coffeehouse? Feel free to send suggestions for future topics to us at magic@uconn.edu 

This event is sponsored by the University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center- MAGIC and is free to attend.

New Interactive GIS Shows Proximity to Trauma Care

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According to its website, The American Trauma Society “is dedicated to the elimination of needless death and disability from injury.” The ATS recently released an interactive map that shows emergency care coverage across the United States. Through this GIS, users can examine how access to emergency care is distributed across the country. You can query the map based on the mode of transportation (ambulance or helicopter) in addition to the time it takes to get to the nearest trauma center (45 minutes, 60 minutes or longer). With this map, you can easily see the best trauma coverage is located around population centers – especially the northeast – while rural areas in the south and midwest have noticeably absent coverage. This map also allows you to export to a .jpeg image of the map and you can calculate the percentages of area and population that fall within the coverage zones.

Neighborhood Change, 1934-Present: A Dual View Map with Linked Controls

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This is the second post in the Outside the Neatline Blog series focusing on web-based maps developed by the University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) for the On The Line project.

When our research team began working with digital aerial photographs, we asked ourselves: how can we display two views of the same terrain at different points in time? Our solution was to develop a linked-control dual-view map, titled Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934 to Present, which allows users to compare aerial images from past and present, side by side. Since this interactive tool is based on Google Maps web technology, it features the familiar controls to zoom and pan around the map, as well as a Google search engine for any address in Connecticut. Best of all, the linked controls means that the two images are synced: when a user moves or zooms into one side of the map, the other side automatically matches it.

This map is a wonderful tool for examining changes in land use anywhere in Connecticut. For example, compare Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, before and after the construction of the Interstate-84 highway exchange in the 1960s, which benefited suburban commuters but divided urban neighborhood irrevocably. See also the conversion of rural farmland into post-war suburban residential and commercial developments, such as the WestFarms Mall area in Farmington/West Hartford, or the Bishop’s Corner shopping center in West Hartford.

neighborhood_change_map

Caption: Click image to explore our Neighborhood Change map for Hartford’s Parkville area (shown above) or any other region in Connecticut.

At present, the Neighborhood Change map displays aerial imagery for selected years: 1934, 1991, 2008, and Google’s current view. Soon we will add more options to the drop-down menu: 1951-2 and 1970. Our goal is to create a tool to show neighborhood comparisons in approximately twenty-year intervals from 1934 to the present.

Another feature of this map allows anyone to create a custom URL web address to point any visitor to a specific location in Connecticut. To do this create a URL using this format, 

 http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/dualcontrol_aerialchange.html?lat=[insert latitude]&long=[insert longitude]

and identify the latitude and longitude you are interested by going to Google Maps and right-clicking on a point, select “What’s Here?” and copying the latitude and longitude coordinates added to the Google Maps search box into the URL.

For example a URL for Westfarms shopping mall, Farmington would look like this: 

 http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/dualcontrol_aerialchange.html?lat=41.7222&long=-72.7632


This linked-control dual-view tool may also be used to compare other types of maps, such as historic census data to the newly released 2010 census data of the United States.

We invite you to explore the Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934 to Present web-based map and On The Line.

Technical detail:

This linked-control dual view map uses similar Google Maps JavaScript API version 3 and customized javascript coding for the Federal HOLC “Redlining” Map, Hartford region, 1937 map discussed in last weeks On The Line series post, but with enhanced WMS server integration. We incorporated aerial imagery into the linked-control dual view map by using Web Map Service (WMS), which is a standard protocol for using georeferenced images over the internet. MAGIC’s WMS is a Cadcorp GeognoSIS based server that includes historical aerial images and maps. All of our imagery is projected in WGS84, which allows them to be overlaid on Goggle Maps. The WMS server enables us to link aerial imagery and historical maps into our web-based maps. Integrating WMS into the web-based map was facilitated by using custom JavaScript developed by Ben Spaulding of TheGISDoctor.com and assistance from other sources. The code allows Google Maps to read the WMS server for a particular image or map and then overlay it on a Google Map interface. WMS is basically a tiled image on another server you can overlay on your Google interface. This could be done with ArcGIS Server as well. To actually reference an image or historical map from the WMS server you need the WMS server address plus the layer name; we have a page that details this at http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/wms_layers.html

Coming next in this series — Racial Change in the Hartford Region, 1900-2010: An Animated Time Slider Map

Connecticut Geo-Focus Newsletter – Summer 2011

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The latest issue of the Connecticut Geo-Focus newsletter is now available. In this issue you will find articles and updates on the following topics:

  • Emergency Sirens 
  • Japan Debris Tracking 
  • Marine Debris Tracking 
  • UCONN Invasive Aquatic Plants
  • Geo-Tidbits 
  • Educational Offerings 
  • Coastal Resilience Project  
  • High School Geography 
  • News of the Bee 
  • CT DOT Bicycle Map Website
  • GIS Day Announcements 
  • GIS and Public Safety