Programs to create detailed maps of marine areas that identify use by humans, habitat and natural resources, along with allocated space for fishing, recreation, shipping, oil and gas development and renewable energy production are on the rise.

The marine spatial plan gives communities the tools to define their environmental, economic and social goals to minimize conflicts among users and to maximize benefits. President Obama directed 22 U.S. federal agenices to develop a framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning back in June and the number of programs are multiplying. The effort addresses both ocean coasts and Great Lakes resources.

There was a one-day symposium this past Saturday about marine spatial planning at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Learn more about the AAAS symposium on the subject, including details on presenters, in this press release.

In a New York Times blog post today, design and architecture columnist Allison Arieff writes about the continued issue of empty space and inefficiency in our built world, pointing to GIS as an answer to solve these issues.

“G.I.S. allows us to literally view our place both globally and in a hyperlocal context. That level of specificity, both at the micro and macro level, is helping revolutionize the way we think about, plan for and design the space we inhabit (or abandon). A visual map can show us patterns of overbuilding, abandonment, mis- (or lack of) use; it can teach us something about our current tendency to overbuild.”

This article reinforces the gaining prominence of GIS within the design community as a means to understand the whole, and to pull together patterns and discrepancies in the larger urban fabric. There appears to be a groundswell of interest in better planning and design as our cities become more and more important to how we live. This article concludes that the coming age of data-driven design will usher in more dynamic and flexible planning.

The unfolding events in Haiti have underscored the fact that accessibility to map making tools and open spatial data can make anyone a mapmaker. Mapping is an activity that provides a tangible means for concerned citizens to reach out and help make sense of a very complicated and evolving situation where the more that is known, the more that can be done, and the quicker the mapping response, the quicker aid will reach the effected population.

The various Crisis Camps that are taking place to respond to the devastating earthquake in Haiti have stoked the advancement of the citizen mapmakers who are creating detailed, timely and valuable volunteered geographic information. While in the past there were only separate mapping efforts from various government entities and non-governmental organization that might each struggle with available data and resources, now there’s a mapping effort by many that are far removed from the area or event that can support good work on the ground.

Organic Efforts

Within a very short time frame the small and poor country of Haiti has been mapped extensively with great detail, far exceeding the quality of any previously available maps. Largely this effort was done by volunteers who benefited from the availability of freely provided high-quality data, such as satellite imagery from GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. This certainly isn’t the first disaster that has benefited from such resources, but this event was different in terms of the quick mobilization of collaborative teams that quickly and efficiently teased out information from this data from far-flung locations as diverse as New York, Chicago, Montreal, London and Bogota, Colombia.

Social networking was largely responsible for the quick and collective response. The tools such as Twitter and Facebook spread the word quickly that there was need for technologists to assist, and many responded to the unprecedented opportunity to do more than just send money. While the information technology efforts weren’t relegated to mapping only, the mapping effort was one of the more visible aspects of the effort that quickly put a visual face to the scope and severity of the disaster, and it was an aspect that was widely covered by the news media.

Communications Aggregation

One of the more interesting aspects of this effort was the mapping of SMS text messages from those that were in need of help. With a devastated communication network with little capacity, text messages were often the only means of communication with the outside world, and many messages came in, even from those trapped in rubble. A volunteer effort took these messages, having to translate many from Creole into English, and endeavored to geolocate them in order that help might be sent to where it was needed most.

The map aggregation of this information provided near real-time information for first responders in Haiti. Having this information in their hands made these responders much more effective. Word spread quickly of this map resource and many teams were able to provision their personal GPS devices with updates and accurate map data to greatly speed their response times.

Open But Not Interoperable

OpenStreetMap and Google Mapmaker were largely the mapping tools of choice, but amidst all the mapping there was a call for a conflated and coordinated effort between the two. The spectre of interoperability was magnified by the altruistic intent of the effort where data created to help in one platform couldn’t be used to update the other, causing a needless duplication of effort and knowledge gaps that degraded both platforms despite the best intentions of all involved.

The Open Geospatial Consortium approach of W*S services were active and effective to help eliminate such duplicated efforts. There were Web Mapping Services to pull together SDI layers, and Web Feature Services to help bring framework data such as boundaries, hydrography, transportation and population to the masses. There was also a OpenLS route service to help route emergency services based on OpenStreetMap data.

While all these efforts were helpful, clearly more work needs to be done for greater coordination and easier portability of data between different platforms and different creators and users of the data.

Making Mapmakers

In the heat of the mapping effort, many untrained mappers were adding quality information that helped to solve problems, but also plenty of bad data were also generated because of unfamiliarity with the mapping process, and the fact that people will always have different approaches to the task at hand. While it’s difficult to learn the nuances of the task during the heat of such a moment, the WikiProject Haiti did a good job of aggregating lessons and providing a place for discussions.

Perhaps at no other time has an event exposed so many novices to the power and the complexities of mapmaking. We can expect that these now-trained volunteers will be willing and eager to help out in the next such event, and that their ranks will swell. In the interim, the geospatial community would all benefit if we were prepared to facilitate these efforts with more and easier tools for quick and coordinated mapping where the work of all benefits those that are in need and those that are at risk.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES

Ushahidi Haiti

Open Street Map Haiti

Crisis Commons – Home of the collaborative CrisisCamps

WikiProject Haiti – Earthquake Map Resources

Google Map Maker – Mapping Haiti

ESRI Haiti Disaster Relief and Support

Open Geospatial Consortium Haiti Effort

Virtual Disaster Viewer

There’s a great interview of Ken Greenberg on MetropolisMag where he speaks about the future of urban planning and the future of the city. Greenberg sees a number of trends for sweeping changes on how we live and work. He compares the profound changes of the current urban form with the post-WWII decades and the rise of automobile-oriented development, with those changes now becoming obsolete.

“We’ve reached the end of the lifespan of much of the highway infrastructure that was built after WWII. We’ll see a major retooling of the infrastructure of the city. We’re going to see an incredible investment in public transit. We’ll see congestion pricing—which is now only in a handful of cities—applied pretty much across the board. This will enable, both from a capital and an operating standpoint, a huge reinvestment in public transit. We’ll see buildings that put energy back into the grid.”

We profiled Greenberg in V1 Magazine back in August when he spoke at the GeoWeb Conference. In our interview, Greenberg discusses applying technology to build collaborative multidisciplinary teams to solve complex urban planning problems. You can read that interview here.

California has begun a statewide growth scenario plan, with aims to devise detailed growth scenarios with an eye toward reducing carbon emissions. The planning project has been awarded to Berkeley-based Calthorpe Associates with a budget of $2.5 million and will be overseen by the Strategic Growth Council.

The work begins by bringing together existing regional plans. From there various scenario plans will be run to come up with a preferred scenario. To date no statewide scenario planning has occurred, and the passage of the high speed rail system has spurred the interest in low-impact planning.

This in an 18-month project with three phases. Th first step is compiling data and defining standards. The second phase involves scenario building with alternative growth scenarios tested . The final phase is to share the preferred vision with local governments and other stakeholders.

Read more about the project in this SF Gate article.

Just got a note from Wendy Nelson at URISA. She indicates that after several months of lower-than-normal job postings on the URISA Marketplace that there’s now increased activity. It’s good to hear that there are indicators of an improving economy. If interested in what’s available check out: http://www.urisa.org/MarketplaceJobs

China is on track for a 75 percent urban population by 2050. This rapid urbanization holds challenges for achieving sustainable development goals because currently cities hold 50 percent of the world’s population but emit 75 percent of greenhouse gases. To address this disparity, China is looking at an ec0-city development concept that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and move toward 30 percent renewable energy in the next 20 years.

The Low Carbon Eco-city Strategy was launched by the Chinese Society for Urban Studies in a report to policy makers that will eventually be distributed to officials in 600 Chinese cities. The report outlines a move toward integrated public transport systems, green building, clean energy technology and cleaner manufacturing. The report also recommends that local government should receive financial support to enact these recommendations.

This approach is a positive step for the world given the scale of China’s urbanization movement, and it’s current status as the number one polluter.

The project to transform Union Station in downtown Denver in a multi-modal transportation hub will begin construction this week, and there’s a new website to mark this progress. Currently the station houses Amtrak rail service, with the redesign making the station a hub for four new commuter rail lines that are part of the FasTracks project. The redevelopment work on the station is a $500 Million project that is expected to be complete by 2013. The new website has renderings, floor plans, history, public space plans, and real estate details.

While it may be a bit premature to pronounce the recovery of the global economy, it’s not too early to start thinking about the technologies that will benefit once things start looking up. 3D laser scanning is one of the brightest spots in the geospatial technology arena, because it’s a relatively new technology without a great deal of installed base, it  introduces some impressive efficiencies in the surveying process, and it addresses sectors that stand to rebound as things look up.

There an increasing interest in 3D visualization, with new software and system capabilities to deal with this data type, and improved hardware to speed its use. 3D brings a lot to the table for quicker communication and improved insight, and it has the potential to dramatically streamline and improve the planning process.

Improved Data Collection

These tools of quick precision can be harnessed to provide a wealth of new details about infrastructure in a relatively short time and at an affordable cost. 3D laser scanners have the promise of largely replacing traditional optical surveying instruments, particularly in urban areas where capturing detailed environments can benefit greatly from the laser point cloud approach.

Laser scanning is a technology that will quickly revolutionize surveying. The ability to take a terrestrial laser scanner to a site to capture the entire area with accurate survey points frees up the surveyor to visit a site once for a specific project, and to take some subsequent measurements from the office, rather than having to know each and every point that will need collecting ahead of time. This provides a huge productivity gain to cut down on repeated visits to the same site. It also improves the safety of the surveyor for they can set up scanner once in a hazardous area rather than having to cover that area on foot several times in the traditional approach.

Digital Planning

The economic stimulus package has placed an emphasis on infrastructure, but the majority of those projects have gone to maintenance rather than new construction. When the intent is quick action, it’s understandable to pick paving projects, but the impact on sustainability is negligible in terms of improving road safety or easing traffic congestion. Planning for new projects is cumbersome and time consuming. What is needed is a whole new digital design process, and 3D scanning is a critical component in all phases of digital project management.

It’s mind boggling that infrastructure planning is largely still a paper-based workflow. Starting each project with a detailed 3D laser scan, and the creation of a 3D collaborative design space makes a great deal of sense to improve project efficiency. Having the designer, engineers and inspectors all working from the same true-to-life  3D environment would greatly streamline the collaborative process. Repeated scans as the work progresses would ensure that the project is progressing as planned, and that it moves forward on time and on budget. Detailed scans of the finished project would be used for ongoing maintenance and as a basis for any future projects in the area.

There’s an increasing need for planning reform in light of the tools and technology that could greatly speed and improve the construction process. If such tools were in place prior to the influx of spending on infrastructure projects, we’d see much greater impact from infrastructure investments. Instead of just a smooth new road surface, we might see the removal of poorly designed road bottlenecks, a direct impact on the efficiency of our transportation networks, and improved lives.

Work Without Workers?

The worldwide construction industry has been  hard hit by the economic downturn, and the resulting fall-off of projects has meant industry layoffs and business consolidation. When construction was booming there was a shortage of available surveyors to meet the demand. Although there are presently fewer jobs available because of the economic climate, when things start to pick up the shortage will not have disappeared and will put greater pressure on surveyors to improve the efficiency of their operations.

The average age of a land surveyor in the United States is mid-fifties, which means that dramatic changes will need to take place in this profession over the next ten years in order to fill the gap as these practitioners retire. The training of new surveyors will be critical, but laser scanning can also have a dramatic impact on efficiency, driving down the time that a surveyor has to be on any one project site, and allowing one surveyor to do the work of an entire crew.

The future of 3D laser scanning stands to improve steadily, with the potential for dramatic gains once construction starts increase. A movement toward a more digital construction process and 4D construction management will spur on the growth of this sector as will the movement to create highly detailed 3D digital city models for the better management of our urban centers. If you’re contemplating business opportunities or a career change within the geospatial space, 3D laser scanning is an area that you must explore.

The World Bank’s new Eco² Cities Program aims to balance economic growth and ecological impact in the developing world by changing the way that cities are developed in order to make good use of energy and resources, and to avoid problems with pollution, congestion and the rapid growth of slums.

The problem is a pressing one, as the growth of cities is expected to be dramatic over the coming decades:

“It took the world hundreds of years to build today’s urban space of 400,000 square kilometers of cities. It will take only about another 30 years to build that same amount of urban space in cities of developing countries.”

The first phase of this program recently culminated with the publication of a three-part book that outlines a comprehensive analytical and operational framework. The framework outlines the steps necessary for successful and equitable growth, and was built using the example cities of Curitiba, Brazil, Stockholm, Sweden, and Yokohama, Japan.

There are four guiding principles in the program:

1. ‘A City Based Approach,’ which enables local governments to lead a development process that takes into account their specific circumstances, including their local ecology
2. ‘An Expanded Platform for Collaborative Design and Decision Making’ that accomplishes sustained synergy by coordinating and aligning the actions of key stakeholders
3. ‘A One System Approach’ that enables cities to realize the benefits of integration by planning, designing, and managing the whole urban system
4. ‘An Investment Framework that Values Sustainability and Resiliency’ by incorporating and accounting for life cycle analysis, the value of all capital assets (manufactured, natural, human, and social), and a broader scope of risk assessments in decision making.

The guiding documents promote the use of spatial tools to visualize urban forms, in combination with flow diagrams that illustrate urban metabolism. The report promotes the integration of forms and flows for collaborative decision making with a visual approach that combines the expertise of a large number of stakeholders.

The next phase is to start applying the framework in several cities around the world. Representatives from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are meeting in Singapore this week to learn more about the program.

More details about the Eco² Program through can be found in this brochure and this report.