[CivicAccess-discuss] Fwd: [Geowanking] The Open Indicators Consortium

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

This may prove interesting!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raj Singh <raj at rajsingh.org>
Date: Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:05 PM
Subject: [Geowanking] The Open Indicators Consortium
To: geowanking at geowanking.org




*The Open Indicators Consortium*

The University of Massachusetts Lowell announces the formation of a
national open source consortium to develop a new system for
integrating and visualizing neighborhood, municipal, and regional data

Project Leaders:
Georges Grinstein and William Mass, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Charlotte Kahn, The Boston Foundation

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has announced the formation of a
national consortium dedicated to improving access to important data about
communities and regions.  This consortium will develop a new open source
software system for the analysis and visualization of economic, social, and
environmental indicators at the neighborhood, municipal, county and regional
levels.  The effort will be led by faculty members Georges Grinstein
(Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Institute for
Visualization and Perception Research) and William Mass (Director of the
Center for Industrial Competitiveness*)* and by Charlotte Kahn, Director of
the Boston Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation.  Consortium members
include organizations from Greater Atlanta, Georgia; Metro Boston,
Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Chicago, Illinois and New
Haven, Connecticut.  Additional partners will be announced soon.
Up to ten founding members, each of which will contribute funding to the
joint initiative, will guide development based on local preferences in order
to achieve universally useful functionality.  They will test progress
through quarterly releases of the program, with the goal of establishing
fully operational websites in each participating region by the end of 2009.
In the second year of the program, additional features will be added, such
as online networking, collaboration within and across regions,
personalization, and user history.
Once complete, the open source program will be made fully available, with
constraints only on commercial use.  Users of the new software will likely
include researchers, planners, educators, the media, and the general public.

The founding members see many opportunities to use this new tool for complex
data integration and visualization.  Michael Rich, Director of the Emory
University’s Office of University-Community Partnerships and Associate
Professor of Political Science, is a lead data and technology partner for
Atlanta’s Neighborhood Nexus.  Rich is excited about “creating a tool that
will make information about neighborhoods and communities available to a
wide audience in an easily accessible format and the tremendous potential
for comparative research on cities and neighborhoods to inform policy and
evaluation.”
Joshua Connolly, Manager of Data Analysis for Arizona Indicators at Arizona
State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, looks forward to
“filling the gap in public knowledge” so that “public policy decided through
voter initiatives can be based on an accurate understanding of conditions in
Arizona rather than on partisan positions.”
David Norris, Community Data Manager at Community Research Partners in
Columbus Ohio, sees “the opportunity to benchmark across communities in ways
we never could before in Central Ohio and, in the process, save a lot of
money.”
Holly St Clair, Director of Data Services at the Boston-based Metropolitan
Area Planning Council, notes that “efficiency and sustainability are key
challenges facing the nation, but data centers are tightening their belts.
This tool is a sophisticated yet cost-effective way to help us see how our
communities are doing, despite the downturn.”
The product of this effort will be a high-performance, highly interactive
software system that supports the analysis of local and regional datasets
through a variety of visualizations such as scatter plots, bar or pie
charts, line graphs, and multi-layered maps.  The software will allow
multiple visualizations to be displayed simultaneously, and action on any
visualization will automatically update the others allowing for quick
comparisons. The system’s mapping capability will cover a variety of
boundaries and jurisdictions, including parcels, census tracts, voting
precincts, zip codes, neighborhoods, municipalities, legislative districts,
and watersheds.
Simplicity, ease of use, and security are key goals for the software.
Different configurations will be tailored for novice, intermediate and
advanced users, and individual users will be able to further personalize the
site.  The system will be “browser-based,” requiring no special software and
facilitating collaboration by simultaneous users at different sites for
joint development, technical assistance, and training.  It will also support
voice and chat functions to enable collaboration.
The University of Massachusetts Lowell brings a wealth of talent to the task
ahead, including graduate students in the departments of Computer Science
and Regional Economic and Social Development as well as staff at Institute
for Visualization and Perception Research and the Center for Industrial
Competitiveness.  This team has diverse and deep strengths in
interdisciplinary collaboration, project management, programming, and data
base management support.  Key expertise will be provided by Computer Science
faculty Cindy Chen and Jesse Heines, post-doctoral fellow Jianping Zhou,
project manager Mary Beth Smrtic and project architect Alex Baumann.
 Several computer companies are participating as advisors to the project.
The Consortium’s commitment to open source software and the democratization
of data will inspire ongoing innovation among a growing community of users.
 The open source tools being used have already attracted large and
well-established developer communities and are freely available. The
Consortium is structured to promote university, community, industry,
business and public partnerships, and to expand current organizational
capacities.
William Mass’ presentations for planning communities in New England and
research on Indicator Projects around the country, made him aware of the
potential value of new, powerful information visualization and mapping
software tools for extending these organizations’ reach. Georges Grinstein,
a leader in the field of information visualization and visual analytics,
believes that* *“this community of open source practitioners and developers
will support innovation regionally, nationally and internationally and that
the freely available software will have great impact on increasing the
public’s access to data.” For more information contact Grinstein at*
Grinstein at cs.uml.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots.
You need JavaScript enabled to view it *or 978-934-3627 or Mass at *
William_Mass at uml.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots.
You need JavaScript enabled to view it *or 978-934-2721.

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-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
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