Kyle Larkin and Dan Wandrey of Arizona State have developed a community participation tool for urban design called Community Futures. Some would say it’s geodesign. The “web application ... integrate[s] visual storytelling with live data, allowing advocates, political officials, developers and community members to use information to clarify problems and offer solutions.”
- ASU News
High school students from Altoona, WI, have mapped all the trees in town (900) with particular attention to the 22% that are ash trees. They are helping the city prepare for the ash borer, which may damage the trees. The map they created using GPS, I guess, and knowledge of tree types and indicators of health will help the city keep an eye on the trees and mark any that need to be removed.
- WQOW
Austin Peay State University’s Geographic Information Systems Center working with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has developed an Android app for damage assessment, now in beta. It may replace old paper and pencil methods of documenting damage, along with many other apps like it, I’d guess.
The APSU GIS Center has worked for years with the Homeland Security District 7 to develop this technology, and in 2009, the center received a grant from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to create the Disaster Mitigation And Recovery Kit (DMARK) application for Android Mobile Phones. The prototype application was unveiled on April 7. It is still in the testing phase, but Wilson said they used the recent middle Tennessee floods to see how the DMARK program worked in a real-world scenario.
Jack Dangermond, founder of ESRI, gave the commencement address at the University of Redlands Business School graduation. Among his comments:
“I’ll be gone but you’ll still be here,” he said. “We’ll need all your knowledge and best thinking to deal with these things [environment, and urbanization and social conflict].”
