Chicago Shows Off its Open Data Platform

While the April 26 webinar was hosted by Socrata, very few details were giving about its offerings. Instead, the session titled "Chicago's Smarter City Transformation" focused on what the city did with the platform. It built an open data portal. Join Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s Chief Data Officer, and Danielle DuMerer, Open Data Project Manager did most of the talking.

Goldstein noted how the platform was design to serve many including academics, the press and hisand other Mom's. There was one shoutout to GIS professionals: Goldstein noted that putting out shapefiles was not enough, so they also provide KML. DuMerer showed off data tables, maps of the data, views of the data, etc. Chicago held a contest to encourage app development and recieved 60 submissions. The open data portal stats include:

• 328 datasets
• 470,000+ embeds
• 1000 + user views
• 50+ apps

More important perhaps were the ways the open data project impacted they city:

• No more FOIA (Freedom of Information Act requests)
• Departmental accountability
• Cost effectiveness
• Smarter decisions
• Civic engagement (included classes to introduce the data and platform)

The two big takeaways for me were:

1) Building such portals (or the SDI for that matter) is still about digging up and reformating data. An engineer wanted to buiild an app about street sweeping. After digging around the city the data was found - it was in a spreadsheet embedded in a PDF. So, it had to be extracted and turned into a data table and geographic layer. As new and shiny as open data programs are, we are still doing much of the same work extractino and conversaion work we did in the 1980s.

2) Return on investment is not being formally measured. Goldstein responded the ROI question by asking how you value gaining public trust or encouraging sotware developers to donate time to trackling civic issues. If Chicago is not insisting on some measure of ROI, I do hope Socrata is working with customers to develop some sort of response to this perennial question.

Updating Aerial Imagery and other Government GIS News

It's spring - and time to capture aerial images before the trees bud! Lancaster County, PA is doing it with NGA and USGS (local paper). Summerland in BC is doing it on its own (local paper).

- various outlets

Governor Pat Quinn, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle and Mayor Rahm Emanuel today unveiled Socrata-powered http://www.MetroChicagoData.org , the nation's first data convergence cloud that brings public data from the City of Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois into a single Open Data portal, for easy access by residents and businesses in the Metro Chicago area.

There is an API, but I don't believe you can download the data.

- press release

The USDA Forest Service's Eastern Forest and Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Centers recently unveiled a product that helps natural resource managers rapidly detect, identify, and respond to unexpected changes in the nation's forests by using web-based tools. ForWarn, a satellite-based monitoring and assessment tool, recognizes and tracks potential forest disturbances caused by insects, diseases, wildfires, extreme weather, or other natural or human-caused events. The tool, available at http://www.forwarn.forestthreats.org, complements and focuses efforts of existing forest monitoring programs and potentially results in time and cost savings.

ROI for Chicago’s Tree Trimming GIS Use and other Government GIS News

[Chicago  Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Tom] Byrne said the blitzing now permits crews to trim 20 trees a day instead of 14.

The maps are based both on observation by city employees and by callers to the city’s 311 non-emergency line. Byrne said that in less than four months, use of the program has reduced the number of backlogged tree-trimming requests from 30,000 to 23,000, with a blitz taking place in each of the city’s 50 wards roughly twice a month.

...Byrne said it saves on manpower, fuel and mechanical wear and addresses complaints more quickly.

The app was first used to map crime, now tree trimming requests. Next up: graffitti.

- CBS Chicago

2011 NAIP 1 meter, 4 band aerial photography is now available in Image Server (image.agrc.utah.gov). This imagery was acquired statewide in the summer of 2011 as a part of the National Agriculture Imagery Program and is also available for FTP download as well.

- Utah GIS Portal

The county will now offer its global information mapping services at no cost to area school corporations.

Allen County commissioners approved a new membership agreement with Fort Wayne Community Schools today that will eliminate the fees the county normally charges for sharing mapping information, said Dave Estes, who manages the county’s GIS office.

The legislation that requires those fees has retricted the county from contributing to IndianaMap, the state's map.

- Journal Gazette (I contacted the paper about the expansion of "GIS" above)

"Investigators consider making map of arson fires" is the headline in the local paper in Kamploops, BC. They have a list of the suspicious fires. I wonder what they are waiting for?

- Kamloops Daily News

Esri is among those noted in new project cited in a press release from the White House discussing its Global Development Policy.

• A new “app store” for development to spur humanitarian apps and software: USAID has joined forces with today’s leading technology companies to build an “app store” for development-oriented software.  The platform will enable public and private technology interventions to be scaled and replicated across multiple countries, programs, and implementers while creating a marketplace of ideas and applications.   This partnership will take advantage of the knowledge of “cloud computing experts” from major technology companies such as HP, Cisco, Accenture, and ESRI to increase the productivity and efficiency of USAID’s development assistance.

- fact sheet via @michael_d_gould

Chicago Shovels and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

A new addition to ChicagoShovels.org, Adopt-a-Sidewalk will allow residents to request help in shoveling via a map.

- NWI Times

Forget OSM and Google Maps, Hillsborough, NJ is using GreenMap.org for its community mapping efforts.

- Hillsborough Patch

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the British Astronomical Association’s Campaign for Dark Skies are calling for ‘citizen scientists’ to take part in Star Count Week.

From January 20-27 stargazers will be asked to count the number of stars they can see within the constellation of Orion with the naked eye.

This effort is in Cheshire and yes, the results will be posted on a map. Data is gathered via Survey Monkey.

- Ellesmere Port Pioneer

Chicago, NYC offer Real Time Snow Plow Maps and other Government GIS News

Chicago (map) and NYC (map via www.nyc.gov when its up an running) will offer real time snow plow info. While the maps won't get the streets plowed any faster, the transparency is most welcome.

- press release (Chicago)

- ABC  (NYC)

Linear referencing is still a challenge on rural roads. In Canada, one community finds it'd cost quite a bit to put in marker numbers for 911 response.

According to Good’s report, it would cost $95,000 to install the markers along Muskoka’s rural roads, with additional costs needed to maintain the signage in the future.

Utility poles can be used in part because they have bar codes and small numbers that are difficult to read from the road and because reponders need permission to use the data.

- Cottage Country Now

The City Council [NYC] on Wednesday passed a measure that requires the Department of Transportation to post information on its website regarding resurfacing and capital improvements.

Data such as when streets were last paved and road conditions will be available. There is an online map, but it has not geocoding yet.

 - NY1