I am pleased to announce the first Azavea Summer of Maps. Inspired by the Google Summer of Code, Summer of Maps is a program that offers stipends to student GIS analysts to perform geospatial data analysis for non-profit organizations. We are going to match up non-profit organizations that have spatial analysis needs with talented students of GIS analysis to implement projects over a three-month period during the summer. Here’s how it will work:
- Feb 28 – Mar 16 – Non-profit organizations can submit brief proposals for spatial analysis projects to Azavea
- Mar 17 – 20, – Azavea program administrators review organizations
- Mar 21 – April 2 – Students submit proposals and applications
- April 2 – 13 – Top candidates are interviewed in Philadelphia
- April 16 – Azavea announces successful Summer of Maps fellows
- May 14 – August 31 – Summer of Maps fellows work on spatial analysis projects
This is our first time doing this, so we may have to adjust this schedule, but we’ll try to keep the main web page updated on the progress.
What’s in it for the non-profit orgs?
- Receive pro bono services from a talented student GIS analyst to geographically analyze and visualize your data
- Visualize your data in new ways
- Combine your data with other demographic and geographic data to draw new observations
- Receive high quality maps that can be used to make a case to funders or support new initiatives
What’s in it for the students?
- Work on a spatial analysis project that supports the social mission of a non-profit organization
- Work with Azavea mentors to improve your GIS skills
- Receive a monthly stipend
- Gain work experience implementing a GIS project
If you are a non-profit organization and have a project you would like to see implemented, please submit an application. Deadline is March 16.
Learn more about Azavea Summer of Maps at www.azavea.com/summer-of-maps/
As many of you know, since 2010 Azavea has been a B Corporation. That means we are a for-profit corporation that operates with a social mission. The B Corporation is a new designation, but Azavea was founded with a public service mission, and this continues to motivate much of our work. To become certified, B Corporations must meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards, and amend their corporate by-laws to incorporate the interests of employees, community, and the environment. They also agree to contribute a portion of their revenue (based on the company’s size) each year to B Lab to support the program, and to undergo an audit of their business practices once every 2 years to ensure that their business practices continue to align with the B Corporation’s principles.
Azavea’s social mission is:
Apply geospatial technology to create more sustainable, vital and livable communities, while advancing the state of the art through research.
As part of our policy of financial transparency with our staff, Azavea prepares an annual report. Beginning this year, we have also prepared an annual report to all of you, our community, on the various ways in which we are fulfilling our social enterprise commitment.
Some highlights of our 2011 B Corp Annual Report include:
And we will be rolling out some exciting new initiatives later this year. Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can read the full report.
As a certified B Corporation, Azavea is held to a high set of sustainability and social value standards. We’re committed to keeping the interests of employees, our community, and the environment at the core of our mission. And we strive to create a challenging and intellectually stimulating environment for our colleagues while seeking out projects with social value that help create more vibrant, sustainable communities (learn more here).
In addition to carefully selecting the types of projects with which we engage – public health, crime analysis, elections, human services, cultural resources, economic development, and land conservation, to name just a few – Azavea operates a pro bono program and gives away a portion of its annual profits to nonprofit organizations each year. Each of our 25 staff members is given the opportunity to allocate the contributions. Each person receives 10 points they can distribute across a list of organizations that match our areas of interest including:
- Ecosystems
- Local Arts and Culture
- Open Government and Rule of Law
- Internet and Open Data
- Sustainable Transportation
- Growing Underdeveloped Markets
We’re pleased to announce that our staff selected the following organizations for our 2011 charitable contributions. We believe that the work they are doing is well worth our support, and we hope you’ll take a moment or two to learn more about them.
Ecosystems
Local Arts and Culture
Open Government and Rule of Law
Internet and Open Data
Sustainable Transportation
Growing Underdeveloped Markets
We also made donations to support other organizations and activities, including:
This past Wednesday we hosted a webinar that was a bit different than our prior HunchLab webinars. In our previous webinars, we would cover the functionality that we’ve built into our HunchLab product as well as provide some background into how underlying algorithms work.
This most recent webinar, however, is designed to give crime analysts ten concrete actions they can take to improve their analysis. Some of the topics we covered are practiced by many police departments; other topics are newer and less commonly utilized.
Our ten steps are grouped into three categories:
- ways of improving data quality (which improves analytic results)
- analytic techniques
- use cases (which increase the value of crime data to a community)
Video Recording
Also available on Youtube, Slideshare and as a PDF of slides.
For the past year, we’ve been hard at work on OpenTreeMap, the open source software for collaborative, geography-enabled urban tree inventory. With funding from USDA and CALFIRE and in collaboration with Urban Ecos and TreeKIT, we’ve added new features and made exciting plans for future development (can anyone say mobile app…hint, hint…). OpenTreeMap now powers websites in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sacramento with other cities in the works!
Many municipalities must deal with the complex process of maintaining the urban forest. As an open source software project, OpenTreeMap can be a valuable tool that enables organizations to work together with the public to map and inventory the urban forest.
On March 8, from 1-2pm ET, we’ll be hosting a free webinar where we’ll discuss the major features of OpenTreeMap and how it can assist with public engagement. To discover more about OpenTreeMap or ask questions about the software, please feel free to join us!
During the webinar, you will learn how OpenTreeMap can:
- Enable collaborative urban tree inventory projects
- Calculate and display the ecosystem benefits of the urban forest
- Engage the community in the care and maintenance of neighborhood trees
You can register for the March 8 webinar at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/875138166.
If you can’t make the webinar, please contact me at dboyer@azavea.com or visit the OpenTreeMap website for more info. We’d love to hear what you think about OpenTreeMap!
Are you looking to optimize the crime analysis at your police department? This webinar will cover a series of 10 discrete steps that police departments can take to produce more effective crime analysis.
As we develop our crime analysis software, HunchLab, we are always on the look out for ways of examining and improving data quality as well as new academic research that shows promise to enhance crime analysis.
In this one-hour webinar, we will first explain some of the ways we examine data quality when we utilize historic incident datasets for research and analysis and how you can use these techniques in your department. Then, we will walk through a series of analytic techniques and practices that can help your department improve your crime analysis processes.
This session will cover analytic topics in a non-technical manner and outline techniques that require only free or commonly available software.
Registration link:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/193960006
Similar to last year, I’ve volunteered the Azavea office space for a Code for America hackathon at the end of February. This will coincide with a coordinated national event, a series of CityCamp hackathons that will also be known as Code Across America, on Saturday, Feb 25. Coffee and bagels will be served at 9am, festivities will begin around 9:30am and we will be working hard on civic apps all day. This will be part of a national week of civic innovation. We’ll build apps, liberate data, and develop the skills we need to create an ecosystem for civic engagement.
We hope you’ll join us. You can sign up for the Philadelphia event at: http://codeforamerica.ticketleap.com/codeacrossamerica2012/
If you are interested in other cities, there’s more info at: http://codeforamerica.org/code-across-america/
