Azavea’s Brown Bag Lunch program provides a unique monthly opportunity for Azavea staff to talk about projects they are pursuing inside/outside of work as well as hear from community leaders in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Our speaker for March was Thaddeus Squire, founder and president of CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia.  CultureWorks is the next evolution of Peregrine Arts, the organization that presented the spectacularly successful Hidden City event in 2009. During the Hidden City festival, performing and visual artists created dance, music, sculpture, video, print, and mixed media pieces inspired by the history and architecture of ”hidden” sites that people are not usually able to see.  [Azavea participated in an early brainstorming session and also developed a transit map to help Peregrine Arts determine which hidden places would be the most accessible to visitors].  As part of his talk, Mr. Squire described the process of bringing some of the city’s best-unknown historical and architectural landmarks back to life and how excited he was that some of the old buildings, many of which are in various states of disrepair, are currently being repurposed due to the renewed interest generated by Hidden City.  Those of you who attended the 2009 event will be pleased to know that a new Hidden City festival is currently being planned for 2013 and will encourage even more interest in redevelopment and reuse of neglected historic sites.

With fully 47% of all arts and cultural organizations in southeastern Pennsylvania currently operating at a deficit, the overarching goal of the new CultureWorks venture is to provide arts and heritage organizations with affordable access to the support and strategy they need to be resilient and sustainable in a constantly changing environment.  A major challenge for non-profits is reliance upon government and foundation grants.  When they end or decline, many organizations are forced to shrink and eliminate programs.  CultureWorks aims to improve the financial resilience of non-profits by lowering costs and developing or improving their business models.  These services are provided through three important programs:

• Cultural Sustainability Initiatives that provide partnering and resource support for large organizations with a particular project or goal in mind;
• Management Services for smaller organizations in need of financial, fundraising and marketing support; and
• Cultural CoWorking space to provide organizations of all sizes with the opportunity to network and support each other.

Mr. Squire indicated that arts and cultural organizations often find themselves competing for both funding and community support not only against other like-minded organizations, but also with the educational and community development projects that are often perceived by the general public as being more important.  The recent announcement that the world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra was filing for bankruptcy really drives home the challenges faced by arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation.  CultureWorks has been founded to improve the chances of both survival and prosperity for cultural organizations.

• 10% time for personal research projects, training or open source projects
• Pro bono spatial analysis mini-projects for non-profit organziations
• Quarterly R&D social
• Monthly R&D code sprint day
• Monthly brown bag lunches

While we have had the 10% research program for several years, some staff found it difficult to carve out the time to work on research projects.  So last fall, we started setting aside one day a month where there is both explicit social permission and peer pressure to invest in research projects.  We also align this day with our long-running Brown Bag Lunch events.

The day starts with a stand-up meeting attended by the whole company.  Each person with a research project says a brief word on what their goals are for the day.  Robert then provides a summary of major accomplishments for the past month and priorities for the coming month.  Around noon, food arrives and we gather to listen to a lunch-time speaker.  Brown bag lunches are an opportunity for either an Azavea colleague to talk about a personal project they are developing outside of work or to invite someone from outside the company to talk about a project about which they are passionate.  These presentations have included an incredible range of folks including:

• The fight to save the S.S. United States
• The development of a new documentary, Philadelphia: The Great Experiment
• The latest research from people like Dennis Culhane, Amy Hillier, Doug Wiebe, Dana Tomlin, Joel Caplan and Charlie Branas
• Introduction to Fencing from a local maestro
• Robots and GIS, Benton Yetman from PenBay Media
• What I learned working for the 2008 Obama campaign (Josh Marcus)
• Philadelphia Sesquicentennial (Deb Boyer)
• Hand Drawn Maps Association, Kristofer Harzinski

Azavea will be blogging about these monthly events beginning with a summary of our March presentation by Thaddeus Squire of CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia.  Stay tuned.

WikiWatershed is a multi-year project being funded by the National Science Foundation, the same organization that funded Azavea’s GPU research.  One of the overarching goals of the WikiWatershed Project is to help students understand how present and future actions can impact environmental changes, and to potentially interest them in pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers.  

The first of several planned modules for the WikiWatershed Project is already live.  The Model My Watershed Information Portal is streaming real-time stream gauge and weather station data for the entire Schuylkill River watershed.  Stream gauge data from the United States Geological Survey is used for a broad range of important watershed management activities nationwide, including flood prediction, water allocation and recreational safety enhancement.  Local weather data includes temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure and precipitation totals.  WikiWatershed users have the option to view current stream gauge or weather station data for a particular location, or to visualize historic data through the use of graphs and tables. 

Keep checking back over the next several months as new modules are added to the site, including interactive applications that will support the simulation of stormwater runoff and infiltration.  Once complete, the WikiWatershed website will provide a collaborative platform where local students and other users can share their observations, ideas and resource data to enhance environmental stewardship. 

The Model My Watershed Information Portal enables users to visualize historic stream gauge data with graphs and tables.

On September 11, 2010, Japan launched the first in a series of three satellites that will provide enhanced navigation signals for Japan and portions of the surrounding Asia-Pacific region.  The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) is named for the asymmetrical Figure-8 orbit that will keep at least one satellite almost directly overhead – at the zenith – at all times.  For high accuracy positioning, the ideal satellite geometry is to have one satellite at the zenith and three others broadly scattered around it.  The new satellite, also known as “Michbiki,” will send signals that are interchangeable with those of the United States’ GPS constellation, thus allowing the QZSS to augment the eight to eleven GPS satellites that are normally available over Japan at any given time.  When fully operational in 2013, the three QZSS satellites will reduce ranging errors and increase positioning accuracy even in areas of Japan where urban canyons or mountainous terrain have previously been an issue

Even before Michibiki was launched, it had its own iPhone/iTouch application. QZ-Finder allows users to keep track of QZSS and GPS satellite positions overhead with a compass-like skyplot view as well as a world map view that shows how the satellites are distributed around the globe and even tracks the QZSS orbit trajectory.  The new app also features an augmented reality view of the satellites that can be accessed through the user’s iPhone camera and even incorporated into a photograph for an image that is truly “out of this world.”

Japan is also moving ahead with its Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).  The QZSS will provide navigation coverage for Japan and portions of the surrounding Asia-Pacific region, with full operational status anticipated in 2013.  The first satellite was originally scheduled to launch on August 2, 2010, but the launch was postponed due to a suspected defect in the satellite’s reaction-wheel assembly system.  The defective part has since been replaced, and the launch has been rescheduled for September 11, 2010. 

The QZSS will provide high accuracy positioning to most of Japan, even where urban canyons or mountainous terrain might otherwise be an issue.  Following a campaign by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the satellite has been nicknamed “Michibiki,” which means “guiding star” or “showing the way.”  The satellite also has its own mascot as well as a dedicated website that will provide 3-D interaction and information about the satellite beginning on August 23. 

The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System Orbit will keep a navigational satellite almost directly overhead at all times, providing greater positioning accuracy for GNSS users in Japan (public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

 Once all currently planned satellites have been deployed and added to those already in orbit in existing constellations, it is anticipated that positioning services, particularly in “urban canyons” and other locations where signal strength has previously been an issue, will be significantly enhanced for navigation system users around the world.

The Compass Navigation Satellite System will initially provide service to the Asia-Pacific region (public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

The IIF satellites are part of the ongoing modernization of the GPS constellation by the United States Air Force.  The IIFs have improved atomic clocks used for timing and are therefore expected to provide more accurate navigation signals than those currently available from the rest of the GPS constellation.  The IIFs will also broadcast the civil L5 signal for safety-of-life applications, which has the potential to enhance indoor reception with its wider bandwidth and lower frequency.  The new satellites will also be compatible with the Galileo, GLONASS and QZSS constellations.  In addition, the IIFs will assist the IIRM series already in orbit with military-specific M-code, a unique encryption for military users requiring secure access. 

The new satellite, officially known as GPS IIF-1 SV-1, is expected to begin broadcasting its signal to GPS users following a three- to four-month testing period.  In addition to being the first in the new IIF satellite series, this launch was significant for another reason as well.  GPS IIF 1 SV-1 was carried into orbit on a Delta IV rocket, making it the first GPS satellite since 1985 that was not placed in orbit by an Atlas rocket.

The new IIF satellite series has finally launched. (Public domain image courtesy of http://pnt.gov/public/images/.)

The AWRA Conference covered a diverse range of subjects involving the use of GIS in the water resources industry.  There were presentations on hydrologic modeling, watershed delineation, data sharing, software interface development and land use applications, just to name a few.  The poster session added topics such as coastal management, agriculture, community water systems, education and irrigation, as well as document management.  Many of the organizations looking at Sajara to manage their infrastructure plans were also interested in using GIS for stormwater management applications, similar to what the Philadelphia Water Department is doing with phillystormwater.org.    

The opening plenary session featured Jack Dangermond with additional details on his vision for GIS in the cloud” and web services to enable data sharing.  He particularly referenced CUAHSI HIS (Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc.), an organization representing over 100 United States universities.  CUAHSI has received National Science Foundation support to develop a web API and the HydroDesktop software application.  The desktop application has been released as open source and available at no cost to users to help them download and manage available water data.  But the web API and the database behind it are most interesting parts of the project.  CUAHSI harvests sensor feeds of water data from 1000’s of sites across the United States.  This data is archived and made available through a SOAP interface   Dangermond collaborated with David Maidment on a paper for the AWRA proceedings that outlined the integration of water resources data using GIS and the web more generally and the CUAHSI project specifically.  Maidment is the Director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at the University of Texas in Austin and heavily involved in the CUAHSI project.  Both of them were also part of a panel discussion on the future of water resources information. 

In addition to discussing Sajara with various organizations, one of the highlights of the conference for me was a presentation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding GIS past, present and future for water resources applications.  Part of their vision for the future includes augmented reality applications, enabled by smart phones, special glasses or potentially car windshields, which would augment the reality experience of approaching a well or other infrastructure asset, for example, with critical descriptive information, or even diagrams and engineering plans overlaid on the reality view.  The potential for these projects is very exciting to me, particularly since the Philadelphia Department of Records recently received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities under its Digital Humanities Startup Grant program to develop an augmented reality application for PhillyHistory.org that would enable smart phone users to view historic photographs of the city as an overlay on their camera displays by simply pointing their smart phone cameras at selected buildings. 

AWRA will be holding this year’s annual conference right here in Philadelphia beginning on November 1, 2010.  They will be addressing regional topics of interest to Mid-Atlantic water resources organizations.  Perhaps Azavea will see you there.

The Poster Session at the AWRA Conference demonstrated Sajara’s ability to organize, search and retrieve infrastructure documents in a single web interface. Azavea’s poster was one of more than forty posters showcasing various aspects of GIS for the water resources industry.

As a comparison, the current GPS constellation maintained by the United States includes 32 satellites and reached full operational capacity in 1995.  It takes a minimum of 24 operational satellites to provide complete global availability.

Solar activity generally occurs in eleven-year cycles, with the next peak expected by 2012.  Increased solar activity is particularly troublesome for the navigation devices many drivers reference in their vehicles.  GPS blackouts may last for a number of minutes during periods of peak solar activity and may occur several times each year.  In addition to GPS blackouts, the atmospheric charge can impact the amount of time it takes for a GPS signal to make it to a GPS receiver, which causes inaccurate readings.  Positioning may be off by as much as thirty feet during these periods, which will have the greatest impact on GPS survey equipment. 

For iPhone users that want to keep track of solar activity, NASA has helped implement a new app called “3D Sun” that allows users to access a live global view of the sun.  Data is provided in near real-time fashion by NASA’s STEREO mission, a pair of satellites that provide coverage of both sides of the sun simultaneously.  More information on the app is available at http://3dsun.org/.

A high resolution 2D image of the sun taken by NASA's STEREO mission. STEREO is monitoring solar activity that may interfere with GPS and other signals. (Public domain image courtesy of NASA.)