The American Water Resources Association (AWRA) held its Spring Specialty Conference on GIS and Water Resources from March 29-31, 2010 in Orlando, Florida. I had the privilege of attending this event to present a poster on using the Sajara software framework to manage hardcopy infrastructure plans. Azavea also prepared a paper for the conference proceedings to help utility organizations digitize their hardcopy documents and otherwise prepare them for integration in the Sajara software framework.
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.
Smart phones combine Internet access and camera capabilities with conventional cell phone functionality. The most recently released smart phones have global positioning systems (GPS), magnetic compass and accelerometer capabilities built in that determine where the phone’s user is standing, in which direction the phone is pointing, and at what angle the phone is tilted. This past summer, the Google Android and Apple iPhone platforms were enhanced to enable software developers to interface with the camera display controls and overlay additional information. Referred to as “augmented reality,” these new capabilities enable smart phone users to automatically access selected information about the world around them in order to augment their reality experience.
Augmented reality technology is extremely new, and its full potential still remains to be seen. Applications have already been developed to help users identify landmarks, learn about architecture, locate public transportation stops and even find their cars in crowded parking lots. Once an augmented reality application has been downloaded to a user’s smart phone, there is no need to access a traditional website or even enter a street address or other search criteria in order to use it. The augmented reality data simply appears on the smart phone’s camera screen in response to the phone’s location. For example, a smart phone user could point the phone’s camera at a local street scene and instantly access prices, room sizes and other information about available real estate within camera range. Depending on the application, the augmented reality data might appear as an overlay at the bottom of the camera display, or as lines of text superimposed directly on a selected site in the camera’s viewfinder.
Azavea recently assisted the Department of Records City Archives with a grant application that could bring augmented reality to the City of Philadelphia. If funding is approved, the proposed application will enable point-and-view access to designated historic photographs from the PhillyHistory.org website for selected locations around the City. The Department of Records believes that augmented reality will provide an innovative means of engaging students in the study of history, architecture and photography. A secondary benefit of this exciting technology would be the enhancement of local tourism, since tourists will be able to access archival photographs and background information about an historic building while literally standing at its doorstep. Best of all, users will be able to download the proposed augmented reality application at no cost directly from the PhillyHistory.org website.
The example image below is courtesy of Mobilizy/Wikitude World Browser (www.mobilizy.com).
Augmented reality applications, like the Wikitude World Browser shown here, allow users to access information about the world around them in relation to their locations. The augmented reality data appears as an overlay on the camera display and can be paged through much like standard web pages. The Philadelphia Department of Records is pursuing a grant that could provide point-and-view access to historic photographs of selected locations in a prototype augmented reality application. Users will be able to automatically access and page through the historic photographs by simply pointing a Smart Phone at the contemporary site.
The Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association held its 67th annual conference and trade show from September 13th to 16th, 2009. Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities provide potable water, sewage treatment and waste management services to municipalities across the State. I attended the conference on September 15th to learn more about current trends for GIS in the water, sewer and stormwater management industries, and to evaluate the conference as a possible future venue for Sajara.
You might already be familiar with the use of the Sajara software framework in the popular PhillyHistory.org and MuralFarm.org web applications. Sajara provides an excellent means of managing and geographically displaying historic documents that had previously been languishing in file drawers, or celebrating the City’s unique collection of architectural murals and local artists. Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities and other infrastructure management organizations often have historic documents as well, and they have a very specific set of management needs that the Sajara software framework can help to address.
Much of the water and sewer infrastructure in the United States was built between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. For water and sewer management purposes, infrastructure includes things like pipes, manholes, fire hydrants, water mains, wells, pump stations, water storage tanks, and sewage treatment plants. For stormwater management purposes, infrastructure includes things like inlets, outfalls, drainage basins and culverts. The original plans and blueprints of these facilities provide invaluable reference when repair or replacement is needed. Unfortunately, finding these archival documents can be difficult, since they have often been haphazardly stored over long periods of time and may not even be accurately indexed. It can be very frustrating to manually search through hundreds of original hardcopy infrastructure drawings in order to find the one critical piece of data that is really needed, particularly in an emergency situation when time is of the essence. The Sajara software framework can geographically reference these important documents and make them instantly searchable by address, date, type of infrastructure and other criteria. The plans can be made available specifically to authorized personnel over the Internet and through various mobile platforms to provide field access when and where it is needed.
Next time you turn on the tap, drain the bathtub or watch the rivers of stormwater pooling in a drainage basin after a heavy rainstorm, think of the infrastructure people behind the scenes that make it all possible. We hope that by applying the Sajara software framework to their historic infrastructure data, their work will become a little less challenging.
Using the Sajara software framework for an infrastructure application might look something like this. Water, sewer and stormwater management documents will be easily accessible in relation to their geographic locations or other search criteria important to infrastructure management personnel nationwide. The Sajara software framework will provide a much more efficient means of searching for historic data than rummaging through stacks of hardcopy drawings, particularly in the event of a water main break or other emergency situation.
The Google Earth Blog posted about a presentation by Michael Jones from Google discussing the roadmap for Google Earth. It seems Google is working on an algorithm to automatically geocode uploaded photographs by comparing them with a large collection of known geo-tagged photos. These known geo-tagged photos could be drawn from a combination of Google Street View, Wikipedia, Picasa and other sources.
There also seems to be some work going on with landmark matching in particular — matching photos with landmarks (the Golden Gate Bridge as an example) as opposed to photos in general. Google published a research paper a few weeks ago that outlines a system to match landmarks around the world with 80% accuracy. There is definitely some way to go before we see high accuracy for geocoding photos in general if this very specialized set of photos only manages 80% accuracy at present.
We’ll certainly be thinking about this technology and how it might relate to our digital asset management system, Sajara. In particular I wonder how their algorithms take into account how a neighborhood’s appearance can change over time. If an algorithm takes into account the date the photograph was taken this could be useful to automatically tag photos not only in regards to their location, but perhaps also the date they were taken.
PhillyHistory.org, an implementation of Sajara – Azavea’s web-based geographic digital asset management software, recently announced that it has made a select number of historic images from its database available on Flickr. The hand-selected photos include some of the oldest and most popular images from the City Archives and provide a beautiful visual history of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and streets.
Visit the PhillyHistory.org photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillyhistory to view and comment on the images. For more information about PhillyHistory.org on Flickr, visit the PhillyHistory.org blog.
Google Street View has been available for a few months now on Muralfarm.org, an implementation of Sajara, Azavea’s web-based geographic digital asset management software, which enables users to search and view the murals produced and maintained by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Included in the thumbnails of photographs for each mural is a white box labeled “Google Street View.” Clicking on this link enables viewers to see the mural as it’s visible to someone walking down the street. It’s a great chance to view the mural in the context of its larger streetscape and neighborhood.
We had such a positive reaction to Street View on Muralfarm.org that we decided to add the feature to PhillyHistory.org, another Sajara implementation that shows the beautiful historic images from the Philadelphia City Archives. We figured it would be a useful way to compare past architecture to the present landscape and tell more of the story of the city’s past.
The results provide an exciting visual demonstration of how the city has changed and developed over the course of its history. A 1914 photo shows a few people standing outside the Head House Market near 2nd and Pine Streets. The present-day Street View for that location shows the same market house with a few changes. A photo from 1918 of the intersection of Arch Street and 10th Street includes several businesses and a sign stretched across the street proclaiming that “Food Will Win the War.” The same intersection in 2009 is still home to many businesses and restaurants. Instead of a war-time sign, an ornate Chinese gate extends across the street, reflecting the ancestry of many residents of an area which now makes up part of the Chinatown neighborhood.
Arch Street Looking West from 10th Street, 1918
Arch Street Looking West from 10th Street, 2009
In the midst of the Street View awesomeness, there was one tiny, frustrating issue. The Street View is set to automatically show whatever Google has established as the default view for that address or intersection. This means that it’s sometimes necessary to navigate up and down the street or pan the view in order to see the mural or the location that matches the historic photo. However, thanks to the work of Carissa, one of our software developers, we’ve found a way around that problem. Carissa built an administrative tool that lets us set the angle and viewpoint of the Street View for any asset. We simply adjust the angle until we have the perfect view and then click “Save” to set that view as the default. Now, whenever the Street View is opened for that asset, it will show the perfect angle with no panning or navigating necessary. To find out more of the technical details of how Carissa solved the problem, read her entry over at Azavea Labs.
Check out the Street View on Muralfarm.org and PhillyHistory.org, and let us know what you think!
