Azavea Journal

Vol. 6 Issue 6
December 2011

Cicero API: Evolving to Greet 2012 and Redistricting

By Abby Fretz Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

The Cicero team welcomes 2012 with a new face and a new engine. We’ve just launched a new Cicero website (www.azavea.com/cicero). Additionally we are in the process of developing a Cicero REST API to allow for more integration flexibility (Cicero is currently a SOAP-based API), building an online batch stamping tool, and have just released a vital and timely data set. We’ll talk about the new API in a future newsletter, but I’ll focus on the new data set here.

Following every decennial census, each state goes through the process of redrawing their legislative district boundaries at the congressional and state levels. As many of you know, we’ve done a significant amount of research and software development related to making the process of drawing and analyzing new legislative districts easily accessible by anyone (e.g. DistrictBuilder, Redistricting The Nation, “Redrawing the Map on Redistricting” whitepaper, etc.).

We’ve also had to consider the significant impact redistricted boundaries will have on our Cicero users. Many organizations need to match their members or contacts to legislative districts in advance of organizing a call-to-action campaign or lobbying effort on behalf of their organization. Many Cicero users expressed a desire to match their address databases to both the boundaries currently in place and those that will take effect in the new legislative sessions.

Because our team is continuously accessing legislative boundary and elected official data we are in a great position to quickly serve up this data, and are now able to support both:

Legislative boundaries currently in use – This includes the district boundaries released after the 2000 Census that are still in effect. As state elections take place and inaugurations occur (Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia elections used new boundaries in November), we will incorporate those boundaries that have gone through the final approval process by the state and will be in effect following the elections.
Legislative boundary plans that have been officially approved but will not take effect until the next election - This data set will not provide complete coverage of the United States until all states have completed the redistricting process. New states will be added as we receive and process the data.

If you have any questions about any of the Cicero team’s recent developments, please feel free to contact Project Manager, Abby Fretz at afretz@azavea.com or via phone at 215.701.7503.

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Find Medical Services in an Emergency

By David Middlecamp Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

I’ve never been to Skopje, the capital city of the Republic of Macedonia, or Budapest, or Ostava in The Czech Republic. I’ve never even been to Roswell, New Mexico either, but if I did go there and was involved in an accident, I would know exactly how to find the nearest emergency medical facility, thanks to a new free iPhone app we built and just launched.

We worked with the Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF) to build the Emergency Medical Center Locator – a free app for your iPhone. It makes it easy to access the nearest Trauma, or Pediatric care center (or Cardiac, or Eye, or Burn, or Stroke, etc.) while at home or abroad. Having that information easily available not only allows for extra peace of mind, but it can mean the difference between life and death. Indeed, those first few minutes and hours after a trauma can significantly impact chances of survival.

Applications like the Emergency Medical Center Locator that are simple, focused and data-driven are significant equalizers when it comes to making information accessible. However, this data can change on an ongoing basis. We built the app in a way that would allow us to update the data as it changes. The app communicates with a set of database services in order to retrieve the latest information for you medical centers around your location. If you have your iPhone and a data connection, you can just download the app from the Apple Store, here.

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TEDx Philly: We Were There and Loved It

By Rachel Cheetham-Richard Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

Early November, Philadelphia welcomed one of the most anticipated events of the year: TEDx Philly.

TEDx events are independently organized TED events. They are held all over the globe and bring together some of the most thought-provoking speakers from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

On November 8, TEDx Philly brought to its stage engaging speakers, performers and artists who explored The City, as this year’s theme. Through their talks and performances, 600 audience members were challenged to question and examine some of the greatest challenges, innovations and realities that shape our cities — most importantly, our city.

The day-long event was organized in four sessions: Engage, Transform, Converge, Reveal. While all speakers and performers were truly engaging, a few stuck with me. Jeffery Brenner, a physician in Camden, NJ, painted a devastating picture of the U.S. healthcare system, but told us about his hopeful efforts to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of care in his city. Keya Dannenbaum, founder of ElectNext, reminded us that voting to get our interests properly represented does not have to be a guessing game. Spoken-Word poets from the Philly Youth Poetry Movement made us laugh out loud with their wits and word-plays, while demonstrating that education, critical-thinking skills, and self-esteem don’t only happen in the classroom. Our friend and colleague Amy Hillier, a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, explored how our geographic location affects the quality of our health, especially in terms of obesity issues. Janet Echelman’s magnificent fishing net urban sculptures made us dream while she and Susan Weiler, partner at the Philly-based landscape architecture firm OLIN, discussed a ground-breaking project that will re-shape the current unwelcoming Dilworth Plaza into a more inviting and artistically playful environment.

Throughout, TEDx Philly was a resounding success. We were glad to attend, but most importantly, we were proud to have our own Abby Fretz and Tamara Manik-Perlman as part of the volunteer organizers, along with Roz Duffy and former Azavean Reed Lauber!

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Urban Forestry Fun in Florida

By Deb Boyer Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

This past month, Carissa Brittain and I flew to Disney World for a few days. Azavea team bonding event? Early Thanksgiving vacation? Nope, we were actually off to sunny Florida on business – specifically to attend the annual Partners in Community Forestry Conference, held this year (lucky for us!) at Walt Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort near Orlando.

Why would a GIS software development company attend a forestry conference? For the last year and a half, we’ve actually been thinking a lot about trees – how to count them, where to plant them, how they impact the environment, and how to get communities enthusiastic about them.

It all started in 2010 when we won a USDA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant to build OpenTreeMap, an open source software platform for collaborative, geography-enabled urban tree inventory. This fall, we were fortunate to win a Phase II SBIR grant from the USDA to expand OpenTreeMap. At about the same time, we also learned we had been awarded a Phase I grant to research and create new web-based tools for prioritizing tree planting locations and modeling tree growth and impact over time.

All this tree work made us want to learn more about the urban forestry community and the Partners in Community Forestry conference, organized by the Arbor Day Foundation, is one of the best places to meet “tree people” from across the country. With our partners from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Strategic Nature, we gave a presentation at the conference on PhillyTreeMap.org (one of our implementations of OpenTreeMap) and our plans for future development of the site. We also staffed a booth in the exhibit hall where we talked with attendees about OpenTreeMap.org and how it’s being used around the country. We heard some great feedback about how we can improve the software and were very excited to learn about organizations interested in downloading the code and trying OpenTreeMap themselves.

We came back from the conference with many ideas for our future urban forestry efforts. Over the next few months, we will be finishing our tree modeling and prioritization work and diving into the next phase of OpenTreeMap with specific focus on creating mobile and tablet versions, adding in more gaming and social networking elements, and building APIs for more efficient transfer of data in and out of the system. Trees and software to help plant, grow and maintain them seems, dare I say, to have really taken root at Azavea.

To see OpenTreeMap in action, visit PhillyTreeMap.org, UrbanForestMap.org, and GreenprintMaps.org.

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A Close Finish Ends Phase 1 of the OpenDataRace

By Deb Boyer Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

In the October newsletter, we were excited to announce the beginning of the OpenDataRace, a contest that encouraged local groups and members of the public to become involved in advocating for the release of open data while also supporting non-profit organizations and their work to improve the Philadelphia region. The contest built on the OpenDataPhilly.org site launched in April 2011.

Fifteen non-profits nominated over two dozen data sets that they felt should be made available to the public. While we hoped people would visit the OpenDataRace contest page and vote for the data they wanted more widely available, we weren’t quite sure how much of a response we would get. As PlanPhilly put it, that’s a “powerfully nerdy” type of contest. Would anyone actually vote in a contest about data?

Turns out we didn’t need to worry. Throughout October, over 2,400 new users registered on OpenDataPhilly and cast their votes for a particular data set. The voting for first, second, and third places was particularly fierce as the top three vote-getters earned a small cash prize for the non-profits who nominated them. Email pleas were sent, impassioned tweets and blog entries were posted, and in a close finish, three data sets emerged as the most desired data in the City of Philadelphia.

First Place: National Student Clearinghouse Data, nominated by The Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Second Place: Reported Bike Thefts, nominated by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia

Third Place: Vacant Land Data, jointly nominated by Conservation Pennsylvania/Young Involved Philadelphia/Penn Future’s Next Great City

While the voting phase may be over, the OpenDataRace effort is just beginning. The OpenDataPhilly team will now begin the process of advocating for the release of the data sets. We also hope to organize hack-a-thons in February 2012 that will encourage software developers and others to take any newly released data and create amazing apps or data visualizations.

For a full list of the OpenDataRace voting results, visit OpenDataPhilly.org.

Thank you for joining us in the race for open data!

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Behind The Scenes

By Andrew Thompson Published in

Vol. 6 Issue 6, December 2011

Sometimes we craft these “Behind the Scenes” posts to give you an insight into the personal components that make up the Azavea whole. But no Azavean is an island (though sometimes our two “remote Davids” out in Boston and Minneapolis may feel that way!). Building great geographic software requires great team players, so for this “Behind the Scenes,” we asked our teams to synchronize their creative forces and devise a music album, movie, and superpower that best describe them as a collective.

We Contain Multitudes is the name and parallel computing of the game over at the DecisionTree team. Erik, Tamara, and Josh like to get in the zone by listening to Steve Reich’s concurrent yet carefully orchestrated Music for 18 Musicians. ”Welcome to a parallel world!” this team says about Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 film Alice, a free adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Marvel’s Doctor Strange wields occult powers of magic that make him “more powerful by far than any of your fellow humanoids,” an apt analog to this intrepid team as they wield their own brand of multi-threaded geoprocessing magic more mighty than any single CPU.

The Trending Gentlemen – Jeremy, Bennet, David Middlecamp, and Kenny - are in charge at the Law Enforcement and HunchLab team. Their crime analysis technologies are watching “Every Breath You (criminals) Take” and solve “Murder by Numbers,” making the Police’s A-side and B-Side of the same names logical musical selections. We might not sell an accompanying full bodysuit with each implementation of HunchLab, but officers won’t need one like that found in Paul Verhoven’s 1987 RoboCop when they have the power of real-time statistical hunches on their side. First time users might equate such hunches with the superpower of precognition, but don’t worry, this team doesn’t actually generate them with by sitting in the swimming pool like you saw in Minority Report.

The Cool Kids in the Marketing team – Rachel, Amy, Abby, Jeremy, and Andrew T (yours truly) – have adopted the Bangles’ “Manic Monday” as our anthem as we frenetically write, tweet, strategize, and promote our products. Christopher Guest’s 2000 Best In Show - consisting of mostly improvised dialogue – is an allusion to our awe-inspiring presentations at tradeshows. And, like Wonder Woman, our writing and speaking practice gives us the power of omni-linguism, including French, Spanish, and the powerful “Developerese!”

Abby, Dana, Andrew J, Joe, and Daniel at the DistrictBuilder and Cicero team spend their day writing software that keeps the balance of political power stable, hence Van Halen’s Balance describes them. Johnny Cash may Walk the Line (2005), but so does this team as they help draw fairer legislative district lines. A politician’s gerrymandering schemes are no match for this team’s Shapeshifting powers that rival the likes of Mister Sinister and Mystique.

Last but not least, Brian and Mike are Scanners! David Cronenberg’s 1981 film Scanners and its soundtrack match the extreme psychic superpowers this design duo has at creating eye-popping graphics and websites.