Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

Vol. 2 Issue 2
March 2007

It's been a cold couple of months, but between turning around a new application in a week, launching our brand new website, learning how to build a guitar from Chip, and our president and vice-president running around the office in their fencing gear, we have been keeping warm at Azavea. And these are just a few of our recent activities! Welcome to a new edition of the Azavea Journal.

Photo Credit: Callowhill Neighborhood, 2002 (detail) Egg tempera on panel, 16"x20". Courtesy of the artist and Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NY

Azavea.com Goes Live All Over Again

By Abby Fretz Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

A partial screenshot of our new website.

We are more than pleased (tickled pink, in fact) to announce the launch of our new and improved Azavea website. As we grow and change, our ‘story’ does too. In order to provide you with the most up-to-date news, we have designed our new website using the open-source content management software, DotNetNuke. Instrumental in our decision to use DotNetNuke, Bernard Wolff (featured in our ‘Meet the Staff’ article in the last newsletter), one of our Drexel Intern Co-ops, has seamlessly integrated all the moving parts of our website into this new platform. Keith Fraser, our Graphic Designer, has beautifully incorporated Azavea’s print design, product family design and now, our website into a cohesive statement that illustrates Azavea’s personality and brand.

Catch the latest news from Azavea, profiles of our most recent projects, clients, and new products, where we’ve traveled most recently and learn more about why we love Philadelphia. Visit www.azavea.com.

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Mapping Citizens’ Voices

By David Zwarg Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

"Turn it around in a little over a week? That was where the fun began."

“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” —Winston Churchill

The Citizen’s Compact with City Hall (http://www.reformballot.org/) is a grassroots democracy action born out of the Reformer’s Roundtable, an organization convened by Philadelphia Forward (http://www.philadelphiaforward.org/). We like what these people are trying to do to improve city government in Philadelphia, so we’re lending a hand.

The idea was to get a quick and intuitive representation for the geographic distribution of individuals who sign the Citizen’s Compact with City Hall. When a visitor signs the compact, their contact information and address are saved. The Reformer’s Roundtable wanted to show a map that changed as more and more citizens volunteered to become involved. Not only that, we wanted to protect each individual’s address using some geographic aggregation. Turn it around in a little over a week? That was where the fun began.

Azavea turned to ESRI’s ArcWeb Services, GoogleMaps and Open Source software to achieve this dynamic, interactive map. The addresses are geocoded with ESRI’s ArcWeb Services (http://www.arcwebservices.com/), processed and stored in a PostGIS database, and rendered in OpenLayers via MapServer using the GoogleMaps basemap. All in all, a tidy package that processes visitor information and dynamically generates a map of aggregated citizen distribution.

This is an exciting project for us – it is a good cause and it involves an intriguing constellation of geographic information technologies. As part of our staff’s research, we have developed a bit of expertise in each of these realms, but hadn’t had the opportunity to bring them all together in one project. We are excited to see it in action, and we hope you take a moment to check it out.

And if you live in Philadelphia, please consider signing the Citizen’s Compact. When you sign the compact, you’ll get access to a wiki where you can contribute your own ideas for political reform in the City. In a couple of weeks, you’ll have a chance to rate those ideas. Then, the top-rated ideas will be sent to each of the candidates for City Council and Mayor to see what they are willing to support. The results will all be posted online.

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Location! Location! Location!

By Rachel Cheetham-Richard Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

"We love the open space, imposing columns, high ceilings, and large windows with views of the skyline."

A historic photo from the neighborhood. Courtesy of www.phillyhistory.org

Azavea’s office is located in the Wolf Building on 12th and Callowhill Streets in what is now known as the Callowhill neighborhood. Callowhill consists, roughly, of the area north of Vine Street and Chinatown to Spring Garden Street and between Broad and 8th Street. Formerly the home to large-scale manufacturing and other industries, in recent years, many old factory buildings have been converted to loft-style apartments, condos and offices; to such a degree, that the neighborhood is also known as “The Loft District”.

Located in a one such loft on the 4th floor of the Wolf Building, we have been able to expand from a small area on the southeast corner of the building in 2002 to almost a quarter of the floor. We love the open space, imposing columns, high ceilings, and large windows with views of the skyline. Those ceilings have proven particularly fruitful as they have enabled our friend Dan Rose to create an elaborate, intriguing, and stark sculpture named, “Piton Project”. One of our programmers, David Zwarg, has also used the ceiling space as a canvas for a suspended map image from one of his projects using old business cards!

David Zwarg’s business card installation.

A few blocks away from the Reading Terminal Market and Chinatown, we can head to our favorite spots for a quick bite to eat at the market, Café Lift or Vietnam Restaurant (and wind down with some suds at a local microbrew, Independence Brew Pub). That’s what I call a nice location!

More on Callowhill:
Photo: Callowhill and Broad in 1901
Photo: Callowhill and Broad in 1894
Wikipedia on Callowhill
The Callowhill Neighborhood Association

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OLAP: Online Analytic Processing

By Dave Felcan Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a technology that extends conventional database technology by enabling rapid analysis of aggregated data. Like most information technology, OLAP comes with its own vocabulary. Whereas data in a traditional database is stored in two-dimensional tables, OLAP databases store data in multi-dimensional cubes that enable people to quickly change their view of aggregated data with less effort. The cube is made up of numeric facts called measures – like the ‘number of packages of widgets shipped to a client’. Measures are grouped into dimensions. Some typical dimensions might include time, product categories, delivery areas and so on.

OLAP cubes can be queried in a similar manner to a conventional database, but while most databases use Structured Query Language (SQL), their OLAP brethren have their own language, called MultiDimensional eXpressions (MDX). You wouldn’t want to use MDX to run your sales transaction database, but it’s ideally suited to create a report such as ‘Total Packages Delivered by Route by Product Source per Quarter for the last 5 years’.

The output of an MDX query can be represented in all of the traditional ways including tables and charts, but we are obviously interested in the geography and maps. While OLAP systems have been used in large businesses to analyze sales and other data for many years, their use with geographic data has been limited. Geospatial information has special properties that are not captured in most OLAP systems, such as proximity and cartographic hierarchies (like various zoom levels). The distribution of events in space and time has much to say about those events, and the spatial part of that equation is not yet incorporated fully in many of the tools on the market today. By incorporating these special properties into OLAP cubes, more powerful data analysis can be performed, revealing new and important patterns in information. My research seeks to bring spatial analysis into the OLAP world and broaden the power and applicability of this technology. I am particularly interested in real estate data and am working with several years of Vermont real estate sales.

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Nourishing MANNA

By Megan Heckert Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

"These[Azavea-created] maps serve as a visual tool for MANNA to demonstrate the extent of their services and impact on the Greater Philadelphia Region."

Azavea is committed to working on socially redeeming projects that ask intriguing social questions. As part of this commitment, Azavea employees are able to spend their personal research time (approximately 10% of their time) on pro bono projects. Through these projects, we strengthen our ties to the community and share our geographic analytical expertise with new audiences. One of our recent pro bono projects involved cartographic representation of the reach and services of local nonprofit, MANNA.

Founded in January 1990 by members of the First Presbyterian Church, MANNA is the only non-profit, non-sectarian organization in Philadelphia, which provides freshly cooked, home-delivered meals prepared exclusively for the nutritional needs of people living with HIV/AIDS and has recently expanded their services to homebound people living with cancer. MANNA delivers more than 2,000 meals each day to clients living in Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties as well as the New Jersey counties of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem, and Delaware’s New Castle County. Azavea used MANNA’s database of customers, volunteers and supporters to create a series of maps highlighting the number of meals they serve, the number of people they assist and the geographic range of their services. These maps serve as a visual tool for MANNA to demonstrate the extent of their services and impact on the Greater Philadelphia region. Initially they were used to show volunteers and supporters the immense reach of the organization, but they have also been used in grant applications and public presentations.

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Azavea (Brown) Bags-It

By Megan Heckert Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

"Relaxed and fun, the Brown Bag Lunches let us share our unique talents (show off) and learn a bit more about each other in the process."

Chip Hitchens builds his own guitars.

Every once in a while the staff at Azavea needs to stand up, stretch the keyboard-itis out of our fingers, and run around the office. Rather than induce group mayhem we have found an organized, extra-curricular outlet for our office angst. ‘Brown Bag Lunches’ take place once a month during the lunch hour. Everyone congregates in one of our conference rooms to enjoy a collegial lunch and a presentation from one (or two) of our own. We like to consider ourselves well-rounded people to begin with, but we each have now learned a wealth of new information about topics ranging from the martial art Aikido to the ‘art and mystery’ of guitar making, and the ancient Chinese game of ‘Go.’

During a recent lunch, Robert and Rachel Cheetham donned full fencing gear and turned the center of the office into a makeshift piste (the name of the strip along which fencing bouts are held, which we learned during their presentation). A few months earlier, David Zwarg demonstrated how he uses a cell phone to blog and map his location on trips. Relaxed and fun, the Brown Bag Lunches let us share our unique talents (show off) and learn a bit more about each other in the process.

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Meet David Zwarg

By Abby Fretz Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

David Zwarg knitting.

If you have ever visited Azavea’s office and seen a programmer bolting a phone to the ceiling, creating sculptures out of old business cards and unwound network cable, knitting on the couch or filming epic Tupperware battles, you’ve witnessed a David Zwarg moment.

After graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2000 with a BS in Imaging and Photographic Technology David worked for the CIA integrating remote sensing with 3-D visualizations. In 2002 David moved to California where he worked for a Biotech company as an Instrumentation Engineer doing algorithm development and device control.

At Azavea David has been instrumental in the development of several Azavea projects including Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF) (a web-based software that displays maps, charts, tables, statistics, and reports for aggregated, geographic indicators), The City of Philadelphia’s Zoning Overlay project, the company ‘wiki,’ PHA Arrest Notification, and he works with Bernard, one of our Drexel Co-op students, on the Esphero Global Geocoder and the Azavea.com website.

Outside of Azavea, David is an electronics hobbyist and amateur photographer. His curiosity often leads him to emerging technologies like GPS and SMS messaging, and playfully merging them on the internet as blogging tools or Independent Media.

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Scavenger Hunt

By Abby Fretz Published in

Vol. 2 Issue 2, March 2007

Take a trip through a number of our applications and be the first to answer the questions below to win a $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. Send your answers to info@azavea.com.

Azavea Business Development Manager Megan Heckert grew up in Germantown, and was quite pleased to discover that the Mural Arts Program recently completed a mural called “Growing un in Germantown”. Visit the muralBase website and find that mural (hint: it’s in zip code 19144).

1. What is its address?
2. The artist’s bio indicates that she studied in two different cities. Which city comes first when listed in alphabetical order? Make sure to write down the answers!

Now visit Phildelphia’s CityMaps website and search for city services at the mural’s address.

3. In which police district is the mural located?
4. Which elementary school catchment is it in?

Now visit the website for Azavea’s Cicero™ Elected Official Service. Search for the representative whose street address is the answer to questions 3 and 4 in the city you answered for question 2. Answer these final questions for a chance to win the gift certificate.

5. What is the district number?
6. Who is the representative?