Vol. 3 Issue 1
February 2008

In February in Philadelphia, the temperature regularly drops below freezing and we at Azavea leave our speedos at home, tucked away in mothballs next to our short-shorts and sombreros. But here in the office we're kept toasty-warm by the electric glow of our monitors, rocked by the steady humming of our CPUs, and happily developing a veritable plethora of mind-scorchingly hot new projects! The next generation of Cicero is now updated with fresh legislative data from our noble neighbors to the north, the Canadians! A collaboration with Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive has brought about a brand-spanking-new application for mapping geneology online! And the launch of a new website empowers our fair city, the pulsating paradise of Philadelphia, to crack down on property fraud. Yes, we've been busy. We wouldn't have it any other way. Welcome to another edition of the Azavea Journal!

‘The Root’: Map Your Family Tree

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"The family is one of nature's masterpieces" - George Santayana

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” — George Santayana

If you have been following the news, you have probably heard a lot of buzz about that famous nucleic acid, DNA. Rest assured, Azavea hasn’t jumped onto the genetically modified bandwagon*- we’re just helping people put together the pieces of their family history. We partnered with WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive to integrate a family tree editor and mapping application into their new website, theroot.com. The Root is a daily online magazine that provides commentary on today’s news from a variety of Black perspectives. The family tree editor and mapping application are meant to complement the site’s interactive genealogical section to trace one’s ancestry through AfricanDNA.com, a DNA testing site co-founded by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is also The Root’s Editor-In-Chief.

A sample, editable family tree on WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive’s ‘The Root’ website.

Using common genealogy metaphors, we developed a powerful editor for building and maintaining family trees. Built with Flex and the yFiles graphing framework, this editor enables dynamic editing and visualization of an individual’s family tree. Leveraging our geographic background and indulging in our strong interest in Open Source software, we integrated geocoding from Google, OpenLayers, and PostGIS to display family members on a map, anywhere in the world.

This project was an exciting whirlwind of development, lasting only 6 weeks, including design, debugging, and load testing. A couple fun hours were had by all when we unleashed all of our staff on the application, in an attempt to find bugs. What was most enjoyable was listening to the cackles of laughter after attempts at SQL injection.

We are continuing to work on this project, and future releases to the mapping tool will include a GEDCOM exporter, support for really complicated family relationships, tight integration between the family tree and map views, and with DNA test results from AfricanDNA.com. So stay tuned!

*No comment on the quality of the genetically modified developers we hired recently.

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Cicero: Release of 30-day Free Trial and Canada Legislative Data

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"If you're not convinced... [try] a Cicero API 30-day free trial..."

Quick show of hands: how many of you know for certain which state senate district you live in? The identity of your state representative? The geographic boundaries of your elected officials’ districts or the last time they were redrawn?

For many organizations, this type of information is both invaluable and difficult to get with any degree of reliability. Knowing the geographic boundaries of the districts in which their members live can help to encourage them to express their opinions to the elected officials who represent them. Further, knowing the exact geographic boundaries of their members’ districts can help organizations more directly in their own advocacy roles. Imagine you work for a local non-profit and are scheduled to meet with a group of state representatives from your area. How would you like to be able to tell each of them just how many of the citizens they represent are supporters of your organization? How would you like to be able to tell those members that you spoke directly with their representative?

Cicero is designed to help. It is a web API (Application Programming Interface) that enables users to add legislator and legislative geography lookup capabilities -matching any address with their designated legislative districts and elected officials, including their geographic boundaries- to any website or software application. It is a cost-effective and precise way for organizations to receive legislative information, including contact information for their local (check our list of available local cities), state and federal level representatives, district maps, and school district identification.

If you’re not convinced … We just released a Cicero API 30-day free trial, now giving developers the opportunity to ‘test drive’ the API with their company or organization’s website or software – for free! Each 30-day free trial includes access to one region of your choice and up to 250 web service hits. Visitors to the Cicero site can also experience Cicero first-hand by visiting ‘Cicero Live‘ to get the information about elected officials who represent any address in the U.S.

In October we announced the release of several new, comprehensive sets of data including city council districts for more than 60 cities, and district lookup and legislator contact data for all U.S. state and federal legislative districts. We are thrilled to announce the addition of legislative and legislative geographic boundaries lookups for local, provincial and federal level data for the majority of the lower provinces in Canada (available soon on Cicero Live) – go Canucks!

Coming soon: Australia, New Zealand and France. Visit the Cicero website for more information, as well as an updated list of available data.

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Tracking the Fraud-ulators with GIS

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"...it will be an important new tool for the City, legal professionals, and law enforcement to fight property fraud."

Photo courtesy of PhillyHistory.org, a project of the City of Philadelphia Department of Records.

As if declining home sales, a credit squeeze and predatory lending practices were not enough, there has been a substantial rise in mortgage and deed fraud throughout the boom and bust of the real estate market. While this trend has been most apparent in the hottest real estate markets, Philadelphia’s homeowners have not been spared from this crime. The methods run the gamut from simple to complex, seemingly innocent to downright treacherous. But the outcome of what is known as ‘property conveyance fraud’ is often the same — a homeowner is bilked out of their equity or the deed to their home. The City of Philadelphia has been combating this phenomenon with a multi-agency task force organized by the Philadelphia Bar Association. The Property Conveyance Task Force is an ad hoc committee of City agencies, law enforcement officials, title insurance companies, non-profit legal assistance organizations, and the district attorney’s office. The group meets every few months to discuss and share information on fraud schemes and develop strategies for detecting and mitigating the damage.

The task force has made progress in terms of developing strategies, but the most serious impediment remains the lack of information available to all members of the group. Azavea was asked by the City’s Department of Records — where deeds and mortgages are recorded as legal documents — to help develop a GIS-enabled fraud tracking system. The result is a set of web-based tools that use ESRI’s ArcIMS map server and the City’s web services API’s to enable all members of the task force to register fraud reports, search the results, and subscribe to geographic alerts. While it will not be available to the general public, it will be an important new tool for the City, legal professionals and law enforcement to fight property fraud.

If you are interested in learning more about the effects of property conveyance fraud, there was a series of articles in the New York Times last year that may prove interesting:

“Mortgage Fraud Is Up, but Not in Their Backyards“

“New Scheme Preys on Desperate Homeowners”

“Fraud Cases Are Rising, F.B.I. Says”

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What the Heck is…Map Algebra?

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"...Map Algebra provides a vocabulary and conceptual framework for classifying ways to combine map data to produce new maps."

I have written before about GIS models, toolboxes and geoprocessing. But long before those concepts and products existed, many of us interacted with GIS software through a command-line interface. These command line interfaces were quite different from one product to the next. But for those of us who started out with raster processing after 1990 (I learned my first GIS concepts using the command line version of Idrisi) there was a unifying language that we could use to describe the various functions and processes: Map Algebra.

Developed through the 1980′s by Professor C. Dana Tomlin as part of his PhD thesis work, Map Algebra provides a vocabulary and conceptual framework for classifying ways to combine map data to produce new maps. While primarily applied to raster data sets (GRID and image data), the same concepts can be applied to many types of cartographic information, and it has since been extended by Dr. Tomlin and others to 3D, time and other domains. People use Map Algebra for a broad array of applications including: suitability modeling, surface analysis, density analysis, statistics, hydrology, landscape ecology, real estate, and geographic prioritization. Azavea has used Map Algebra on several projects and it is at the heart of our DecisionTree product.

What does it look like? Usually, Map Algebra can be expressed as text – for example, one might add several maps of rainfall like this: Rain_total = Rain_April + Rain_May + Rain_June, but it also lends itself to graphical flow charts like those in the ModelBuilder application.

Map Algebra is organized into four major groups of operations – local, focal (or neighborhood), zonal, and incremental. Each of these operations combines maps or transforms map data to create a new map. Part of the elegance of Map Algebra operations is based on the idea that all operations result in a new map. This makes it easy to group and string functions together into larger models. While there are different flavors of Map Algebra, the overall concept is used in every GIS system that supports raster calculations. Early in its development, Dr. Tomlin made the decision to openly share all of the source code, documentation and algorithms with anyone that asked (pretty nice guy!). Consequently, the ideas and source code were incorporated into many commercial software packages. In the ESRI product suite, Map Algebra capabilities are provided through the SpatialAnalyst extension.

Illustration of a Neighborhood Maximum operation applied to produce a new data set.

If you would like to learn more about Map Algebra, the original book is Geographic Information Systems and Cartographic Modeling by C. Dana Tomlin. He is also the co-director of a research lab called the Cartographic Modeling Lab. And if you want to use Map Algebra and cartographic modeling in your organization, give us a call.

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Placing History: Released by ESRI Press

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"It's an exciting time for historians, and this book is an expression of that innovation."

Our work on the PhillyHistory project and development of the Sajara® product has given us a chance to meet and work with many people working in the field of ‘historical GIS’. In 2005, we participated in the GeoHistory Symposium developed by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL). We have also been working on a project at the University of Pennsylvania called ‘Mapping the DuBois Philadelphia Negro’ for which we are developing a web-based mapping application to support this research project led by Dr. Amy Hillier, Professor of City and Regional Planning at U-Penn. We’ll write about that in a future Azavea Journal, but the big news this month is that Dr. Hillier’s new book, Placing History has just been released by ESRI Press.

The full title - Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship – is a mouthful, but describes the contents well. Co-edited by Amy Hillier and historical geographer, Anne Kelly Knowles, the book is a series of case studies and essays on the key issues faced when using GIS tools to visualize historical information. With more powerful and easy-to-use software tools, geography is being applied to historical research in new unprecedented ways. Old maps are being mashed up against new maps, historical records are being geocoded to discover new patterns, and quantities of documents are being scanned and georeferenced. It’s an exciting time for historians, and this books is an expression of that innovation. An added bonus is a supplemental CD with software, data, powerpoints, videos, and notes for educators.

This book has been a lot of work for the editors and authors, but we’re just super-proud to see our friend Amy getting published. And if you’d like to hear her and co-editor Anne Kelly Knowles talk about the new book, check out the podcast.

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Azavea and PALINET Put GIS on the Map of PALINET’s Members

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"Many of our non-profit and academic clients have approached us with complex problems, stimulating community-focused questions, and technical puzzles our developers have relished cracking."

With more than 30 non-profit and academic clients, and numerous pro bono projects involving non-profits, we like to think our services serve worthy causes throughout the country. From web-based applications enabling the display and the analysis of data as varied as neighborhood, state or national demographics, poverty, crime, child care, health, food and shelter, natural and cultural resources, to web services tracking voters’ contributions, Azavea has a strong background supporting non-profit organizations.
After attending the NTEN conference last April, I had claimed in a previous article “the non-profit community is vibrant, sophisticated and mighty inspiring.” I stand by my opinion today and look forward to attending the next NTEN conference in New Orleans in March. Many of our non-profit and academic clients have approached us with complex problems, stimulating community-focused questions, and technical puzzles our developers have relished cracking.

We recently got involved with PALINET and decided to join their Business Partner program. PALINET is a leader in digitization initiatives and has been serving more than 600 member libraries, information centers, museums, and archives throughout the Northeast corridor since 1936. Through their Business Partnership program, PALINET selects partners they believe will bring value to their extensive array of membership programs, workshops, and services. PALINET believes Azavea’s GIS expertise can be applied to numerous projects led by libraries, museums, and archives alike.

The partnership with Azavea will benefit PALINET members with preferred rates on Sajara®, our geographic digital asset management software operating the award-winning historical photograph archive, PhillyHistory.org, as well as many of our software customization and development services. For more information about our PALINET Business Partnership or Sajara, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Azavea will be presenting Sajara at several conferences in the next few months including:

NTEN Conference – Science Fair, New Orleans, LA, March 19, Booth # 32

Museums and the Web Expo 2008 in Montreal, Canada, April 8-12, Booth #28;

American Association of Museums Annual Meeting and Expo in Denver, CO, April 27-May 1, Booth #207.

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Azavea is Hiring!

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For those of you who are just getting to know us, we are a small, customer-focused, Philadelphia-based company that seeks out interesting and complex web-based software projects. We develop innovative software that uses mapping technologies and geography to solve complex, interesting, and novel problems. We have particular expertise in natural resource planning, economic development, crime analysis, real estate property analysis, and cultural resources, but are engaged in a wide range of other interesting projects.

We have recently opened three positions – Software Developer, Project Manager and Quality Assurance Engineer/Analyst. We are looking for colleagues who are curious, open-minded, or wish to contribute to their community, and make a difference through their work at Azavea. We welcome candidates from all walks of life and value diversity in our company. Available positions are thought-provoking, challenging, rewarding, full-time, and offer a competitive salary and stellar benefit package. Visit the ‘Careers’ page on our website for more information.

To apply, please send your answers to our applicant questionnaire, your cover letter and resume to Abby Fretz.

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Puzzle: Cicero Live

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It’s a clue! Cicero maps of our representative voting districts.

Try Cicero Live!

1. Azavea is located at 340 N. 12th Street in Philadelphia, PA. Using Cicero, find the United States Democratic Senator who represents the area where Azavea is located. What is the name of that Senator?

2. Using the link included on the same Cicero results page, go to the website for the Senator from Question 1. On the frontpage of that website, find the address for the Senator’s office in Pittsburgh. What is that address?

3.Using the address from Question 2, go to Cicero and find the name of the Congressman representing District 14. What is the Congressman’s telephone number?

Extra Credit: Dave, the lead software developer for Cicero, works at Azavea’s office in Burlington, Vermont. Test your research skills and find an address located in Burlington. Plug that number into Cicero and find the name of any elected official who represents the City of Burlington. What is the name of that elected official?

Be the first to send an email with all three correct answers to info@azavea.com and we will send you a $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble!

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