Philadelphia, PA, May 8, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the winners of its second Summer of Maps.  Inspired by the Google Summer of Code, Azavea Summer of Maps is a program that offers $5,000 stipends to student GIS analysts to perform pro bono geospatial data analysis projects for non-profit organizations over a three-month period in the summer of 2013.  Azavea received applications from students and nonprofits from all over the United States. This year, the number of selected students increased from two to three thanks to sponsorships from Esri and Tri-Co Digital Humanities.

Azavea selected Lena Ferguson, studying Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College; Julia Reeves, also studying Growth and Structure of Cities at Haverford College; and Tyler Dahlberg, Master of Science in GIS for Development and Environment at Clark University.  Ms. Ferguson will be working with the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children on mapping the need and capacity of high-quality childcare in the Delaware Valley.  She will also be working with the Sunlight Foundation on mapping and analysis of political influence on members of the U.S. Congress.  Concurrently, Ms. Reeves will be working with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society on an analysis of urban tree mortality with local tree tender volunteers; and with the Texas Trees Foundation on an analysis of tree planting locations to prioritize planting projects while evaluating the impact of canopy change in the City of Dallas.  Mr. Dahlberg will be working with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia on the analysis and visualization of bicycle activity in Philadelphia; and with the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger on the visualization of high-need residents and underserved areas in Philadelphia for Coalition Against Hunger assistance.

This year again, both national and regional non-profit organizations applied with a wide array of potential spatial analysis projects that spanned domains as varied as the arts and culture, environment, community and economic development, public health and food, elections and politics, transportation, and family services.  The Wilma Theater, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, the Public Health Management Corporation, the Voting Information Project, DataHaven, the Women's Opportunities Resource Center, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police were among the participating organizations.  The majority of the student applications came from students at regional Philadelphia universities like Temple University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Tri-College Consortium: Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore, but a significant number were submitted from as far away as Middlebury College, Harvard University, The New School University, University of California Davis, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“The quality of the applications we received from both the non-profit organizations and students was outstanding. Competition was fierce, which made it challenging for us to select winning organizations and students. What this showed us, though, is that a lot of non-profits are asking very sophisticated spatial data analysis questions in support of their missions.  I am very excited that Azavea will have a chance to work with these top students implementing projects with social and civic value.  This combination of advanced analysis and social benefit is what Azavea is all about.” said Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President.

From June to August 2013, the winning non-profit organizations will be able to:

• Receive pro bono services from a skilled student GIS analyst to geographically analyze their data
• Visualize their data in new ways
• Combine their data with other demographic and geographic data
• Receive high quality maps that can be used to support new initiatives or make a case to prospective funders

The fellows will:

• Work on a spatial analysis project that supports the social mission of two non-profit organizations
• Work with Azavea mentors to improve their GIS and project management skills
• Receive a monthly stipend
• Gain work experience implementing real-world GIS projects

 Azavea is planning to renew this initiative next year, and encourages nonprofits and GIS students to continue checking the Azavea Summer of Maps webpage for announcements related to the 2014 program: http://summerofmaps.com/

 
About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of vibrant and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com/.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amelia Longo at (215) 701-7715 or e-mail alongo@azavea.com.

Philadelphia, PA, April 10, 2013 – Presented by NASA, the International Space Apps Challenge is a two-day hackathon where teams of technologists, scientists, designers, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, software developers, and students will compete and collaborate across the world, utilizing publicly available data to design innovative solutions for global challenges in software development, citizen science, sensors and hardware, and data visualization. 

This year, Philadelphia has been nominated to be the event Global MainStage where the local event is organized by Azavea, an award-winning geospatial data analysis software company.   The hackathon will be held at The ExCITE Center at Drexel University (3401 Market Street, Phila, PA 19104) on April 20-21, 2013 from 9:00am – 8:00pm on Saturday and 9:00am – 5:00pm on Sunday; registration is open at: http://2013.spaceappschallenge.org/location/philadelphia/  . The opening reception will be held at First Round Capital (4040 Locust Street, Phila, PA 19104) on Friday, April 19 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm; registrations can be made at: http://azavea.ticketleap.com/space-apps-phl-kickoff/

Among the 15challenges to be highlighted at the Philadelphia event, participants will have the opportunity to design a CubeSat for an upcoming Mars mission; create a visualization that increases understanding of the problems of our current air traffic control system; and create an app that integrates wind, solar, and geothermal energy data.  A full list of challenges is available at:  http://spaceappsphiladelphia.tumblr.com/tagged/challenges .  Select judges including Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer at the Franklin Institute, NASA Deputy CIO Deborah Diaz, and City of Philadelphia Chief Data Officer Mark Headd will award prizes to winning solutions, including credits donated by Amazon Web Services, K’NEX building kits, and spaceflight training courses donated by the NASTAR Center of Southampton, PA.  Other space experts, including Nick Skytland, Program Manager of NASA’s Open Innovation Program, and Brienna Henwood, Director of Space Training & Research at the NASTAR Center in Southampton, PA will also be at the event to help participants and answer questions about space.

“I'm delighted to be a judge for Philadelphia's Space Apps Challenge,” said Derrick Pitts.  “I am especially excited that this event will show people real challenges for NASA and outer space work, and give all of us a chance to engage with them to come up with solutions in just a weekend.”

The event is being held concurrently with the annual Philadelphia Science Festival and Philly Tech Week.  A truly collaborative problem-solving weekend, the Space Apps Challenge – along with hundreds of science-focused and tech events held in Philadelphia that week – aims to provide a hands-on approach to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education with enthusiasm built in. Younger students will be able to use K’NEX building kits at the event.

The Philadelphia Space Apps Challenge is sponsored by Amazon Web Services, Azavea, Chariot Solutions, GitHub, Global Advantage Consulting, Jar.vus, the NASTAR Center, K’NEX, and the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. The venue sponsors are:  ExCITE Center at Drexel University and First Round Capital.

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of vibrant and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or the Philadelphia International Space Apps Challenge event, please contact Andrew Thompson at (215) 701 – 7689 or e-mail athompson@azavea.com.

About NASA - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Find more at: http://www.nasa.gov/

If you would like more information about the global International Space Apps Challenge event, please contact Sarah Rigdon at (202) 358 - 1144 or e-mail sarah.a.rigdon@nasa.gov.

Philadelphia, PA, April 2, 2013 – Azavea, an award-winning geospatial data analysis software company, was awarded a $150,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation to create a web-based historical mapping system that will enable geographic indexing of historical documents.   The software is aimed at supporting a wide range of government, commercial, academic and other research projects involving the analysis of geographic data through time, with particular emphasis on projects related to public health, epidemiology, political science, history, and genealogy.

Search engines, like Google and Bing, are successfully indexing and making available enormous amounts of contemporary human knowledge and activity.  However, much of human experience is not contemporary; it is “old knowledge” that is housed in the world’s libraries, archives and museums, and most of this material has yet to be digitized and indexed.  Many of these documents have addresses and place names, but they can neither be searched geographically nor placed on maps because the location references are based on old street names and place names.

With modern web maps, the act of turning an address into a map location is now easier than ever.  But digital mapping systems focus on the contemporary world and a time-enabled geocoder has yet to be developed.  Address numbers, street names, and place names are dynamic and change a great deal over time.  This is particularly true in urban locations, where streets are frequently added, changed, moved or vacated from the urban landscape to reflect redevelopment, migration, updates to land use regulations, annexation, growth or decline of individual neighborhoods, and compliance with the E911 emergency system.  As a consequence, “1234 Green St” in 1856 may not be the same location as “1234 Green St” in 2013.  These changes have been incrementally recorded in documents such as municipal ordinances, directories, and paper maps, but have not been consolidated into a single database, cannot be easily traced back and forth through time, and are not referenced in any contemporary mapping system.  This poses a complex problem for researchers trying to determine a current location based upon an historical address and makes the automation of geographic indexing in historical documents all but impossible.  

The new Temporal Geocoder project will address these challenges with two solutions.  First, Azavea will create an online tool that will enable historians and the general public to collaboratively create a digital database of historical streets and neighborhoods.  Second, they will implement a prototype software service that can geographically tag documents based on a combination of location and time.  Together, these two components will provide the ability to find historical locations on a current map and facilitate research that relies on these historical knowledge repositories. 

The idea for the Temporal Geocoder originally arose as Azavea worked with the Philadelphia City Archives to geographically tag thousands of historical photographs and maps for inclusion in the PhillyHistory.org website (www.phillyhistory.org).  The  company found that it was extremely difficult to accurately georeference the historical images to their contemporary locations on a map without a comprehensive index of street name changes.  As a result, Azavea developed a database of street names, building on the work of a former employee of the Philadelphia City Archives, which can be found at www.phillyhistory.org/HistoricStreets/.

The development of the Temporal Geocoder is supported by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the National Science Foundation (Award No. IIP-1248753).

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amelia Longo at (215) 701-7715 or e-mail alongo@azavea.com.

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Juliana Reyes of Technically Philly explains what the License to Inspect application is and what it can be used for. Read more here.

Naked Philly also talks about what the License to Inspect application is and how the public is finally able to see and learn about the ongoing and upcoming development activity in Philadelphia. Read more here.

Nate Adams of the Mt. Airy Patch reports on the License to Inspect application and how finding out about upcoming construction projects just got easier. Read more here.

Curbed Philly also reported on the License to Inspect application calling it "High-Grade Heroin for Real Estate Junkies" .. clever title, huh? Read more here.

Sandy Smith of the Philadelphia Real Estate Blog talks about the new License to Inspect application and how it lets you search Licenses & Inspections permit data for every address in the city including zoning, construction, use, and more. Read more here.

Philadelphia, PA, January 15, 2013 – Azavea, PlanPhilly and the City of Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology announced today that the ‘License to Inspect’ application, an online search tool for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections permits, applications and violations, is now available for the public to use.  More importantly, the application provides a mechanism for citizens to save and track specific searches they are interested in and demonstrates the City of Philadelphia’s on-going commitment to open data and open data initiatives.  The application is available at: http://lti.planphilly.com.

The ‘License to Inspect’ application is a project of PlanPhilly, funded by the William Penn Foundation.  Journalists, planners, city officials and regular citizens are invited to use it.  The application offers intuitive data search, sort, and download functionality that enables users to search building permits; zoning variances; code violations including inspection violations, dangerous conditions and demolitions; fire code violations; cease occupancy orders; stop work orders; and housing inspection licenses among other data provided by an API built by Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology.  After signing up for a free account, users are able to subscribe to email alerts for notifications of changes in their neighborhoods, including zoning, permitting and licensing activities.  In other words, if a user is interested in knowing when new permits are generated in the 4-5 blocks around his or her house, they would do a search, save their search parameters, and then ask to be notified (daily, weekly or monthly) when new records appear.

“Through OpenDataPhilly and other efforts, Azavea has supported and promoted Open Data in Philadelphia for several years.  PlanPhilly could not have provided this online tool to the public without the City’s willingness to share the data related to licenses and permits,” said Robert Cheetham, CEO and President of Azavea.  “This project is a real demonstration of how open data can enable new types of applications and services that benefit the public.”

As more and more municipalities nationwide release their data, applications like ‘License to Inspect’ are made possible, which in turn fosters a dynamic dialogue between data consumers, software engineering companies, the public, and the municipal government that holds the data.  This is not the first time that the City of Philadelphia has collaborated with Azavea and organizations like PlanPhilly to demonstrate its commitment to open data and open data initiatives.  In April 2011, in partnership with WHYY Radio, and Technically Philly, the City’s Open Access Philly task force contributed dozens of data sets from multiple city departments to OpenDataPhilly.org, a first-of-a-kind Philadelphia-centric catalog of over 175 online data, applications and APIs.  Later that summer, the OpenDataPhilly partners organized OpenDataRace whereby non-profit organizations voted for the data sets they wished the City to release.  Permits and citations were among the most requested data sets.  Now, with ‘License to Inspect’, this data set and many more are available for anyone to freely consume.

"PlanPhilly, Azavea and the William Penn Foundation have been working with L&I on the release of this data for three years, and we are thrilled to be able to see this application realized.  Many parties have been involved in the effort, and we are excited that the resulting tool will benefit a large range of users," said Matt Golas, Managing Editor, PlanPhilly.

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

About PlanPhilly - PlanPhilly is an independent news gathering entity affiliated with PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania. Former reporters and editors from The Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as citizen journalists, provide daily news coverage of the built and planned environment.  Find out more at http://planphilly.com/.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Outside of the office, Steve spends most of his time learning as much as he can about technology and looking for ways that it can help people. He attributes his success largely to the free and open source software movement and hopes to spread this empowerment to others. As the lead developer of VegPhilly, he built a web application to connect people in Philadelphia with vegetarian and vegan food options. He is likely to install GNU/Linux on anything with a CPU, especially if it is large enough to place a GNU sticker on, too. He also enjoys taking computer science courses online and using functional languages to write programs that play board games, solve math problems and automate server administration.

Away from his computer, Steve’s hobbies include playing in chess tournaments, teaching chess, reading science fiction, cooking and riding his bicycle around Philadelphia.

For a detailed description of the positions and instructions on how to apply, please visit our Current Job Openings page.

New York, NY and Philadelphia, PA, December 20, 2012 – CartoDB, a cloud-powered open source spatial database, mapping, analysis, and visualization engine and Azavea, a leading geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announce a new partnership agreement.

This partnership will bring together both companies’ tremendous array of data visualization and spatial analysis experience.  Azavea’s expertise in building complex geospatial web and mobile applications meshes well with CartoDB’s versatility.  Built using the open source PostGIS database and running on a large-scale cloud infrastructure, CartoDB enables users to easily create location aware applications and dynamic map visualizations, while Azavea’s experience with web-based high performance geoprocessing operations makes the firm a strategic partner for the creation of extremely fast geospatial applications.  In particular, CartoDB-based applications could seamlessly leverage Azavea’s GeoTrellis open source geographic data processing engine to offer scalable analysis and spatial modeling applications, especially with very large data sets.

In a recent blog post, John Branigan of Azavea wrote, "Wordpress revolutionized the process of publishing content on the web, significantly lowering barriers to entry. CartoDB is like a user-friendly CMS for geographic data. It takes the pain out of setting up servers with PostGIS and Geoserver, and serving data to the browser ..."

Both, Robert Cheetham, CEO and President of Azavea, and Javier de la Torre, CEO of CartoDB are excited about this partnership and the possibilities it creates to implement innovative, user-friendly approaches to geographic analysis and web applications that in turn, have the potential to benefit communities around us.

”This new partnership is very exciting.   CartoDB and Azavea have complementary skill sets.  CartoDB combines a geodatabase in the cloud with high quality visual design.  Azavea uses its open source GeoTrellis framework to create advanced apps that can support spatial analysis on the web.  We believe the two platforms will catalyze new types of applications,” said Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

Javier de la Torre, CEO of Vizzuality, added “We couldn’t be more proud of partnering with Azavea. We share a common vision on how geospatial technology can improve environment and society. Combining CartoDB with Geotrellis capabilities for analyzing large raster data sets will enable the development of the new generation of geoprocessing applications.”

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About CartoDB –  CartoDB is a versatile cloud-powered spatial database, mapping, analysis and visualization engine that greatly facilitates the process of building spatial applications for both web and mobile devices; the platform is currently used by major news organizations, research institutions, non-profits and geospatial application developers.

For more information on CartoDB, or to request a press kit or schedule an interview with Javier de la Torre, Vizzuality CEO, please contact Jacek Grebski at jacek@cartodb.com or (646) 812-7650.

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Philadelphia, PA, October 25, 2012 – DistrictBuilder (http://www.districtbuilder.org/), open source software for collaborative redistricting, won the ‘Data Used for Social Impact’ award today at the Strata Data Innovation Awards.  The Strata Data Innovation Awards recognize “disruptive, innovative technologies in big data and data science, highlight data science as an increasing importance for companies, and showcase the highlights of the growing data community. “

The DistrictBuilder software was developed by the Public Mapping Project (http://publicmapping.org/) with software engineering by Azavea (http://www.azavea.com/), a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, and the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to give the public access to online redistricting tools that make the redistricting process more open and collaborative.  The platform has supported redistricting efforts for the states of Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Virginia and others.  It was also used at the local level in Contra Costa County, CA, Marion County, IN, and in Philadelphia for the first online redistricting contest ever held in that city.  The DistrictBuilder software development effort was catalyzed by the enormous U.S. redistricting effort triggered every ten years by release of official population data-- but in the past year has also been extended to support redistricting laws and languages throughout the world.  All told, thousands of users have generated several thousands of redistricting plans nationwide thanks to DistrictBuilder, demonstrating that not only are citizens interested in the redistricting process, they are sufficiently invested and motivated to spend many hours drawing high quality plans that would pass legal muster in their city, county or state.

“We are pleased to have been able to work with our advocacy partners to support them in their efforts to improve the redistricting process.” said Michael McDonald, Principal Investigator in the project, and Associate Professor at George Mason University.  Micah Altman, Principal Investigator, and Director of Research at the MIT libraries stated, “The drawing of electoral districts has been among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance.  DistrictBuilder has demonstrated that the thoughtful application of information technology and open data can promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting; inform legislators, redistricting authorities, and courts as to the range of possible plans; can signal public preferences over redistricting plans; and can educate the public about the electoral process.  We are optimistic that continuing effort to make redistricting more transparent and participative will create, over time, a ‘market’ for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.” 

With DistrictBuilder, the Public Mapping Project’s Principal Investigators, Dr. Michael McDonald and Dr. Micah Altman set out to:

• Enable the public to learn about the redistricting process.
• Encourage civic engagement in redistricting efforts
• Demonstrate that a non-partisan and open, public process based upon objective criteria can produce fair, legal legislative districts.

”We could not be more thrilled to be a partner on the DistrictBuilder project.  As a B Corporation, Azavea strives to create civic-minded geospatial software that helps make our communities more vital, resilient and sustainable.  DistrictBuilder demonstrates that open access to data, combined with open software and a well-designed user experience, can enable people to become directly engaged in the democratic process at a much deeper level than simply casting a vote on Election Day.” said Robert Cheetham, Founder and CEO of Azavea. 

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

About the Public Mapping Project - The Public Mapping Project is comprised of a coalition of people who believe that democracy works best when the public is engaged. The principal investigators of the project are Dr. Michael McDonald, Associate Professor, George Mason University, and Dr. Micah Altman, Director of Research, Libraries, M.I.T.  Both Dr. McDonald and Dr. Altman are also non-resident Senior Fellows at The Brookings Institution.  Find out more at http://www.publicmapping.org/

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Philadelphia, PA, October 23, 2012 – Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the release “Redraw the Map on Redistricting 2012 – Addendum”,  a new study that examines how the most recent round of redistricting has affected the geometry and geography of legislative districts in the United States.  The white paper is available for download at: http://www.azavea.com/redistricting-white-papers 

In 2006, Azavea released its first white paper related to redistricting and gerrymandering in the United States.  In anticipation of the 2010 Census, Azavea released a completely revised white paper in 2010.  With the latest round of Congressional redistricting now complete, Azavea set out to measure Congressional districts compactness again and assess how the results from this latest round of redistricting has affected legislative districts nationwide.  Using four different measures of compactness, the new study reveals that NC-12, FL-05, MD-03, OH-09, and TX-35 are among the least compact districts in the nation.  Compactness is an important indicator of gerrymandering.  While poor compactness scores do not prove that gerrymandering has occurred, it is an important quantitative indicator of the practice. 

In this new study, Azavea also examined the conditions under which redistricting processes occurred, including types of redistricting authority - a state legislature, a legislative commission, an independent commission, or a court - as well as the party controlling the process.  Their conclusion is that districts drawn by independent commissions appear to be more compact, even in those states where requirements under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) result in some convoluted districts.

”We had tremendous positive feedback on our previous white papers, but with a completely new congressional district plan 2012 and many changes to the redistricting process in California, Florida and other states, we wanted to take a look at how these changes are affecting the quality of the resulting district plans,” said Robert Cheetham, Founder and CEO of Azavea.  “The good news here is that changes to the redistricting process are having a significant, positive impact on the compactness and legibility of legislative districts.”

Azavea is no stranger to political and redistricting projects.  In addition to its previous white papers, the firm released the “Redistricting The Nation” website (http://www.redistrictingthenation.com) in 2009 to provide the public with better information about the legislative redistricting process and tools that support and encourage fair representation and competitive elections.  Azavea is planning to update all district information contain on the website after the November 2012 election.  In August 2011, it also launched FixPhillyDistricts.com (http://www.fixphillydistricts.com/), the first online public redistricting contest in Philadelphia.  The system, which enabled the public to automatically calculate contiguity, compactness, and population statistics on-the-fly as users built their plans, was built with award-winning DistrictBuilder platform (http://www.azavea.com/districtbuilder), the open source software they developed in collaboration with leading redistricting experts at the Public Mapping Project (http://www.publicmapping.org/).

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services.  Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Find out more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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As an undergraduate at Macalester College, Maya studied political science and sociology. She has a particular interest in the role of civil society during democratic transitions and humanitarian crises.  Maya is excited to explore the intersection of mapping and politics at Azavea, where she works on the Cicero team and the Justice and Enterprise Services team.

In her free time, Maya enjoys cooking without measuring ingredients and playing Boggle without keeping score. She would like to one day grow her own vegetables and herbs, but has so far only succeeded in growing basil. 

Rick Mohr joins Azavea as a Software Developer on the Civic Applications team. He brings a broad software background and longtime interest in mapping and urban sustainability to his work on the team. Rick graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D in Computer Science and from Macalester College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Math and Physics.

In previous software lives he has built systems for genome mapping, personalized publishing, WYSIWYG page layout, and parallel computing. His side project Vocola helps people control their computers by voice.

When not working Rick enjoys hanging out with his wife and son, playing fiddle tunes, calling contra dances, walking in the Wissahickon, and working on his personal website http://rickmohr.net.

The elections are around the corner. How can we assist your organization with your political advocacy efforts?  Talk to Maya Gutierrez, our Product Manager, Elections and Politics about how Cicero might make your job more efficient. 

Philadelphia, PA, September 27, 2012 – Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company has released the source code for the first smartphone version of its OpenTreeMap urban tree inventory software.   OpenTreeMap enables organizations to collaborate with the general public to map trees in the urban forest and explore the economic and environmental benefits they generate for the community.  Available at: https://github.com/azavea/OpenTreeMap-iOS , the OpenTreeMap Mobile code provides access to an OpenTreeMap database via smartphone and tablet devices.  The OpenTreeMap Mobile code is now available for iPhones, and an Android version is currently under development and should be available later this fall. 

The first application of the new OpenTreeMap Mobile iPhone was released in late August and provides mobile access to PhillyTreeMap, a web-based map database of trees in the greater 13-county, 3-state Philadelphia region.  The app can be downloaded for free at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phillytreemap/id553281447. Powered by OpenTreeMap Mobile, iPhone apps will also be available for the Urban Forest Map in San Francisco and the GreenprintMaps project in Sacramento in the next few weeks.  

Urban street trees have proven benefits for communities including providing shade, improving air quality, assisting with stormwater runoff, raising property values, decreasing utility bills, and enhancing the look and feel of communities.  While tree inventories ensure that municipalities have data to consult when managing the urban forest, creating a complete inventory is a time consuming and resource intensive process.  OpenTreeMap provides an easy-to-use public inventory platform that enables individuals, organizations, and governments to collaboratively contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of a community’s tree population. 

The benefits of using mobile technology for tree inventories were demonstrated this past summer as interns at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission used PhillyTreeMap to conduct a survey of over 1,500 trees in South Philadelphia.  Accessing the site via iPads, the interns were able to add trees and edit data directly in PhillyTreeMap and then export their survey results for further spatial analysis.

OpenTreeMap is currently in use in five cities across the country. Along with Philadelphia, OpenTreeMap is used in San Francisco (http://urbanforestmap.org/), Sacramento (http://greenprintmaps.org/map/), San Diego (http://sandiegotreemap.org/map/), and Grand Rapids (http://treemap.urbanforestproject.com/map/).  

OpenTreeMap and OpenTreeMap Mobile are open source projects and were developed with support from a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Grant Number 2011-33610-30862).  For more information about OpenTreeMap or to download the code, visit: www.opentreemap.org

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Before joining the team at Azavea he worked at Spectrum Creative Solutions, leading the development team that produced a content managed, data driven marketing platform for higher education recruiting. He also worked at A.D. Marble & Company, where he employed spatial analysis tools to predict prehistoric archaeological site probability and to model wildlife habitat suitability across the entire Delaware watershed.

During his free time you can find him fiddling with new jQuery plugins or APIs from Google Maps to Last.fm. After closing his computer, John will either be pedaling his bicycle around his native Philadelphia, improving his bow technique on the acoustic bass, or trying to determine by taste which hops variety was used to bitter that beer in his glass.

Sam Halperin joins Azavea as a Software Developer on the Civic Applications team. Sam brings over 7 years of experience building web applications using a variety of technologies. Lately he has been focused on creating good user experiences ‘client-side’ using JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js and other frameworks. He graduated from Brandeis University in 2011 with a Masters degree in Software Engineering and in 2000 he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art. Sam is currently taking Graduate coursework in Computer Information Systems from Nova Southeastern University. 

Before joining the team at Azavea, Sam worked at Solutions for Progress, another Philadelphia area B-Corp.  There he was primarily responsible for prototyping of new development, and front-end engineering, but within the context of the entire web-stack, including database code, CGI, etc.

During his free time, Sam is either on the water or on his motorcycle.  He sails a 420 sailboat (4.2m) out of Long Beach Island NJ, and rides local roads on his “Conny” motorcycle as much as he can.

Philadelphia, PA, September 5, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company and Knight-Mozilla OpenNews invite civic software developers, public officials, journalists, data analysts, and designers to participate in Hacks for Democracy, a multi-day hackathon focused on elections and politics.  A brainstorming session will take place at the Azavea office on Friday, September 14 from 6:30pm-8:30pm before the main weekend hackathon on Saturday, September 15 and Sunday, September 16 hosted by Venturef0rth.  The best projects will be awarded prizes at the end of the weekend.  The hackathon will then be followed by a series of follow-up events, culminating in a second round of judging for the most-improved projects on Friday, October 5, one month before the U.S general election. For more information, visit: www.hacksfordemocracy.org

Democracy is not inevitable or a given; it must be sustained and strengthened by each generation. Today, American democracy is challenged by unlimited political contributions, polarized legislatures, gerrymandered districts and opaque processes.  But efforts such as the Voting Information Project, open government data repositories, online voting, Sunlight Labs and ParliamentWatch have demonstrated that technology can make an important contribution toward improving democratic institutions.

This fall is going to be a hard-fought election in the United States.  In addition to electing the President and Congress, most state legislatures will be selected using new district boundaries and many local officials will have to submit their qualifications to their constituents.  Hacks for Democracy's goal is to bring teams of citizens together to collaborate on civic apps that will make a positive impact this election season.   Software developers, designers and data analysts will be invited to create innovative and useful apps that leverage data from a wide variety of sources, such as Sunlight Labs, OMB watch, Freedom Speaks, Project Vote Smart, the Center for Responsive Politics and Azavea’s Cicero API.

The full event schedule and locations are as follows:

Fri, Sept 14, 6:30pm – 8:30pm, API and Project Idea Presentations, Azavea, 340 N 12th St, Suite 402

Sat, Sept 15, 9am – 5pm, Hackathon, Venturef0rth, 417 N 8th St, 2nd fl, Philadelphia, PA  19123

Sun, Sept 16, 9am – 5pm, Hackathon, Venturef0rth, 417 N 8th St, 2nd fl, Philadelphia, PA  19123

Mon, Sept 17, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening, Azavea, 340 N 12th St, Suite 402

Mon, Sept 24, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening, Azavea, 340 N 12th St, Suite 402

Mon, Oct 1, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening, Azavea, 340 N 12th St, Suite 402

Fri, Oct 5, 6:30pm – 8:30pm, Final Judging and Awards, Azavea, 340 N 12th St, Suite 402

The event’s organizing sponsors are Azavea and Knight-Mozilla OpenNews.  VentureF0rth is the venue sponsor.  SecondMuse, Jarvus Innovations, ElectNext, Esri, and Cicero API are event sponsors.

For more information and to register, visit: www.hacksfordemocracy.org. To submit a project for the event, write up a paragraph at https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacks-for-democracy

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About Knight-Mozilla OpenNews - Knight-Mozilla OpenNews is about building an ecosystem to help journalism thrive on the open web. It's about producing next-generation web solutions that solve real problems in news. It's about supporting communities of developers and journalists as they make, learn and invent together. And it's about deploying fellows—and code—into news organizations to collaborate and innovate in new ways.  Find more at http://mozillaopennews.org/

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PhillyTreeMap is also now available as a mobile version on the iPhone and iPad. The free app can be found in the iTunes store here. An Android app is in the works and will be ready in the next couple months.

Democracy is not inevitable or a given; it must be sustained and strengthened by each generation. Today, American democracy is challenged by unlimited political contributions, polarized legislatures, gerrymandered districts and opaque processes. 

But efforts such as the Voting Information Project, open government data repositories, online voting, ParliamentWatch and TheyWorkForYou have demonstrated that technology can make an important contribution toward improving our democratic institutions. 

Do you have an idea for an app that will improve this fall's election?  What tools do we need to improve citizen engagement?  What app might help mitigate the impact of voter ID laws?  

Join Azavea and the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project to Hacks for Democracy, a multi-day political data hackathon bonanza. 

• Fri, Sept 14, 6:30pm – 8:30pm, API and Project Idea Presentations
• Sat, Sept 15, 9am – 5pm, Hackathon
• Sun, Sept 16, 9am – 5pm, Hackathon
• Mon, Sept 17, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening
• Mon, Sept 24, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening
• Mon, Oct 1, 6pm – 9pm, Hack evening
• Fri, Oct 5, 6:30pm – 8:30pm, Final Judging and Awards

Bring your computer, ideas, and friends. We’ll bring judges, prizes, and food! 

For a full schedule, times and locations, submit ideas, and to register, please visit: http://www.hacksfordemocracy.org
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sponsors 

Kevin McCorry of NewsWorks talks about the data Tamara Manik-Perlman of Azavea analyzed that combined PennDOT's info on who already has an ID with Philadelphia's district-by-district voter registration data. She compared that with the 2010 Census' block-by-block info on racial demographics. Read more here.

Daniel Denvir of the Philadelphia City Paper also mentions the data analysis completed by Tamara Manik-Perlman in his recent article. Read more here.

Emily Badger of The Atlantic Cities also mentions Tamara Manik-Perlman's analysis in her article as well. Read more here.

Christopher Wink of Technically Philly talks about the analysis that Tamara Manik-Perlman completed finding that in many North Philly wards, nearly half of residents don’t have ID needed to vote. Read more here.

Ari Berman of The Nation also mentions the study that Tamara Manik-Perlman completed. See #6 - The law is discriminatory. 

In the New York Times they also mentioned the voter ID law in Pennsylvania and linked the data analysis from Tamara Manik-Perlman in their article. Read more here.

Tamara Manik-Perlman's full data analysis on the new voter ID law can be found here.

Philadelphia, PA, July 31, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company and the Center for Security and Crime Science at Temple University announce the release of ACS Alchemist, an open source tool that enables the extraction of up to 100 variables of the American Community Survey (ACS).  The data is extracted directly into a format convenient for display on maps or for use in advanced spatial analysis and modeling.  The source code for ACS Alchemist is being released under the GNU General Public License and is available for download at: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist.

The U.S. Census ACS is an ongoing statistical survey that samples a small percentage of the U.S. population every year.  It has more than 20,000 variables for the 50 states, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, at multiple levels of geographic aggregation.  For organizations that need to analyze Census data to either serve their constituents more strategically or pursue their mission more effectively, the task of extracting such data from the U.S. Census Bureau website is fairly complicated.  The ACS Alchemist software provides a simple and free solution to this challenge.  ACS Alchemist provides straightforward user interface that takes the user through a simple step-by-step process to extract the data based on ACS survey year and level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division, tracts, blockgroups, etc.  The data is then saved as a Shapefile on the users’ computer for use within other GIS applications.

The software was developed by Azavea in connection with a National Institute of Justice grant awarded to Jerry Ratcliffe and Ralph Taylor of the Center for Security and Crime Science at Temple University.  It is the first of several software tools that Azavea is building to support predictive policing research in collaboration with the Center for Security and Crime Science.  This research is aimed at forecasting crime by combining socio-economic data that models crime over long periods of time with short-term changes in criminogenic risk. 

“The ability to analyze census information in a timely manner is a key component to predictive policing and crime prevention,” said Dr Jerry Ratcliffe of Temple University’s Center for Security and Crime Science, “and this tool will definitely aid our understanding of the causes of crime and ultimately, improve community safety.”

This is not the first time Azavea has released the source code for a tool it has developed.  The company built OpenTreeMap, a geographically-based tree inventory system; DistrictBuilder, a web-based platform that enables citizens and government officials to work together on redrawing legislative districts; Open Data Catalog, a portal that provides access to open data sets, applications, and APIs; and GeoTrellis, a framework for the fast processing of geographic data.  They are each available at:  https://github.com/azavea.

ACS Alchemist was supported by Award No. 2010-DE-BX-K004, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this software are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice or Temple University.  It is available at: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist.

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About the Center for Security and Crime Science at Temple University - Housed in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University, the Center for Security and Crime Science is the first center in the United States devoted to Crime Science. Current projects involve: The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment, Research on crime reduction effectiveness of CCTV, The Smart Policing Initiative, and research on predictive modeling of long and short term crime risk. Find more at: http://www.temple.edu/cj/cscs/.

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San Diego, CA and Philadelphia, PA,  June 19, 2012 – Azavea and The Omega Group, two industry-leading developers of innovative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software for public safety, announce a partnership to integrate HunchLab’s early warning system and predictive analytics into the CrimeView suite of law enforcement tools.  The Omega Group has significant experience developing public safety applications, with a portfolio of crime analysis tools for the law enforcement market, including CrimeView Desktop,  CrimeView Dashboard and CrimeView NearMe Mobile applications.  Azavea has developed HunchLab, a web-based geographic crime analysis, risk forecasting and early warning system that brings leading forecasting research from world-renowned criminologists and statisticians to the web and into the hands of law enforcement personnel.

As municipal budgets get cut, law enforcement agencies face the increased responsibility of improving public safety with fewer resources, doing more with less. Prioritizing the deployment of limited resources is challenging.  Traditional retrospective hot spot mapping, while useful, is not able to forecast future trends and simply assumes that what has happened will likely occur again.  The Azavea-Omega Group partnership is aimed at making sophisticated analytical and risk forecasting features available to a wide number of law enforcement agencies nation-wide and abroad in an easy-to-use suite of tools.

The Omega Group’s CrimeView products will leverage Azavea’s HunchLab API (Application Programming Interface) to provide the following analytic features:

• Statistical Early Warning System (Hunches): determine whether the current level of activity for a particular crime class in a given geographic area is statically unusual based on a defined historic timeframe to create an alert

• Near Repeat Pattern Analysis: measure the communicability of risk that an incident transfers to nearby locations increasing the likelihood of subsequent incidents in the area allowing for proactive patrol based on predicted short-term elevations in risk

• Load Forecasting: predict the aggregate levels of incidents expected across different areas of a jurisdiction based on a model that accounts for the time of day, day of week, and time of year (seasonality).

Azavea’s early warning system and predictive analytics draw from the published research of academic criminologists allowing departments to apply sound analytic techniques based on the latest crime theory in their daily operations.   “For several years, we’ve been working to translate the work of lead criminologists into easy-to-use software in HunchLab.  We’re excited to bring our work on HunchLab to The Omega Group’s customers through this new partnership,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

 “We view the integration of Azavea’s predictive analytics as a critical step in strengthening the ability of our product portfolio to support proactive policing approaches and in providing our clients with enhanced ability to optimize patrol strategies. It fits in perfectly with our mission to better integrate crime analysis with patrol work,” says Milan Mueller, President of The Omega Group.

These advanced features are available as add-on modules to The Omega Group’s suite of products including CrimeView Dashboard and CrimeView Desktop.   To learn more about this functionality, please contact Gabriela Coverdale, The Omega Group, at (858) 450-2590 or email gabriela@theomegagoup.com.

HunchLab was developed, in part, with support from the National Science Foundation under Grants Nos. IIP-0637589 and IIP-0750507.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com. If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About The Omega Group
We are dedicated to enriching the quality of life in all communities by providing solutions for law enforcement and public safety. We are the industry-leading developer of innovative Geographic Information Systems software designed to assist public agencies to better integrate data intelligence, analysis and mapping with patrol/field work to improve situational awareness, decision-making and mission outcomes.  We help all levels of an organization to optimize operational and tactical based strategies.

We have provided solutions to clients distributed throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. The Omega Group has over 500 law enforcement and public safety clients using our solutions. We are proud to have been in business for 20 years, since 1992.  To find more information visit our website at www.theomegagroup.com.

If you would like more information about The Omega Group or to schedule an interview with Milan Mueller, President of The Omega Group, please contact Gabriela Coverdale at (858) 450-2590 or email gabriela@theomegagroup.com.

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Brian graduated from the University of the Arts in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. He comes from a mixed background, having worked on both print and digital projects with clients ranging from individuals to large corporations.

Brian previously worked as a Production Artist for Bloomberg L.P., one of the world’s leading providers of financial news and data. While there, he created collateral and digital artwork for clients across the globe, including some in London, Tokyo, and Dubai. Brian also worked as a contract designer with Night Kitchen Interactive creating artwork for several client projects, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s “History of Vaccines” website.

In his free time, Brian enjoys cooking and participating in outdoor activities such as hiking and running. 

Michael Stal of InfoQ talks about the release of GeoTrellis, an open source data processing engine for high performance applications. Continue reading...

The H Open mentions the release of GeoTrellis, the geographic data processing engine under a GPLv3 license. GeoTrellis was written in Scala and uses the Akka framework. Continue reading...

The source code for GeoTrellis is available from the project's GitHub repository.

Philadelphia, PA, May 3, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the release of its newest open source product, GeoTrellis,  a high performance geographic data processing engine.  The company is releasing the product source code under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3).  It is available for download at: https://github.com/azavea/geotrellis/

Geographic data is crucial to a better understanding our communities, our society and our planet.  The data that is gathered about our world is growing at an unprecedented rate.  At the same time, the need to visualize and interact with that data in order to make better decisions has never been greater.  GeoTrellis was designed to help perform common geographic operations on very large data sets with speed, scale and an open architecture, thus enabling analysis applications that have previously only been possible through complex desktop GIS systems to be made available online and in mobile applications.  The software was designed to solve three core issues, with a focus on raster processing:

• Create scalable, high performance geoprocessing web services
• Create distributed geoprocessing services that can act on large data sets
• Parallelize geoprocessing operations to take full advantage of a multi-core architecture

"As a software developer, it’s incredibly exciting to me that our work is going to have a broader impact through its adoption as an open source project.  The web has already transformed the ways we use maps, and my hope is that GeoTrellis will be a part of transforming a new generation of web applications into interactive decision making and analysis tools that help us all improve the world around us," said Josh Marcus, Senior GIS Software Architect, Azavea.

While GeoTrellis is a new product, the concepts are not new for Azavea.  The company has been researching high performance computing techniques for processing large GIS data sets for several years.  Examples of applications that are already using GeoTrellis include:

• CommonSpace, a collaborative destination discovery and sustainable transit planning web application: http://commonspace.us/
• City of Asheville’s Priority Places application: http://gis.ashevillenc.gov/mapAsheville/PriorityPlaces/
• Visualizing Emancipation, a project of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond: http://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation/

GeoTrellis is written in Scala, a language designed for parallel processing, and leverages Akka, another open source project, that support distributed computation.   While GeoTrellis is is available as open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3), that license is not appropriate for all customers, products or markets, so Azavea also offers commercial and OEM licenses.  For more information about GeoTrellis, visit:  www.azavea.com/geotrellis/

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Caitlin Dempsey of GIS Lounge explains the objective of the Visualizing Emancipation project that the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab and Azavea have launched. Visualizing Emancipation is the first interactive map showing the end of American slavery during the U.S. Civil War. Read more about the project here.

Katherine Calos and George Lamm of the Richmond Times-Dispatch also highlights Visualizing Emancipation. Scott Nesbit, associate director of the lab, expects the emancipation map to evolve as scholars and the public contribute more examples of events that occurred along the path of freedom. Read more here.

Visualizing Emancipation was a featured project on the National Endowment for the Humanities website. Brett Bobley talks about the remarkable mapping project about the end of slavery across the American South during the Civil War. Read more here.

Philadelphia, PA, April 26, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the winners of its first Summer of Maps.  Inspired by the Google Summer of Code, Azavea Summer of Maps is a program that offers $5,000 stipends to two student GIS analysts to perform pro bono geospatial data analysis projects for non-profit organizations over a three-month period in the summer of 2012.  Azavea received applications from students and nonprofits from all over the United States. 

They selected Ms. Nse Umoh Esema, Master in City Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ms. Angela Sakrison, Master of Environmental Studies, University of Pennsylvania, as the first participants.  Ms. Esema will be working with The Campaign for Working Families on targeting programs to assist working people in managing their finances.  She will also be working with PlanPhilly on visualizing the impact of Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) on property vacancy, use, and values.  Concurrently, Ms. Sakrison will be working with the National Parks Conservation Association on assessing the impact of fences on patterns of wildlife migration in Grand Teton National Park; and with Stroud Water Research Center on evaluating the impact of vegetation changes in the riparian buffer on stream geomorphology and the fish community.

While this is the first year, Azavea could not be more thrilled by the success of Summer of Maps.   Both national and regional nonprofit organizations applied with a wide array of potential spatial analysis projects that spanned domains as varied as environment, transportation, arts and culture, public health, food, and education and family services.  The Mural Arts Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, National Parks Conservation Association, Morris Arboretum, Immigration Advocates Network, PlanPhilly, Partnership for Working Families, and Philabundance were among the participating organizations.  The majority of the 49 student applications came from students at regional Philadelphia universities like Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Community College of Philadelphia and Villanova University, but a significant number were submitted from as far away as UC Berkeley, MIT, SUNY at Buffalo, University of Vermont, and University of Michigan.

“We couldn’t have hoped for a better turn out. The quality of the applications we received from both the non-profit organizations and students was outstanding. Competition was fierce, which made it challenging for us to select winning organizations and students. What this showed us, though, is that a lot of nonprofits are asking very sophisticated spatial data analysis questions in support of their missions.  It is also exciting for us to see so many GIS students being trained by high quality university programs all over the US,” said Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President.

From June to August 2012, the winning non-profit organizations will be able to:

• Receive pro bono services from a skilled student GIS analyst to geographically analyze and visualize their data
• Visualize their data in new ways
• Combine their data with other demographic and geographic data
• Receive high quality maps that can be used to support new initiatives or make a case to prospective funders

The fellows will:

• Work on a spatial analysis project that supports the social mission of two non-profit organizations
• Work with Azavea mentors to improve their GIS skills
• Receive a monthly stipend
• Gain work experience implementing a GIS project

Azavea is planning to renew this initiative next year, and encourages nonprofits and GIS students to continue checking the Azavea Summer of Maps webpage for announcements related to the 2013 program:  http://summerofmaps.com/

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities while advancing the state-of-the-art through research. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment.  Azavea has offices in Philadelphia, Boston and Minneapolis. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Philadelphia, PA, April 12, 2012 – University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, with Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, has launched “Visualizing Emancipation,” the first interactive map showing the end of American slavery during the U.S. Civil War (http://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation/).  The application displays more than 3,000 geographically tagged emancipation events, such as reports of African Americans helping the Union, fugitive slave notices, insurrections and raids.  It assists the telling of the complex story of emancipation by mapping documented evidence of African Americans’ activities, viewed alongside the Union military movements and the shifting legal status of slavery during the war.  The university and Azavea were partners in the application’s development, funded by an Office of Digital Humanities start-up grant of $48,155 through the National Endowment for the Humanities’ We the People initiative.  The university matched the grant with more than $98,500 in cash and in-kind support.

Numerous primary sources document emancipation events, but they are widely scattered.  Researchers working to put together historical pieces – the multiple authorities that exercised power over slaves during the war, and the time and place of related events – find the task daunting.

“Emancipation did not happen on just a few days, by a single document, or on a fixed field of battle,” said Edward L. Ayers, president and historian of the American South at University of Richmond. “It came around the edges of the story. It started before the war began and ended long after the smoke cleared. It happened on dark roads and in formal government documents. It started, stopped, raced forward and cut back.”

Ayers and Scott Nesbit, associate director of the lab, directed the project.

“The trick,” Nesbit said, “ is finding and making events visible, while acknowledging the complexity of when, where and how slavery fell apart in the U.S.  The site aims to make exploring emancipation more straightforward and understandable.”

“Visualizing Emancipation” includes events pulled from many resources, including newspapers, letters and diaries from Cornell University’s Making of America digital collection; Tufts University’s Perseus Project digital library; the Valley of the Shadow online archive of the University of Virginia; and University of Richmond’s Richmond Daily Dispatch digitized newspaper archive.  An interactive timeline slider enables users to visualize events as points on a map or a searchable table, when they occurred and where Union regiments were located. 

Using its high performance geoprocessing GeoTrellis framework, the Azavea software development team added the ability to see emancipation events on a heat map, showing the density of these events in all areas of the American South.  An additional animation feature shows how the location of events and Union military positions changed throughout the war, enabling investigation of patterns of events.  Events can also be searched by keyword, start and end dates, source (book, newspaper, official record, personal papers) and type of event.  Clicking an event on the map displays an excerpt about it and a link to the primary source. Data about events and the legality of slavery at various locations can be downloaded from links on the application.

The web application combines open source and commercial tools, including: OpenLayers, GeoServer, PostGIS and an ArcGIS Online base map.  The University of Richmond plans to both extend this prototype and incorporate it into a much more extensive digital Atlas of American History.

About the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab
The lab develops innovative digital humanities projects that contribute to research and teaching at the university and beyond. It aims to integrate thoughtful interpretation in humanities and social sciences with innovations in new media. For more information, visit http://dsl.richmond.edu/ Nesbit and Ayers, the “Visualizing Emancipation” project directors, can be reached at snesbit@richmond.edu.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Find more at http://www.azavea.com. 

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Philadelphia, PA, March 20, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announces the launch of a new REST version of the Cicero web services (www.azavea.com/cicero), the company’s district matching and elected official lookup API that is already used by numerous nonprofits and election watchdog groups.  The Cicero API was originally launched in 2006.  The new REST API extends Cicero’s usability and provides users with:

• A growing collection of global election and district boundary datasets
• More contact information for elected officials
• New styling and projection options for district maps
• New API requests
• More data fields to query

Current Cicero users can access the new API calls using their current account information. New Cicero users can simply sign up for a free trial account to begin developing apps with the REST API.  Azavea will continue supporting the previous version of the Cicero API for at least one year from April 1st, 2012, but will be encouraging users to transition to using the new REST API to access district-matching and elected official lookups before then. The new Cicero API will support programmers seeking to use JSON and the convenient querying capabilities inherent in a RESTful interface.

In 2012 the Cicero team will be launching several new tools and features, including:

• Newly approved but not yet in effect legislative district boundaries (launched in January 2012)
• Online subscription payment options
• Easy online batch geocoding and district and elected official stamping
• Extended user account management capabilities

Nonprofit organizations can sign up for 5,000 free credits each toward the use of the Cicero API thanks to its partnership with TechSoup Global, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making technology and technology education available and affordable to other nonprofits worldwide. As a result, the Cicero API provides nonprofits with affordable access to an array of web services that support advocacy campaigns and grass-roots lobbying activity aimed at elected legislators. 

“This important dataset will help many nonprofits promote social causes and further their missions,” said Roger Abraham, Vice President of Product Programs at TechSoup Global.

The Cicero API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms. For more information about the Cicero API, visit: www.azavea.com/cicero.

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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There is still time left to join the My HeartMap Challenge. The contest ends on March 27, 2012. For more information, click here.

 Philadelphia, PA, March 5, 2012 – Azavea, an award winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces its first Summer of Maps.  Inspired by the Google Summer of Code, Azavea Summer of Maps is a program that offers $5,000 stipends to student GIS analysts to perform pro bono geospatial data analysis projects for non-profit organizations over a three-month period in the summer of 2012.  The company encourages non-profit organizations to submit their spatial analysis project ideas to be considered. Non-profit organizations have until Friday, March 16, 5PM to submit their project.  After receiving the organization projects, they will be made available to students. The student application process will then start on Wednesday, March 21 and will end on Monday, April 2.  Only the top two students will be selected and matched with a non-profit organization and their project proposal.

Why should non-profit organizations apply?

• Receive pro bono services from a skilled student GIS analyst to geographically analyze and visualize their data
• Visualize their data in new ways
• Combine their data with other demographic and geographic data to draw new conclusions
• Receive high quality maps that can be used to make a case to funders or support new initiatives

 
Why should student GIS analysts apply?

• Work on a spatial analysis project that supports the social mission of a non-profit organization
• Work with Azavea mentors to improve their GIS skills
• Receive a monthly stipend
• Gain work experience implementing a GIS project

 For more information about Azavea Summer of Maps and a full schedule application, visit: www.azavea.com/summer-of-maps/

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

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Philadelphia, PA, February 8, 2012 – Azavea, an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announces a crowd-sourcing contest to locate automated external defibrillators (AED) and the release of a web application and two free mobile apps, part of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s  MyHeartMap Challenge.   The applications   are now available for the public to participate in the MyHeartMap Challenge which will run for six weeks from January 31 to Tuesday, March 13.  In an effort to build a national database of AEDs and increase AED awareness, the Penn Medicine’s MyHeartMap is turning to the public to gather as much information as possible about AEDs accessible to the public.

Though almost non-existent a decade ago, automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) are now all around us, in airports, schools, gyms, and workplaces.   These devices can save lives as they deliver electric shocks to victims of cardiac arrests.  This is most effective in the first minutes after someone collapses.  Yet, there is no comprehensive map of such devices available to the public.  As a result, AEDs are often not used when they are most needed either because witnesses of a cardiac arrest incident do not know there might be an AED close by or that they should be looking for one.

The Penn Medicine MyHeartMap team is initiating the MyHeartMap Challenge project by encouraging the public, armed with the web and mobile applications built by Azavea, to locate and photograph as many AEDs in Philadelphia as possible.  Both the apps and participation in the contest are free.  Participants will be able to geocode their photos via the mobile app – available on the iPhone or Android -- and register information about the AEDs such as manufacturer and condition of the device.  In addition to the mobile apps, participants can enter data and check their status in the contest at the MyHeartMap website: http://philly.myheartmap.org/.  

MyHeartMap Challenge participants can register as individuals or as teams.  The individual or team that will find the most AEDs will win $10,000.  Other participants will win $50 if they are the first to identify one of the designated “golden” AEDs.  The MyHeartMap team is being coy about the precise number of golden AEDs, but has announced that there will be 20 to 200 of them.  The data collected will be used to create an updated database of locations of all public AEDs in the Philadelphia region with a person's GPS coordinates to help them locate the nearest AED during an emergency.  The project is part of a larger ongoing collaboration between faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington and is modeled after the DARPA Network Challenge, a crowd-sourcing experiment in which social media users raced to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations throughout the United States.  It is the team’s hope that this challenge will lead to a nation-wide contest.

The MyHeartMap Challenge project is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Physio Control; the Medtronic Foundation; the HeartRescue Project; Zoll; Cardiac Science; Philips and the University of Pennsylvania.

For more information about the MyHeartMap Challenge, visit: http://www.myheartmap.org.  Participants can use a web application available at: http://philly.myheartmap.org/. The smart phone apps can also be downloaded for free for the iPhone at http://itunes.apple.com/app/id492442372?mt=8 and from the Android Marketplace at https://market.android.com/details?id=edu.upenn.medicine.myheartmap.
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About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About MyHeartMap Challenge –  The Philadelphia MyHeartMap Challenge is the first of many city Challenges, followed by a nation-wide contest. Data collected for the contest will be used for a U-Penn research study evaluating AED mapping and database development. It is the initiative of a group of health professionals dedicated to saving lives and expanding the horizons of theory and practice—this interdisciplinary team has come together to engage and challenge the Philadelphia community to improve access to critical life-saving technologies. By harnessing the increasing reach of new media they hope to bring innovation to address an important public health disparity. Find more at http://www.myheartmap.org.

For more information about the MyHeartMap Challenge, contact the team at myheartmapchallenge@uphs.upenn.edu.

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Zack Stieber of The Epoch Times highlights the winners of the 2012 New York Redistricting Project and mentions DistrictBuilder, the open source software Azavea helped develop, as a source that helped people become more involved in this project. Read more here.

Sam Levin of The Village Voice blogs about New York Redistricting and the winners of the NY Redistricting Project. DistrictBuilder is credited for making it easier to be a part of the whole redistricting process in 2012. Read his blog here.

Dan Rosenblum of the Capital mentions Azavea and the open source software we helped develop, DistrictBuilder, as how students were able to create templates for the NY Redistricting Project. Read more here.

Serena Solomon of DNA info out of Manhattan also wrote about the New York Redistricting project and mentioned DistrictBuilder. Read her article here.

A news release that came from the University at Buffalo highlights all of the winners of the New York Redistricting project and DistrictBuilder is mentioned as the open source software used by students. Read the news release here.

Daniel's interview was also highlighted in the Delaware County Times. 

Another one of Azavea's products, DistrictBuilder, a web-based, open source software for collaborative redistricting was named runner-up for Best Use of Open Source category.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this years awards! Click here for the list of 2011 GovFresh Award Winners!

Philadelphia, PA, December 20, 2011 – Azavea, an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announces the release of the Emergency Medical Center Locator (EMCL) application, available for free download through iTunes.  The application was built for the Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF), whose mission is to provide unbiased information resources about biomedical products for patients and their physician.

The first few minutes and hours after a trauma can significantly impact chances of survival, especially as one travels abroad and does not know the local language.  The EMCL for iPhone identifies a user’s location and automatically retrieves the name and addresses of the 50 nearest medical centers around them in the United States and abroad.  Only the most advanced and state-of-the-art emergency care facilities with improved patient outcomes are included within the application.  Six specialty areas can be selected: trauma, stroke, eye, pediatric, cardiac and burn.  The application contains close to 2,400 medical centers in 101 countries, including Algeria, Afghanistan, France, Jordan, Morocco, Peru, and Yemen.

“A recent study showed that 75% of emergency rooms do not have round-the-clock resources to open a blocked coronary artery and only 10% of patients are transferred to a medical center in time to receive this life saving treatment.  The EMCL app lists only the centers that meet the American College of Cardiology gold standard ‘door to cath lab’ within 90 minutes,” says Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, Founder and Chair of the Board of BREF.

Data-driven applications like the EMCL are significant equalizers when it comes to making information accessible.  However, the data they contain can change on an ongoing basis.  The application was built in such way that it communicates with a set of database services in order to retrieve the latest information for medical centers worldwide.

The application can be downloaded for free at http://itunes.apple.com/si/app/emergency-medical-center-locator/id477974669

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

About BREF - The Biomedical Research and Education Foundation (BREF) is a listed Patient Safety Organization that provides unbiased information on medical devices for patients and their physician. BREF was founded with the concern that patients and doctors do not receive impartial information on the latest biomedical technology; whether it is an implanted device, new surgical procedure, or diagnostic tool. BREF is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization created in 2003.  Find more at http://www.brefnet.org/

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com. 

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Doron Taussig and Holly Otterbein of philly.com also mention a piece about Daniel's blog in this article about Harrisburg, redistricting, and gerrymandering. Read the article here.

Stay tuned for the release of the app we're building for them!

 Cicero API enables the geocoding and matching of addresses to legislative districts and elected official contact information. Enabling users to access both current and future legislative boundary data provides additional value to the district matching process.

Philadelphia, PA, November 17, 2011 – Azavea, an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announces the addition of updated, post-redistricting legislative district boundaries to the Cicero API (www.azavea.com/cicero), Azavea’s district matching and elected official lookup API.  Cicero API users are now able to:

• Match addresses to the district boundaries determined in 2000 that are still in effect as well as those new, redistricted legislative boundaries that have gone through the final approval process and are currently in use.  
• Using a separate web service request, match addresses to revised legislative boundaries that have been approved but are not yet in effect.

The Cicero API team continues to update legislative boundaries at the local, state and national levels as redistricting plans are approved.

Every ten years, following the national Census, city council, state legislature and congressional district boundaries must be redrawn to reflect the nation’s growing and shifting population.  Addresses shift to different legislative districts, which affects an organization’s or individual’s ability to identify the districts an address belongs to.  Yet a multitude of open government, election watchdog organizations, lobbying groups, and unions depend on the ability to match their constituents to the elected officials who represent them in order to advocate on their behalf.  When these organizations have advanced access to the updated legislative districts they are able to more effectively mobilize their constituents.

This most recent addition to the Cicero data collection further sets the API apart from similar other services. The Cicero database and API offer several important advantages:

• Access to a collection of elected official contact and legislative boundary data from around the world.
• Maps of each legislative district, and contact information for local, state, and national elected officials in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
• Information for U.S. governors and lieutenant governors, U.S. police and school districts, and U.S. watersheds.
• Continuously updated data by a team of GIS analysts and political data researchers.
• Highly accurate, address-based, legislative district matching web service.

 All told, the Cicero system now includes over 10,700 legislative boundaries and information on over 12,800 elected officials.

“Many Cicero users have expressed interest in accessing the newly redistricted legislative district boundaries, prior to them actually taking effect.  By releasing the new Cicero API web service call for newly redistricted boundaries, we are able to provide Cicero users with the information they need to actively engage their constituents in a timely fashion.” - Abby Fretz, Cicero Product Manager

The Cicero API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.  For more information about the Cicero API, visit: www.azavea.com/cicero

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com. 

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Christopher Wink of Technically Philly explains what the objective of OpenDataRace is and also speaks with Azavea's President, Robert Cheetham, on what he hopes to achieve by holding this particular type of contest. “The primary purpose of the contest is to..."

Abhi Nemani of Civic Commons talks about the purpose of the OpenDataPhilly contest and how interesting the approach is and the positive effect it will have on the community.



Sue Spolan of Flying Kite Media spoke with Deb Boyer, Project Manager at Azavea, about the OpenDataRace contest. Deb says, "Public participation has been a key feature of OpenDataPhilly and ..."

Philadelphia, PA, October 6, 2011 – In April, Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, along with its partners – Technically Philly, WHYY Newsworks, NPower Pennsylvania, the William Penn Foundation, and the City of Philadelphia’s Open Access Philly task force – launched OpenDataPhilly.org (http://opendataphilly.org/), a Philadelphia-centric catalog of online data, applications and APIs.  Since April, several new data sets have been added to the catalog, and the project team has sought ways to both build a community around the topic of ‘open data and government transparency’ as well as prioritize advocacy efforts for the release of additional data sets.  In September, these efforts resulted in the launch of the Open Data Race.  This four-phase effort first enabled non-profits to nominate data sets that if released by the City of Philadelphia would further their missions and enable them to better serve their constituents.  To date, more than 20 non-profit organizations have nominated data sets as varied as vacant and city-owned land, permit and license issuance, business starts, energy usage, tax revenue, and school BMI data.  In the next phase, which starts this week, the general public is being invited to vote for their favorite data sets (and the non-profits that nominated them). Voting will remain open until October 27.  At the conclusion of the contest, cash prizes will be awarded to the top three vote-winners.

The primary purpose of the Open Data Race is to encourage citizens and advocates to get involved in the process of open government and to cultivate government transparency through the release of data.  In that respect, the contest is somewhat different from other open data contests that derive from municipal initiatives.  Here, consumers of the data get to nominate the data they need, which in turn will receive votes from the general public.  Then, at the end of the public voting period, the Open Data Race partners will work with the City of Philadelphia to develop the mechanisms to release the winning data sets.  Finally, in January to February, the OpenDataPhilly partners will organize hack-a-thons that will invite civic hackers to build applications with the newly released data.  The Open Data Race hopes to foster a dynamic dialogue between data consumers, the public, and the municipal government that holds the data.

Since the launch of OpenDataPhilly.org, Azavea has continued to add new data sets and applications to the online catalog.  To date, OpenDataPhilly.org has cataloged over 150 data sets, applications and APIs from organizations as varied as the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Records, Streets Department, Police Department, the U.S Geological Survey, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Temple University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Information about zoning, mortgages and deeds, campaign finance records, polling places, locations of schools and libraries, bicycle networks, crime, and many other metrics are part of the catalog.  Some data sets, including public transit APIs and land use data have been added since being suggested by users through the site suggestion system.

“Several major cities have released open data catalogs over the past few years.  But these municipalities all have limited resources and struggle with prioritizing which data sets will be most useful.  The Open Data Race is an experiment aimed at both building a community and constituency around open data and open government as well as helping the City to prioritize the inevitably limited resources it can apply to releasing data sets while also delivering social value.” – Robert Cheetham, CEO and President of Azavea.

To cast your vote for your preferred data set, visit: http://opendataphilly.org/contest/

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Find more at http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com. 

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The SBIR Phase I grant of $100,000 will support the development of software tools for prioritizing geographic areas for tree planting as well as modeling the ecosystem impact of trees planted in urban areas. Urban street trees provide myriad proven benefits for the community including improving air and water quality, assisting with stormwater runoff, decreasing electricity bills, raising property values, and enhancing the look and feel of communities. Finding the most effective place to plant a tree, however, is a complex process influenced by several variables such as transportation infrastructure, utilities, land use and presence of potential stewards that will water and care for a tree. Azavea will research and develop a prototype web-based tool that will provide options for users to select a prioritization scenario, assign weights to each of several parameters, and generate heat maps depicting the best locations for planting trees in a new area. The research will build on Azavea’s DecisionTree framework that enables high performance computation of large scale geographic data over the Internet. Staff members from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission will provide feedback and testing for the project.  

The SBIR Phase II grant builds on an SBIR Phase I grant awarded to Azavea in 2010 to develop a prototype tree inventory data management system that would assist communities in collaboratively inventorying and maintaining the urban forest. The resulting software, which was merged with the Urban Forest Map software developed in San Francisco, was released as an open source software toolkit called OpenTreeMap.  It is currently being used in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sacramento. The OpenTreeMap software enables the public, non-profit organizations, and local government to search and view all the trees available in a database based on species, location, and other criteria. With a free registration, users can add new trees, edit existing tree details, and upload tree images. Using iTree, a tool developed by the USDA Forest Service, OpenTreeMap also provides calculations of the economic and ecosystem benefits of urban trees, demonstrating the many beneficial ways trees impact air quality, energy consumption, and stormwater management.

The SBIR Phase II grant of $460,000 will enable Azavea to expand the OpenTreeMap software to include the development of mobile and tablet versions, the creation of input/output application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable integration with other tree management systems, the introduction of social networking, and gaming and competition elements to encourage use and implementation of a cloud-based deployment option. The work will be conducted over the next two years in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and Urban Ecos.   

“We received a lot of terrific suggestions on the initial version of OpenTreeMap. In the second phase, we will both integrate these suggestions and enable more people to do this type of inventory and survey work in their neighborhoods.  Many of our cities are seeking to expand their urban forests in order to reap the benefits of stormwater infiltration, lower energy costs, improved air quality and more attractive places.  OpenTreeMap enables residents to work alongside City Hall to create cleaner, greener neighborhoods.  Combined with our research into urban forest modeling and prioritization, these new geospatial tools will help to both expand and strengthen the stewardship of our vital urban forests,” said Robert Cheetham, Azavea President and CEO.     

The development of Urban Forestry Modeling and Prioritization Tools is supported by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Award Number 2011-33610-30511. OpenTreeMap: Tools for Collaborative Urban Forestry is funded under the same program, Award Number 2011-33610-30862. 

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558 – 6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About OpenTreeMap – OpenTreeMap is open software for collaborative, geographically-enabled urban forestry. OpenTreeMap provides a public tree inventory platform that enables individuals, organizations, and governments to collaboratively contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of a community’s tree population. For more information and to download the open source code: http://www.azavea.com/opentreemap/

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The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) has chosen the PWD's Stormwater Billing GIS web app, PhillyStormWater.org, as the 2011 Exemplary Systems in Government Award winner for the Single Process Systems category. The PhillyStormWater.org app helps PWD convey to its customers how its green stormwater management billing charges are applied, by allowing them to examine the impervious surface coverage of their property and identifying steps they can take to reduce costs and be more environmentally friendly. URISA chose PhillyStormwater for the award because it "has benefited all stakeholders, including both the Philadelphia Water Department staff and the public alike...It gives the public easy access to - and transparency to – storm water charges, and the ability to see the effect on their bills should property owners consider greener strategies...and [has] saved hundreds of hours for the Water Department staff members per month. The system is the largest of its type in the country and certainly is progressive in the way it charges for storm water management costs."

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) will officially present  the DOR’s online database of historic photograph and map collections, PhillyHistory.org, with a 2011 Leadership in History Award of Merit at its annual meeting tomorrow, Friday, September 16th.  This year's fifty-nine national Leadership in History award-winners, including PhillyHistory, represent the best in the field of the preservation and interpretation of state and local history.

NewsWorks' Chris Satullo says that citizen-driven democracy can work and how FixPhillyDistricts.com is a great experiment for the City of Philadelphia.

Chris Satullo also talks about the winning maps. There were 70 valid entries, with 7 maps being chosen and presented to City Council at their final redistricting hearing on Tuesday, September 6th.

Doron Taussig from philly.com reflects on Chris Satullo from NewsWorks' statement that "Citizens are better at redistricting than Council" and how Fix Philly Districts is making this all possible.

Doron Taussig also talks about the winning map from the recent FixPhillyDistricts.com redistricting competition and how the public is a key element in the final decisions.

The Philadelphia Daily News overviews the FixPhillyDistricts.com redistricting competition and highlights the overall winning map, as well the maps for Ward splits, equal population, and compactness.

CBS Philly reporter, Mike Dunn, profiles Azavea and the purpose of FixPhillyDistricts.com. Robert Cheetham, President of Azavea, explains “Our greatest hope is that council will consider the winning plans..."

Jennifer Sun of The Daily Pennsylvanian, describes how FixPhillyDistricts.com aimed to increase transparency in the redistricting process.



techPresident profiles Azavea and FixPhillyDistricts.com, and Nick Judd talks about how this contest has had such an adverse effect in other cities.



The Mt. Airy Patch goes inside one of the Redistricting hearings and explains how the maps from the Fix Philly Districts contest can hopefully leave an impression on City Council for change.

David Gerber of Politics PA, takes a look at the winners of the Fix Philly Districts contest and what the motives and goals are behind this redistricting contest.

1. John Attanasio – Overall Competition Winner
2. Cris Aguilar – Equipopulation Category Winner
3. Frederic Murphy - Compactness Category Winner
4. Steve Horton – Ward Splits Category Winner
5. Gary Zielonis – Honorable Mention
6. Bonan Li - Honorable Mention
7. Andy Toy (Asian Pacific Americans for Progress team) - Honorable Mention

The top scoring plan will receive a $500 cash prize.  The 3 category winners will receive Amazon Kindles.  All winners will receive a chance to present their plans before City Council in an upcoming public hearing.

The main goals of the contest were to:

• Enable the public to learn about the redistricting process
• Encourage civic engagement in the redistricting effort by providing tools for the public to draw their own valid council district plans. 
• Demonstrate that a non-partisan and open, public process based upon objective criteria can produce fair, legal council districts in Philadelphia.  

Participants took these goals to heart and produced, as individuals or as teams, varied multitude of plans.  While some of the winners had clearly had some experience with redistricting activities, the majority of the plans came from regular citizens, most of whom have no background in redistricting or geographic information systems (GIS). FixPhillyDistricts.com automatically calculated contiguity, compactness, equipopulation, and demographics statistics as users built their plans, which made it easier for people to use the system.  FixPhillyDistricts.com was powered by DistrictBuilder (http://www.azavea.com/districtbuilder), the open source software Azavea developed in collaboration with leading redistricting experts at the Public Mapping Project (http://publicmapping.org/).  DistrictBuilder has already supported public redistricting efforts for the states of Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Arizona and Virginia. 

Along with their plans, participants submitted narratives that explained their motivations and thinking.  Participants’ concerns ranged from trying to avoid splitting racial and ethnic communities, to respecting natural boundaries, and making districts more compact.  John Attanasio, overall winner, explains, “While focusing on minimizing ward splits … I also sought to avoid splitting racial and ethnic communities.   My plan thus has one district with a majority Hispanic voting age population.  It also has four districts with a majority Black voting age population.”  Cris Aguilar, Equipopulation category winner, states that in drawing his plan, he “has sought to preserve the geographic integrity of neighborhoods while respecting natural boundaries, such as major arteries, creeks and the Schuylkill River … and make most districts more compact."  

The Fix Philly District partners are thrilled by the level of enthusiasm and public participation that the contest generated, especially in the middle of August amidst vacations, an East Coast earthquake and a hurricane.  Philadelphia has some of the most convoluted city council districts in the country according to the results of nation-wide redistricting research that Azavea conducted in 2006 and 2010 (http://www.azavea.com/research/company-research/).  Poorly drawn districts lead to poor representation of constituent interests and damage the basic fabric of democracy.  An initiative like FixPhillyDistricts.com and other similar contests nation-wide demonstrate that not only are citizens interested in the redistricting process, they are sufficiently invested and motivated to spend many hours drawing high quality plans that would pass legal muster in any city.  

For images and narratives of the winning plans, visit: http://fixphillydistricts.com/winners.html 

About Azavea - Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, http://www.azavea.com.

About NewsWorks - NewsWorks is the online home of WHYY News and its growing network of journalism partners. This public media service covers the Philadelphia region, Delaware and South Jersey, with a focus on regional issues, neighborhoods, health and science, and arts. For more information, http://www.newsworks.org/

About Penn Project for Civic Engagement - The Penn Project for Civic Engagement develops, implements and facilitates public deliberations on important policy issues. We bring stakeholders together to identify and act on problems in their community, business or organization. Our structured dialogues unite stakeholder values with expert knowledge and leadership to produce momentum for real solutions. For more information, http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pcel/programs/ppce

About Philadelphia Daily News - http://phillydailynews.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

About Philly.com - http://www.philly.com/

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This is not the first award that the Philadelphia Department of Records has received for PhillyHistory.org. In 2007, the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) recognized the site as an 'Exemplary System in Government' and conferred on it a "Distinguished System" award.  The same year, the website received a Philadelphia Magazine ‘Best of Philly’ award, followed in 2008 by a ‘Henry Magaziner Award’ from the AIA Philadelphia.

To date, five Philadelphia organizations - the Department of Records, the Philadelphia Water Department, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Office of the City Representative, and the Library Company of Philadelphia - have joined the PhillyHistory.org consortium and are contributing ten different collections, for a total of over 98,000 historic images and maps so far.  Thanks to a geographic digital collection management system built by GIS software firm, Azavea, each collection can be managed separately and directly from the website.  Each agency can upload assets to the site, edit metadata, geocode (assign latitude and longitude) their assets, retrieve usage information and sales, and receive collection-based error reports. Authorized users have access to only the collections from their institution, making the system ideal for a consortium of organizations that might not individually have the funding to build their own web-based digital collection.

The collections are also available via a location-aware iPhone application (http://phillyhistory.org/i/), enabling users to compare historic images to their present location.  Most recently, the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to build a prototype augmented reality application in order to research the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital access to historical and cultural resources.  The results of this research are available in a white paper free to download at http://www.azavea.com/augmented-reality

With an average of 13,500 unique visitors per month and 8,000 registered users who can tag favorite assets, save searches, be notified when PhillyHistory.org adds new photos, share assets, and leave comments on images, the site is heavily used and has attracted the attention of historians, genealogists, researchers and history buffs in Philadelphia and around the world.   

“I am honored to receive this award on behalf of the Philadelphia Department of Records. Making records of history readily available to the public is a crucial responsibility of our department. The City Archive manages a rich collection of photos that depict the remarkable history of our city.  Other agencies and organizations in our region hold as valuable collections. It is my hope that PhillyHistory.org will continue to grow and continue to be an example of how a regional consortium of collections can operate together and be successful.” – Joan Decker, Commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Records.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s CEO and President, or Joan Decker, Department of Records’ Commissioner please contact Amy Trahey at (215) 558–6184 or e-mail atrahey@azavea.com.

About the Philadelphia Department of Records
The Home Rule Charter of 1952 established the Department of Records to ensure that Philadelphia's municipal records are appropriately controlled and managed. The Department sets records management standards and procedures for all departments, boards, commissions and agencies, and it manages key central recordkeeping operations and services such as the City Archives, the Records Storage Center, the Recorder of Deeds and the Central Reprographics Services. www.phila.gov/Records/

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Before joining Azavea, Joe worked for the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority at the Middlesex County Office of Planning. He has also helped develop a data feed for Middlesex County Area Transit.

Over the past year, Joe has helped build with Habitat for Humanity in Warren County, NJ, and hopes to continue serving the community after moving to Philadelphia. In his free time, he enjoys traveling around the country, hosting strangers from out-of-town, and paddling or biking along the river.

Vernon Odom and the 6abc Action News team visited Azavea's headquarters on 12th street to interview Abby Fretz, who gave a demo of the DistrictBuilder software. Watch the newscast here: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=8285064

NewsWorks' Chris Satullo detailed the $1,000 in prizes on offer, courtesy of WHYY, and other competition specifics in his Centre Square blog posting, "Your chance to fix Philly's screwy election map".

"It's Our Money" podcasters Doron Taussig and Juliana Reyes tackled the developments in their own humorous style on their weekly podcast, "Keeping 'the public' in public engagement".

NewsWorks Tonight radio host Dave Heller interviewed Azavea's President Robert Cheetham about Cheetham's visions for the contest and how users will go about using the FixPhillyDistricts.com site to create their own redistricting plans: NewsWorks Tonight

After Azavea's, WHYY's, and UPenn's Project for Civic Engagement's joint FixPhillyDistricts unveiling and Civic Engagement meeting at WHYY's Hamilton Public Media Commons on Independence Mall on August 8th, Chris Satullo wrote up his "stunned" and "flabbergasted" reaction to the well-attended meeting, here, "Voters flock to chance to fix Philly's election map."

Marty Moss-Coane's Radio Times newsmagazine took the FixPhillyDistricts competition as an opportunity to cover the redistricting process in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Moss-Coane invited Cheetham on the show to discuss the contest.

The Inquirer's Bob Warner interviewed Cheetham about the website, and reported on Council's redistricting efforts up to this point in his article on Monday, "Website will let public propose new Philadelphia Council districts". 

The FixPhillyDistricts.com contest was also mentioned in the Inquirer Editorial Board's "Say What?" blog, "Council again shows disdain for public input", the same text appearing in the print paper's opinion section under the headline "Public deserves to be heard".

Representing Philadelphia's diverse Spanish-speaking community, the Spanish-language weekly paper Al Día posted their own translated version of Warner's Inquirer article, "Fixphillydistricts.com permite participación ciudadana en redistribución".

Daily News reporter Catherine Lucey covered the major demographic shifts that any redistricting plan will have to take into account in her politics article, "Council courts public on districts".

The News' "Philly Clout" blog also mentioned the FixPhillyDistricts.com site and Azavea and WHYY's plans to host a public meeting next Monday, August 8 in its post, "Council to hold public hearing on redistricting".

Christopher Wink at Technically Philly posted on the competition here.

Nick Judd wrote a post for PDF's techPresident blog examining how Cheetham hopes the FixPhillyDistricts.com competition will encourage more public engagement, with a shorter summary post here.

PoliticsPA posted about the contest here.

Reporter Mary Silver for the multilingual English and Chinese newspaper The Epoch Times interviewed the Public Mapping Project's Micah Altman, an Azavea partner, about DistrictBuilder and the FixPhillyDistricts contest.

Philadelphia Magazine's Patrick Kerkstra called Azavea "a critical asset for reforming local government" in his blog post for PMag's "The Philly Post."

Brett Mandel explained in his post, "Drawing New Council Lines is an Excercise in Disrespect," that Azavea's DistrictBuilder may make it easy to dive in, but it does not take away the careful nuances required to draw a good city council district map. "I have learned how to make the computer software very happy...But, no matter how hard I try, I finish each map with a measure of dissatisfaction...my map drawing begins with the best of intentions, but ends with me having to disrespect something."

Before joining the team at Azavea, Adam worked at the Oracle Primavera Global Business Unit designing enterprise-level project management software, as well as working on new interfaces for the iPhone and iPad.

When you can tear him away from his computer, you can find this Wisconsin native skiing in the Poconos in the winter and running down the Schuylkill trails. He also loves living down in Center City and the amazing food scene.

View more videos at: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com.

Urban street trees have myriad proven benefits for communities including providing shade, improving air quality, intercepting stormwater runoff, raising property values, decreasing utility bills, and enhancing the look and feel of communities. While tree inventories provide municipalities with vital data to consult when managing the urban forest, creating a complete inventory is a time consuming and resource intensive process.  OpenTreeMap provides an easy-to-use public inventory platform that enables individuals, organizations, and governments to collaboratively contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of a community’s tree population. OpenTreeMap can be used in a single municipality or cover a broader geographic region with many communities.

After completing a free registration, users can add trees to the system, edit or add to existing tree records, and upload tree images.  All changes are immediately visible in the system, but a group of trained administrators may also elect to review changes and new entries to ensure accuracy.  Each tree is associated with a particular location and may include information such as species, diameter, images of the tree, and yearly ecosystem impact metrics.  Calculated using iTree, an urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment software suite developed by the USDA Forest Service, these ecological impact numbers provide a clear illustration of the environmental and economic impacts that trees have on the urban landscape. 

Created using Django, Python and PostgreSQL, OpenTreeMap’s original code was developed by Urban Ecos and Umbrella Consulting for the award-winning Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco.  Azavea adopted the software and extended it with support from a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Grant Number 2010-33610-20937).  Azavea and Urban Ecos plan to collaborate on future urban forestry projects and are seeking additional funding to extend the software to smart phones and tablets, add social networking features, create curricular materials for schools and add new ecosystem modeling features.

“We could not be more pleased to collaborate with the Urban Ecos team. Kelaine Vargas was one of the original developers on the iTree Streets program and brings considerable knowledge about urban forestry and ecosystems. We hope that the OpenTreeMap code will be used by communities around the world to ensure our urban forests are valued and nurtured by the communities in which they grow.” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

For more information about OpenTreeMap, visit: http://www.azavea.com/opentreemap/.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com.

About Urban Ecos
Urban Ecos offers ecological consulting to government agencies, educational institutions, and private companies, helping to make our cities greener and more environmentally sound. With the latest technology and the most up-to-date science, we focus on using our natural resources to increase sustainability. For more information, visit http://www.urban-ecos.com/

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Webinar Registration

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/230667126

Amy received her Associates of Science degree in Business Administration & Marketing from Peirce College this year, and is currently pursuing her Bachelors of Science degree at Peirce as well. Before coming to Azavea, she was an Executive and Marketing Assistant at a GPS fleet tracking company. 

Outside of Azavea, Amy likes to attend sporting events in South Philadelphia where she lives. She also enjoys trips to the beach and walking around exploring the Old City and Rittenhouse areas in downtown Philly.

While a multitude of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions throughout the world have assembled data pertaining to their activities and the communities they serve, these datasets exist in disparate formats and locations.  For people interested in using this data, the search can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  OpenDataPhilly.org, a collaborative effort between Technically Philly, WHYY Radio, the City of Philadelphia’s Open Access Philly task force, and Azavea was launched to connect people with data pertaining to the Philadelphia region.  The initial version of the database encompasses a catalog of over 100 datasets providing information about zoning, mortgages and deeds, campaign finance records, polling places, locations of schools and libraries, bicycle networks, crime, local and regional train routes, and many other metrics about the Philadelphia region.

Written using Django, Python and PostgreSQL, Open Data Catalog is intended to display information and links to publicly available data in an easily searchable format.  The code also includes options for data owners to submit datasets for consideration, for registered public users to request datasets that do not currently exist, and vote on their favorites. Open Data Catalog is free for anyone or any agency to use.  For what purpose?  Government agencies are increasingly turning to the Internet as a way to share operational data, which, in turn is being shared, repurposed and published in new forms by others. Projects such as Data.gov, Data.london.gov.uk, The World Bank, Openly Local, Toronto.ca/open and NYC Data Mine have raised the bar in terms of what the public should expect from a transparent government.  These projects have made it evident that government transparency is not just about giving access to data, but it is also about being able to share, reuse and transform this data in order for people to analyze and understand it better.  It is Azavea’s hope that Open Data Catalog will be used to make this process easier to a broader range of agencies, organizations and citizens.

“Raw data is not meaningful on its own.  With Open Data Catalog, we want to encourage organizations or municipalities to build their own catalogs in order to enable technology communities throughout the world to transform rows of text, numbers and shapes into applications and visualizations that inform the public, inspire action, and contribute to more dynamic communities,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com.

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Daniel graduated from Harrisburg University with a bachelor's in GIS last year, and is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Urban Spatial Analytics at the University of Pennsylvania. Particularly interested in transportation planning, for his graduate research Daniel  is looking into demographic and economic changes near public transit stations in the Philadelphia area.

Before coming to Azavea, he was a GIS intern at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, where he scooped up as many transit related tasks as possible and participated in the DVRPC's Regional Student Forum.

In his free time you can find Daniel boasting and bragging about Philadelphia, biking the Schuylkill River Trail, exploring the city's up-and-coming neighborhoods, or absorbing city life at Rittenhouse Square.

Mike graduated with a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design, with honors, from the University of the Arts.  He previously worked with Night Kitchen Interactive on digital projects for cultural and educational institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Art and Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. In addition, he works as a freelance designer on projects for local and national organizations, including the National Association of Federal Credit Unions and Rope-a-Dope, a Philadelphia-based music and culture organization.

A fan of everything design, Mike is always exploring new ways to grow as a designer. In his spare time, he spends many sleepless nights on personal design projects, enjoying a good meal (with a great beer), and learning new technology.

Android and iPhone Apps Provide Access to 500 Augmented Reality Enabled Photos from Popular Geographic Photo Search Website PhillyHistory.org. White Paper Details Research on AR App Development.

Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2011 -  The Philadelphia Department of Records (DOR) and Azavea announced the publication of a free white paper that summarizes their research on the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital access to historical and cultural resources.  This paper accompanies the release of a prototype augmented reality application for PhillyHistory.org (www.phillyhistory.org), the online database of historic photograph and map collections from the City Archives, the Water Department, the Office of the City Representative, the Free Library, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, originally built by Azavea.  The app is available at no cost for both iPhone and Android smart phones.  

In spring 2010, the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to develop innovative techniques for leveraging the sensors in contemporary smart phones to expand public access to historical data in novel ways.  “Augmented reality” refers to a new type of software that can augment people’s experience of the physical world by overlaying additional digital information.  The new Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org application provides point-and-view access to 500 historic photographs of selected sites around Philadelphia.  Users are able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing the camera of a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The historic photos then appear as an overlay on the current urban landscape, enabling viewers to compare the past to the present. This prototype application focuses on 3D display of images from several neighborhoods across the city while also providing simplified access to nearly 90,000 images from the PhillyHistory database.  In addition to photos in the Center City area, images from other neighborhoods have also been incorporated in order to evaluate issues such as tree cover, building height, and other sources for location error that may affect the accuracy of the augmented reality display.  To assist with evaluation of the software and provide more in-depth text for select photos, the project team worked with an advisory committee that included the co-editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and Dr. Amy Hillier, professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

While augmented reality applications are growing in number and popularity around the world, very little has been written about the technical feasibility of different approaches.  How can mobile augmented reality technology be used to enhance asset collections?  Is the technology sufficiently advanced to make this type of application possible?  Can historic images really be represented as overlays (i.e. 3-D objects pinned in space)?  Is the screen size of a mobile device too small to properly display an image and text?  Are smart phone networks fast enough to load all this information? With support from the NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, the DOR and Azavea’s software engineering team were tasked with exploring these questions and publishing a white paper to present the findings of this research.  The white paper is free to download at http://www.azavea.com/augmented-reality

“When we started PhillyHistory.org 5 years ago, we only had 90 photos.  We could hardly imagine that today we would have almost 100,000 historic photos and maps available to the public. Now with the augmented reality capabilities added to the system, PhillyHistory.org makes creative use of the latest technology to bridge the past and the present, as well as give residents and visitors a new means of learning about Philadelphia.” – Joan Decker, Commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Records

While the $50,000 research grant has yielded a more complete application than originally anticipated, the project team encountered a number of limitations with the current state of the technology.  The Department of Records and Azavea expect to seek additional funding in order to develop solutions for these limitations as well as bring the technology to a broader array of devices including tablets.

 

Android and iPhone Apps Provide Access to 500 Augmented Reality Enabled Photos from Popular Geographic Photo Search Website PhillyHistory.org. White Paper Details Research on AR App Development.

Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2011 - The Philadelphia Department of Records (DOR) and Azavea announced the publication of a free white paper that summarizes their   research on the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital  access to historical and cultural resources. This paper accompanies the release of a  prototype augmented reality application for PhillyHistory.org (www.phillyhistory.org), the online database of historic photograph and map collections from the City Archives, the Water Department, the Office of the City Representative, the Free Library, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, originally built by Azavea. The app is available at no cost for both iPhone and Android smart phones.

In spring 2010, the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to develop innovative techniques for leveraging the sensors in contemporary smart phones to expand public access to historical data in novel ways. “Augmented reality” refers to a new type of software that can augment people’s experience of the physical world by overlaying additional digital information. The new Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org application provides point-and-view access to 500 historic photographs of selected sites around Philadelphia. Users are able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing the camera of a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image. The historic photos then appear as an overlay on the current urban landscape, enabling viewers to compare the past to the present. This prototype application focuses on 3D display of images from several neighborhoods across the city while also providing simplified access to nearly 90,000 images from the PhillyHistory database. In addition to photos in the Center City area, images from other neighborhoods have also been incorporated in order to evaluate issues such as tree cover, building height, and other sources for location error that may affect the accuracy of the augmented reality display. To assist with evaluation of the software and provide more in-depth text for select photos, the project team worked with an advisory committee that  included the co-editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and Dr. Amy Hillier, professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

While augmented reality applications are growing in number and popularity around the world, very little has been written about the technical feasibility of different approaches. How can mobile augmented reality technology be used to enhance asset collections? Is the technology sufficiently advanced to make this type of application possible? Can historic images really be represented as overlays (i.e. 3-D objects pinned in space)? Is the screen size of a mobile device too small to properly display an image and text? Are smart phone networks fast enough to load all this information? With support from the NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, the DOR and Azavea’s software engineering team were tasked with exploring these questions and publishing a white paper to present the findings of this research. The white paper is free to download at http://www.azavea.com/augmented-reality

“When we started PhillyHistory.org 5 years ago, we only had 90 photos. We could hardly imagine that today we would have almost 100,000 historic photos and maps available to the public. Now with the augmented reality capabilities added to the system, PhillyHistory.org makes creative use of the latest technology to bridge the past and the present, as well as give residents and visitors a new means of learning about Philadelphia.” – Joan Decker, Commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Records

While the $50,000 research grant has yielded a more complete application than originally anticipated, the project team encountered a number of limitations with the current state of the technology. The Department of Records and Azavea expect to seek additional funding in order to develop solutions for these limitations as well as bring the technology to a broader array of devices including tablets.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s CEO and President, or Joan Decker, Department of Records’ Commissioner please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701–7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com 

About the Philadelphia Department of Records
The Home Rule Charter of 1952 established the Department of Records to ensure that Philadelphia's municipal records are appropriately controlled and managed. The Department sets records management standards and procedures for all departments, boards, commissions and agencies, and it manages key central recordkeeping operations and services such as the City Archives, the Records Storage Center, the Recorder of Deeds and the Central Reprographics Services.  www.phila.gov/Records/

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Free registration lets the public add and edit information to the current database of 175,000 trees

Philadelphia, PA, April 25, 2011 – Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the launch of PhillyTreeMap (http://www.phillytreemap.org/), a wiki-inspired web application that enables the public to collaborate with the project partners -- City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – to map,  inventory, and preserve Philadelphia's trees.  PhillyTreeMap will be officially unveiled as part of Philly Tech Week’s Green Tech Showcase, on Arbor Day, Friday April 29 at 12-noon at the offices of WHYY, 150 N. 6th Street, Philadelphia. Registrations to the event are still being accepted at: http://tp.ticketleap.com/green-tech-showcase/

Urban street trees have myriad proven benefits for communities including providing shade, improving air quality, assisting with stormwater runoff, raising property values, decreasing utility bills, and enhancing the look and feel of communities.  While tree inventories ensure that municipalities have data to consult when managing the urban forest, creating a complete inventory is a time consuming and resource intensive process. PhillyTreeMap provides an easy-to-use public inventorying platform that encourages the public to contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of the city’s tree population.  While the initial database load has resulted in over 175,000 trees in the system, public help is needed to ensure the data is both current and complete.   With a free registration, users can add trees to the system, edit or add to existing tree records, and upload tree images.  All changes are immediately visible in the system, but a group of trained administrators will also review changes and new entries to ensure accuracy. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation will share the management and monitoring of the system.

The application currently includes existing inventories from the PHS, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and the Township of Lower Merion.  Each tree is associated with a particular location and may include information such as species, diameter, images of the tree, and yearly ecosystem impact metrics.  Calculated using iTree, an urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment software suite developed by the USDA, these ecological impact numbers provide a clear illustration of the environmental and economic impacts that trees have on Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Azavea built PhillyTreeMap using open source code contributed by the Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco and plans to collaborate with the group on future urban forestry projects.  The development of PhillyTreeMap was supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Grant Number 2010-33610-20937).

PhillyTreeMap will help Philadelphia Parks & Recreation progress toward achieving the 30% tree canopy goal outlined in Greenworks Philadelphia by providing a tool for engaging citizens around tree planting and stewardship.  PhillyTreeMap is also a timely addition to the recently launched Plant One Million campaign, an ambitious multi-state plan by PHS and its partners to increase the number of trees in a thirteen county region in southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

“PhillyTreeMap is an easy-to-use tool that offers new ways for the public to learn about and connect with their local trees. This complements Plant One Million’s efforts to plant, count, and tend trees in the Greater Philadelphia region,” said Amanda Benner, Director, Plant One Million, PHS.


About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Claire Connelly at (215) 701 – 7715 or e-mail cconnelly@azavea.com.

About City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation
Philadelphia Parks & Recreation promotes the wellbeing of the City, its citizens and visitors, by offering beautiful natural landscapes and parks, historically significant resources, high quality recreation centers and athletic programs, along with enriching cultural and environmental programs. Find more at http://www.phila.gov/recreation/ and http://www.fairmountpark.org/.

About Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is dedicated to uniting the region's elected officials, planning professionals and the public with the common vision of making a great region even greater. Shaping the way we live, work and play, DVRPC builds consensus on improving transportation, promoting smart growth, protecting the environment, and enhancing the economy. We serve a diverse region of nine counties: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; and Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Mercer in New Jersey. DVRPC is the official metropolitan planning organization for the Greater Philadelphia Region - leading the way to a better future. Find more at http://www.dvrpc.org/.

About Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1827. Under the leadership of Drew Becher, PHS provides educational programs, great events, activities and publications for novice gardeners, experienced horticulturists, and flower lovers of all ages.  Find more at http://www.phsonline.org.

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Nonprofits to Receive 5,000 Free Credits for Address-Based District Matching, Elected Official Lookup and Address Geocoding for a Growing List of Countries 

Philadelphia, PA, April 20, 2011 - Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces that nonprofit organizations can now sign up for 5,000 free credits each toward the use of Cicero, Azavea’s elected official data and district matching API, thanks to its newly formed partnership with TechSoup Global, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making technology and technology education available and affordable to other nonprofits worldwide.

“This important dataset will help many nonprofits promote social causes and further their missions,” said Roger Abraham, Vice President of Product Programs at TechSoup Global. “We’re delighted to welcome Azavea, the second socially responsible B-corporation to join our family of product donors.”

The free Cicero API (http://www.azavea.com/products/cicero/) credits are available through TechSoup Global’s product donation program (www.techsoup.org/cicero) through which companies like Microsoft, Esri, Intuit, Blackbaud and Adobe are already offering their software to nonprofits on a donation basis. Cicero is the first API that TechSoup is making available through this program.  The Cicero API provides nonprofits with affordable access to an array of web services that support advocacy campaigns and grass-roots lobbying activity aimed at elected legislators. 

“We couldn’t be more proud to become a TechSoup Global partner, alongside Esri and other prestigious civic-minded companies.  This partnership aligns with Azavea’s mission to apply geographic data and software to promote more dynamic and sustainable communities.  Our B Corporation status is part of this commitment, and our partnership with TechSoup to provide free access to the Cicero API builds on this foundation,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea

The Cicero API not only provides address-based district matching but also maps of each legislative district, contact information for local, state, and national elected officials in the United States and data for legislative officials and election events around the world.  The service includes coverage in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  The Cicero team of GIS Analysts and political data researchers continues to add foreign legislatures based on client requests.  The database also includes information for U.S. police districts, school districts, and watersheds.  All told, the Cicero system now holds over 10,000 legislative boundaries and information on nearly 13,000 elected officials.  The API currently provides data to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.  Azavea also operates an off-line batch service for organizations that have ad hoc district-matching needs.

"Our clients love how Cicero delivers an amazing feature set and a great value, while our developers love the solid, straightforward well-documented API. That's why we've built Megaphone, our open-source online advocacy module for Plone CMS, on top of it.  We're thrilled that Cicero's new free service tier is going to make that power more accessible than ever to the grassroots nonprofits that power the environmental movement."
Jon Stahl - Senior Strategist, Groundwire

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com.

About TechSoup Global
TechSoup Global is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working towards the day when every nonprofit, library, and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology knowledge and resources they need to operate at their full potential. It provides technology information to organizations all over the world. TechSoup Global continues to innovate with a goal of bringing increased resources and capacity to organizations working diligently on their social missions. In addition to the Cicero API, TechSoup Global has a network of more than 40 corporate donor partners including Microsoft, Cisco and Symantec. For more information about technology donations and resources, visit www.techsoup.org

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Philadelphia, PA, April 18, 2011 – Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company announces the launch of OpenDataPhilly.org (www.opendataphilly.org), a first-of-a-kind Philadelphia-centric catalog of online data, applications and APIs.  OpenDataPhilly.org will be officially unveiled as part of Philly Tech Week, on Monday April 25 at 12-noon at the offices of WHYY, 150 N. 6^th Street, Philadelphia. Stand-only registrations to the event are still being accepted at: http://tp.ticketleap.com/openphillydataorg-unveiling/

While a multitude of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions throughout the Philadelphia region have assembled data pertaining to their activities and the communities they serve, these datasets exist in disparate formats and locations.  For people interested in using this data, the search can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  OpenDataPhilly.org aims to connect people with data by listing the location of these datasets in a single online catalog and, in the process, expand the number of people and organizations that are using data to asking interesting questions.

With this initial version of the database, Azavea has assembled a catalog over 100 datasets from organizations as varied as the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Records, Streets Department, Police Department, the U.S Geological Survey, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Temple University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to name a few.  Information about zoning, mortgages and deeds, campaign finance records, polling places, locations of schools and libraries, bicycle networks, crime, and many other metrics are part of the OpenDataPhilly catalog.  The project team at Azavea will continue to curate the catalog until a permanent home can be found.  The site will also enable the public and agencies to submit datasets, and a suggestion system will enable users to request datasets that do not currently exist and vote on their favorites.

“Raw data is not meaningful on its own.  With OpenDataPhilly, we want to encourage the technology community in Philadelphia to transform rows of text, numbers and shapes into applications and visualizations that inform the public about our region’s well-being, inspire action, and contribute to a more dynamic community,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

The OpenDataPhilly project is the result of a collaborative effort between Technically Philly – the Philly Tech Week organizers --, WHYY, the City of Philadelphia’s Open Access Philly task force, and Azavea.  The project team is committed to three important goals:

• Improve access to data in Philadelphia
• Increase government transparency and accountability
• Drive and encourage innovative use of the data

For more information about OpenDataPhilly.org, visit www.opendataphilly.org – The catalog will be available as of Monday, April 25, 12-noon.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile software as well as geospatial analysis services. Azavea is a certified B Corporation that applies geographic data and technology to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. For more information, visit http://www.azavea.com.

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea CEO and President, please contact Claire Connelly at (215) 701 – 7715 or e-mail cconnelly@azavea.com.

About Technically Philly

Technically Philly is a news site that covers the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia, with a focus on startups, venture capital, digital divide and city IT policy. Technically Philly launched Feb. 9, 2009 and is published by Technically Media Inc., which was founded by Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and Christopher Wink. Find more at http://technicallyphilly.com/

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As part of their Public Mapping Project, Dr. Michael P. McDonald, Associate Professor at George Mason University and Dr. Micah Altman, Senior Research Scientist at Harvard, Non Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, have teamed up with Azavea, an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, to develop District Builder (http://www.publicmapping.org/resources/software), an open source, web-based redistricting application designed to give the public access to online redistricting tools.  The web-based software, can be configured to redistrict any state or locality within the United States, and is based on open source technology in order to make it transparent and accessible by a broad audience.

Every ten years, following the national Census, city council, state legislature and congressional district boundaries must be redrawn to reflect the nation’s growing and shifting population.  While the 2010 Census apportionment data results were released in December, in a few weeks’ time the 2010 Census population demographic profile data will be made available.  At that point, legislators along with political consultants will start shifting district boundaries according to their own political interests, often at the expense of the interests of the citizens they represent.

The Public Mapping Project’s District Builder is designed to enable greater public participation where redistricting authorities solicit public input or for open government watchdog groups to enable the public to generate redistricting plans for their state and localities.  Through an easy-to-use set of map tools, users can select various types of geographies such as blocks, tracts, or counties and assign them to districts.  As districts are edited, users can view demographic information, population count and other statistics.  They can then save their plans, share them with others, and generate plan summary reports using the BARD statistical reporting application, a software package developed by Dr. Altman and Dr. McDonald.  And because the software is web-based, it can be accessible by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

The software was built using several open source technologies including Django, GeoServer, jQuery, PostgreSQL, and PostGIS.  The software code can either be downloaded and installed on an organization’s own servers or run using Amazon.com hosting infrastructure.  The Public Mapping Project’s website lists instructions on how to access the software at: www.publicmapping.org/resources/software.

Several organizations have already committed to using the software.  The Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University and the Public Mapping Project are sponsoring the Virginia College and University Legislative Redistricting Competition, which will be entirely based on using District Builder: www.varedistrictingcompetition.org.  The Midwest Democracy Network is committed to hosting instances of the software for use by its member organizations.  This February, Azavea will launch a local version of the software for Philadelphia to demonstrate how District Builder can be used at the municipal and county level.

Azavea is no stranger to political and redistricting projects.  In 2009, the firm released the “Redistricting The Nation” website (www.redistrictingthenation.com) to provide the public with better information about the legislative redistricting process and tools that support and encourage fair representation and competitive elections.  Concurrently, Azavea and Committee of Seventy, the Philadelphia region’s premier non-partisan government watchdog group, released Redistricting the Philadelphia Region .  Along with the web site, Azavea has also published a series of white papers, including Redrawing the Map on Redistricting 2010: A National Study, which ranks the ten most gerrymandered local, state, and federal districts in the country based on four different measures of compactness.

The Public Mapping Project is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Judy Ford Wason Center at Christopher Newport University.

Robert Cheetham Receives Public Service Achievement Award from Common Cause PA

District Builder: Open Source Web-based Redistricting Application

Read more....

Code for America was founded to help transform city governments through better use of information technology.  Inspired by the highly successful Teach for America program, “Code for America works with city officials and leading web development talent to identify and then develop web solutions that can then be shared and rolled out more broadly to cities across America.” Starting in January, Aaron will take a leave-of-absence from Azavea for a year-long fellowship to work on projects that will help city governments better leverage the power of the web. We wish Aaron the best!

“A hundred years from now, people will look back on the kinds of things Azavea is doing as the next step in the civil rights movement—giving people the tools to watchdog and fight a government that ignores the public interest,” James Browning, the Associate Director for Development in the Mid-Atlantic Region for Common Cause, told Technically Philly.  “On issues like redistricting reform, which can cause eyes to glaze, Redistricting the Nation makes the issue clear and compelling.” (source: Technically Philly)

We want to share this award with our staff and clients dedicated to making our government and democratic process more transparent.   Projects like Common Cause’s Our Philadelphia; Committee of Seventy’s Online Citizen’s Guide and Election Day Incident Mapping; MAPLight’s Remote Control report; George Mason University’s public District Builder redistricting software; and Redistricting the Nation are reminders that brave organizations are out there fighting to preserve one of our most fundamental civic rights: the right to participate in and protect our democratic system.  Thank you.

Azavea, an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase IIB grant, totaling $216,000, by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop advanced crime risk forecasting capabilities for HunchLab, the firm’s web-based geographic crime data analysis and early warning software system.  HunchLab provides both advanced crime mapping and automated notification to authorities about changes in the geographic patterns of crime incidents.  The system is targeted at the law enforcement market and enables police officers to develop, analyze, and evaluate hunches about geographic patterns in criminal activity in the communities they patrol. The Phase IIB award is being used to add new geographic forecasting features to the software as well as develop enhancements to existing functionality.

In 2006, the NSF awarded Azavea an SBIR Phase I grant totaling $100,000 for testing technical merit and feasibility of the HunchLab concept.  Then, in 2008, the NSF awarded Azavea an SBIR Phase II grant to enable Azavea to further develop the HunchLab technology and prepare it for commercialization.   For this Phase IIB development work, Azavea will be collaborating with Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe from Temple University’s Department of Criminal Justice, a leading expert in statistical crime analysis.  Over the past several years, Dr. Ratcliffe has worked with academic colleagues to develop statistical techniques for detecting what is known as a “near repeat” pattern.  Dr. Ratcliffe has discovered that certain types of crime exhibit a “contagion” effect. For instance, a burglary incident will result in an elevated risk that subsequent burglaries will occur within a couple of blocks and weeks following the original event.  This elevated risk can be measured and used by law enforcement officials to deploy their resources more effectively.  Azavea is building on Dr. Ratcliffe's work to make this forecasting technique available within HunchLab.  Two additional crime pattern forecasting techniques, focused on seasonal variations in crime and daily workload forecasts, are also being developed.  The Azavea software team is also enhancing the early warning system to support real-time visualization, animation and heat maps.  

Although HunchLab is being developed to assist with detection of geographic changes in crime patterns, the underlying technology is relevant for any application in which events display geographic changes in distribution, such as disease occurrence, consumer buying patterns, and real estate sales.

“We’re excited to be working with leading criminologists and geographers to implement cutting-edge risk forecasting research in HunchLab.  By providing agencies with tools that do more than simply map the historic frequency of crime incidents at a particular geographic location, we’re helping law enforcement agencies to focus their limited resources in the areas where they can best improve public safety,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

HunchLab is supported by the Small Business Innovation Research program of the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Engineering, Division of Industrial Innovations and Partnerships, Award Number (IIP-0750507).

This is the sixth time in four years that Azavea has been awarded an SBIR grant.  Previous awards were SBIR Phase I and II awards from the National Science Foundation and Phase I awards from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Besides messing around with computers and reading tech news, he enjoys video games, reading, cycling, judo, running, squash, working on random math puzzles, theater, and all kinds of music.  He also plays both flute and piano, although in recent years has been focusing more on the piano.

Justin Walgran, joins Azavea as a software developer on the Land Records team.  Justin graduated from Penn State with a BS in Computer Science and spent 10 years working as a desktop and web application developer at CSSI, a technology consulting company in central Pennsylvania.  In 2004, CSSI launched CoreIntegrator, a software platform for document management and business process automation.  Justin took on the roles of architect, lead developer and project manager over the lifetime of the application, often at the same time.

Outside the office you will usually find him attached to a laptop keeping up with software and design blogs, working on his own personal web projects and attending local developer meet-ups.  Away from the computer, he enjoys German board games, tinkering with analog electronics, and he’s been playing music since the age of ten, taking up the saxophone, guitar, bass, and drums.  Over the years his bands have independently produced and released 4 albums.  Justin lives with his wife, 2 rescued dogs and 2 rescued cats.

Azavea, an award-winning Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software design and development firm, announces the launch of PhillyStormwater.org, a public web Stormwater Billing application (http://PhillyStormwater.org/) for the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD).  The application supports the City of Philadelphia’s new parcel-based stormwater billing program.

On July 1, 2010, the City of Philadelphia flipped the switch on a new approach to assessing stormwater management fees that has been under development for over 15 years. As a consequence, a new billing system is now in place. Under the new billing methodology, which will gradually be phased in over the next 3 years, non-residential property owners will be charged for stormwater based on the total area of their property and the amount of impervious surfaces on their property, rather than being based on the amount of water they use.  The Phillystormwater.org system, developed by Azavea, enables property owners to understand how PWD calculates their new stormwater charges, detailing how each component of the stormwater charge was calculated, how it will be phased in over time, and what steps the property owner can take to reduce their charges through a credits program for each onsite water management practice they decide to implement.  The application enables property owners to visualize their property in a high resolution aerial photography and display the following data:

• Impervious area of their property
• Gross area of their property
• PWD account information
• Credits associated with the account
• Charge summary from FY 2011 to FY 2014

Customers who want to dispute the gross area or impervious area of their parcel can submit appeals, which are researched and in turn, managed by the PDW staff members through the PhillyStormwater.org application.

Why is the City of Philadelphia’s new stormwater management program such a significant move and why can it be qualified as “green”?  As a city grows and its open spaces are covered with concrete, asphalt and rooftops, stormwater that might have once been naturally filtered and absorbed by vegetation and soil is collected by the municipal stormwater system.  In many older cities, the stormwater and the sanitary sewer are combined into a single system.  When there is a storm event, the system outstrips the filtering capacity and the extra runoff overflows into the rivers, creating significant environmental and health impacts.  The more impervious surface  -- parking lots, sidewalks and roofs – the more rapidly and frequently the runoff will result in a combined sewer overflow (CSO) event.  Most municipalities remediate this issue by building more and larger infrastructure, but for a city the age and size of Philadelphia, this would carry a very large price tag.  The Philadelphia Water Department has decided to implement a billing system that aims to encourage property owners to use onsite green management practices such as retention basins, trees, green roofs and porous pavement in order to both reduce the amount of impervious pavement and use soil and vegetation to filter the water.  They hope this new approach will be more environmentally-friendly, lower cost, and easier to manage. In addition, PWD has also created a program of credits that incentivize owners to retrofit their properties with onsite stormwater management practices, thus reducing their stormwater fees.

Philadelphia’s approach is not unique -- Portland, Oregon has implemented a similar sustainable stormwater management system -- but Philadelphia’s program is the largest and most ambitious green stormwater management program in the country.  By 2029, PWD plans to replace at least one third of the City's impervious surfaces with green stormwater infrastructure.  Already a national leader in the design and construction of green roofs and other urban sustainability practices, the new program is part of Philadelphia’s Greenworks Program, an ambitious plan to transform Philadelphia into the greenest city in the U.S.  By committing the city to managing stormwater with green infrastructure, PWD also aims to increase recreational opportunities, provide jobs, and improve air quality.

“As a B Corporation, we seek out projects that use GIS technology to deliver both new services and social value.  Azavea does work all over the United States, but it’s thrilling when we can make a contribution to a project in our hometown, Philadelphia, that is setting the standard for innovative ways to better manage our ecosystem,” says Robert Cheetham, Azavea President and CEO.

Representatives of Azavea and the PWD will be presenting PhillyStormwater.org at the next American Water Resources Association (AWRA) conference in Philadelphia from Nov.1 – Nov.4  

To view PhillyStormwater.org, visit: http://PhillyStormwater.org/

About Azavea

Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile solutions, as well as geospatial analysis services to enhance decision-making. Azavea is committed to working on projects with a strong social value component in order to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Azavea is a certified B Corporation. For more information, visit www.azavea.com

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com

About the Philadelphia Water Department and Water Department Bureau
The Philadelphia Water Department and Water Revenue Bureau serve the Greater Philadelphia region by providing integrated water, wastewater, and stormwater services. The utility's primary mission is to plan for, operate, and maintain both the infrastructure and the organization necessary to purvey high quality drinking water, to provide an adequate and reliable water supply for all household, commercial, and community needs, and to sustain and enhance the region's watersheds and quality of life by managing wastewater and stormwater effectively. For more information, visit http://www.phila.gov/water/

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 Azavea, an award-winning Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software design and development firm, announces that it was awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant totaling $90,000, by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop prototype of a new data management software that will assist communities with the inventory and maintenance of urban forests.

Working with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), the City of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), Azavea will use the Phase I SBIR funds to test the feasibility of developing OpenTreeMap, an urban forestry tree inventory and management tool to support collaborative data collection and tree management by municipal government, non-profit organizations, students, and volunteers.  The Phase I project will focus on development of a prototype in Philadelphia, but if the approach proves successful, Azavea will be eligible to apply for Phase II funding that will enable extension of the system to any location in the world.

Urban forests provide valuable ecosystem services with global implications, including carbon sequestration, stormwater management, urban heat island mitigation, air pollution reduction, and shade that reduces energy consumption.  However, because of budget and staffing constraints, every urban and suburban municipal government faces major challenges in terms of managing their street trees and other public land.  As a result, in many communities, citizens, students and non-profit organizations supplement the government activities by planting trees, performing inventories, pruning and other activities.  But these activities are difficult to coordinate, tend to be focused in only a few areas and do not have the long-term continuity necessary to have substantial impact over time.  Azavea hopes to mitigate some of these challenges by designing the OpenTreeMap web application as a wiki-style data editing software that will enable people of many ages and experience levels to participate collaboratively in the tree inventory process.

“Across the country there are hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of citizens that are passionate about greening their communities by planting and caring for trees, but they lack the tools necessary to work together, measure progress and manage information over time. It is our hope that OpenTreeMap will help the public participate in this process by collaborating with both local government and other members of their community”, says Robert Cheetham, Azavea President and CEO.

Azavea has previously received SBIR Phase I and II awards from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

OpenTreeMap is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of

Agriculture, under Agreement No 2010-33610-20937 of the Small Business Innovation Research Grants Program.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile solutions, as well as geospatial analysis services to enhance decision-making. Azavea is committed to working on projects with a strong social value component in order to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities.  Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Azavea is a certified B Corporation. For more information, visit www.azavea.com

If you would like more information about Azavea or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com

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(Please keep in mind that we won't consider applicants who have not filled out the questionnaire.)

We look forward to hearing from you!

Software Engineer Job Description: http://www.azavea.com/about-us/join-us/current-job-openings/software-engineer/

To date, five Philadelphia organizations - the Department of Records, the Philadelphia Water Department, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Office of the City Representative, and the Library Company - have joined the PhillyHistory.org site and are contributing ten different collections of historic maps and images. The Library Company of Philadelphia is the first non-city agency to join the consortium. It is the hope of the Department of Records, who manages the City Archives, that other Philadelphia institutions will join PhillyHistory.org and provide increased public access to  visually rich, but not well-known archival collections.

The images from the Library Company and the Office of the City Representative capture over 125 years of Philadelphia history. Among the collections from the Library Company of Philadelphia are photographs depicting Civil War recruiting camps outside Independence Hall (http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=104996), the ruins of the northeast corner of 6^th and Market Streets after an 1856 fire (http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=104822), and the Western Exchange Hotel at 15^th and Market, which was then the western end of many omnibus lines (http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=104832). The Library Company hopes to build on this initial collaboration and add other image collections to PhillyHistory.org in the next few months. Featuring images of everything from planes (a Spirit of St. Louis reproduction arriving at Northeast airport: http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=103030) to parades (Mummers marching near City Hall) to presidents (President Kennedy speaking in front of Independence Hall: http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=103936), images from the Office of the City Representative collection depict historic events in our city and country’s history. Additional images from the City Representative’s collection will be added throughout fall 2010. 

“I am thrilled by the amount of enthusiasm we have received from other organizations who manage historically significant collections. It is my hope that PhillyHistory.org will continue to grow and continue to be an example of how a regional consortium of collections can operate together and be successful.” – Joan Decker, Commissioner, Department of Records

Thanks to a sophisticated collection management system, powered by Sajara®, a geographic digital collection management system built by Philadelphia-based GIS software firm, Azavea, each collection can be managed separately and directly from the website.  Each agency can upload assets to the site, edit metadata, geocode (assign latitude and longitude) their assets, retrieve usage information and sales, and receive collection-based error reports. Authorized users have access to only the collections from their institution, making the system ideal for a consortium of organizations that might not individually have the funding to build their own web-based digital collection.

"The Office of the City Representative is enthusiastic about providing public access to the 50 years of Philadelphia history documented in our photograph collection. We are pleased to make these beautiful images available for public viewing and purchase on PhillyHistory.org for the first time. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Department of Records, we can work together to show the wonderful people, places, and events of Philadelphia's history." – Melanie Johnson, City Representative

"The Library Company is excited to make our historic images of Philadelphia available to a wider audience via PhillyHistory.org. We're proud to be the first non-city agency to join this collaborative effort and hope that visitors will enjoy the opportunity to view the amazing photographs of nineteenth-century Philadelphia that are available in the Library Company's collections." - Dr. John C. Van Horne, The Edwin Wolf 2nd Director, Library Company of Philadelphia

The collections are also available via a location-aware iPhone application (http://phillyhistory.org/i/), enabling users to compare historic images to their present location.  And to further help people see the past all around them, the Philadelphia Department of Records has recently been awarded a NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up grant to develop a prototype augmented reality application.  Utilizing a combination of the GPS and camera technologies available on smart phones, this mobile phone application will enable users to view the historic photographs from PhillyHistory.org as overlays on the current urban landscape.

To view the photographs and maps contained in PhillyHistory.org, please visit www.phillyhistory.org. To search particular collections, select the ‘Collections’ search item on the search page. To request interviews, high-resolutions photographs, and more information about the PhillyHistory.org project or the technology that underlines it, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com

The 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2006 to 2009. Over that period of time, Azavea experienced a 3-year growth rate of 91%.  Within the Greater Philadelphia region, Azavea ranks No. 63.  Despite the fact that most of this year’s measuring period of 2006-2009 took place during the latest recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $321.6 billion, up more than 50 percent from last year. And in total, the companies on the Inc. 5000 have created 1.4 million jobs. The effects of the recession are seen, however, in the median three-year growth rate, which dropped to 96 percent from last year’s 126 percent.

Azavea has experienced several years of growth despite the recession, which has also earned the company placement on the 2010 Inner City 100 list (ranked No. 28), compiled by The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City  (ICIC) and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The firm was also a finalist in the 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces list, also published by Inc. Magazine.

“It is an honor to be part of this list of thriving companies. Our firm was founded on the idea that geography matters, and that geospatial software technologies can help build thriving communities. We serve governments, non-profit organizations and university researchers by providing analysis and visualization tools to help people make better decisions.  We look forward to continuing to make a difference in the various communities we serve across the country.” 

-- Robert Cheetham, CEO and President of Azavea

 Highlights of the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 include:

- The fastest-growing sector by median revenue growth was Real Estate, which showed 231% median growth over the period and a total growth rate of 189 percent.

- Software was second with a growth rate of 126 percent, and Telecommunications was third with 119 percent.

- The Government Services sector showed the biggest gain in terms of the number of companies on the list, up 33 percent from last year to 335 companies. Government Services was also the second-fastest-growing sector in terms of median revenue growth, posting a 202 percent gain over the 2006-2009 measuring period.

 Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles, can be found on www.inc.com/5000.

The application enables users to enter their location, their mode of transportation, the time they are willing to travel, and preferred entertainment like restaurants, shows, cultural events or shopping.  Adding additional users at different starting locations, their modes of transportation and travel times prompts the application to automatically calculate the common space for all of the people in a given group.  The application generates an interactive map displaying what social activities are available in the users’ common space.  Users can then add destinations to a plan, which they can share with others via a hyperlink or generate a walking, biking or public transit route in Google Maps.

The platform is built on a combination of OpenStreetMap data and transit data from SEPTA, the Philadelphia regional transit agency, recently released in the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format. To calculate the “transit-sheds”, the system uses the open source GraphServer framework, which correlates routes and the time that a user is willing to travel.  Azavea also used an experimental, next-generation version of its DecisionTree technology, code-named Trellis, for distributing the geographic data processing across many servers.  Developed using Scala and leveraging the open source Akka framework, the new technology enables the web site to respond quickly and support large numbers of visitors.  Once a user selects a starting address and mode of transit, tens of thousands of possible routes are mapped behind-the-scenes using transit and street data.  Then the application renders the possible area that someone can reach in the amount of time they have chosen.  The results appear on-the-fly on a Google Maps base map.

As an increasing number of communities promote more healthy lifestyles and sustainable environments, web tools like CommonSpace demonstrate how geographic technologies can help people make the most of the amenities around them while also making better transportation decisions.  CommonSpace redefines what “local” means, and in the process can help all of us make our communities healthier, as well as more socially and environmentally responsible.

“While the application enables users to make social plans and have fun, we see CommonSpace as a new generation of applications that leverage publicly available geographic data in new ways to promote more accessible communities and help city dwellers discover local treasures that they might not otherwise have been aware of,” said Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s President and CEO.

The website is the result of a partnership with the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, NPower Pennsylvania and the William Penn Foundation.  Data providers include the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe Festival; Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Phillyfunguide.com; Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation’s Uwishunu.com; Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia; and Yelp.com.

“We are excited about CommonSpace because it will help shoppers find new local businesses in their own backyards and plan their trips in a more sustainable way,” said Leanne Krueger-Braneky, the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia’s Executive Director.

Azavea hopes to expand the application to more locations, add additional data that impacts walkability, and create a smart-phone version.  CommonSpace relies on data populators to make the site useful and relevant.  The project will continue to seek unique local attractions and venues to incorporate into the offerings, such as Philly Beer Week and neighborhood festivals, as well as solicit feedback and input from Philadelphians using the site to impact its future.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile solutions, as well as geospatial analysis services to enhance decision-making. Azavea is committed to working on projects with a strong social value component in order to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Azavea is a certified B Corporation. For more information, visit www.azavea.com

About The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia
The Sustainable Business Network (SBN) of Greater Philadelphia is a nonprofit network of local triple-bottom-line businesses and social entrepreneurs. SBN is made of local business people, professionals, social entrepreneurs, investors, not-for-profit leaders, and government representatives who are committed to building a more socially, environmentally, and financially sustainable local economy. For more information, visit www.sbnphiladelphia.org/

About NPower Pennsylvania
NPower is a charitable organization that provides technology services and support to other charitable organizations. NPower's mission is to ensure all nonprofits can use technology to better serve our community. NPower PA was founded in 2002 with support from Microsoft and a matching grant from the William Penn Foundation. Starting with 30 member organizations our first year, we are now providing affordable, high -quality technology services to over 375 member organizations in the greater Philadelphia community.

About the William Penn Foundation
The William Penn Foundation, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas, is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Greater Philadelphia region through efforts that foster rich cultural expression, strengthen children’s futures, and deepen connections to nature and community. In partnership with others, we work to advance a vital, just, and caring community.

• UK Parliament (House of Commons)
• London Assembly
• The Scottish Parliament
• The National Assembly for Wales
• Northern Ireland Assembly

This most recent addition to the Cicero data collection further sets the API apart from similar services as an unique address-based, legislative district matching web service that offers access to a collection of elected official contact and legislative boundary data from around the world. The Cicero API already provides address-based district matching, maps of each legislative district, and contact information for local, state, and national elected officials in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The database also includes information for U.S. governors and lieutenant governors; U.S. police and school districts; and U.S. watersheds.  All told, the Cicero system now includes over 10,700 legislative boundaries and information on over 12,000 elected officials.

Other recent Cicero developments include:

• The addition of Nova Scotia provincial legislative boundaries and elected official data:  This completes Cicero’s Canada dataset at the federal and provincial levels.
• Private Cicero user account administrative pages:  Enables Cicero users to track credit usage, activity and change account information.
• Data provider partnership with Salsa Labs, a suite of tools for organizations, campaigns, and companies to use for online organizing, advocacy, fundraising, and communications:  Salsa Labs customers can now stamp and segment their member databases with legislative districts and elected official contact information at the local, state, and national levels.

In 2009, Azavea released several additions and improvements to the Cicero API including support for ESRI’s new ArcGIS Online premium geocoding service and launched a Cicero free account to enable smaller organizations to use 1,000 credits for free every month for an unlimited amount of time.  In addition, the firm launched a batch geocoding and district matching service.  The service uses the same Cicero API provided to developers, but it enables users to send Azavea a database of addresses to be stamped with geographic coordinates, districts and legislator contact information and then returned to the customer. 

The Cicero API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms. 

Matthew McFarland, software developer, joined Azavea in August as a member of the Land Records Team. Matt worked for a number of years in Denver navigating the ArcObjects library to deliver GIS processing and editing tools to many large utilities and municipalities.  Deciding to go out on his own, he ended up in London writing an online GIS editor for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and then back to the states for more utility work with ArcFM and ArcGIS.  Outside of his technology work, Matt, along with his wife, run a half acre urban farm in Germantown complete with a dozen chickens and a small apiary.  They sell weekly vegetable shares to neighbors, friends, and to the neighborhood Food Co-op.  He is also a founding member of the Philadelphia Urban Farming Network, The Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild and the Philadelphia Horticultural Society’s Growers Alliance Program.

Azavea provides clients access to advanced geospatial technologies through highly-crafted and easy-to-use web software, and personalized geospatial analysis services. Their goal is to combine their extensive experience solving tough geospatial analysis problems, strong customer service, and a profound motivation to “do well by doing good” in order to help their clients create more dynamic, vibrant communities. Azavea works with clients in the fields of natural resource planning, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, crime analysis, real estate property analysis, redistricting, political advocacy, and cultural resources, to name a few.

This is the third time that Azavea has received an award from ESRI. This award follows Azavea’s recognition by ESRI as Business Partner-of-the-Year in 2006 and Foundation Partner of the Year award in 2007 (at the time the company was named ‘Avencia’). In 2006, the City of Philadelphia also won a Special Achievement in GIS award for DecisionMaps, a solution developed by Azavea that became a prototype for what has since become Azavea’s DecisionTree® product.

“We're honored and proud to receive this prestigious award from ESRI,” said Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.  “We stand at the cusp of an age when geospatial analysis capabilities will be both ubiquitous and critical to solving the problems faced by our communities, cities and the planet. Azavea works closely with ESRI to leverage its leading edge web and analytical products, such as ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online, to create solutions that both address these types of challenges and create social value. This award is a tribute to both Azavea’s staff and the clients with whom we collaborate.  Azavea’s solutions for managing our heritage, communicating with our elected officials, making our streets safer and supporting better economic development and planning decisions all benefit from our strategic partnership with ESRI.”

In case you haven't heard, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MBTA) announced a Developers Real Time Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to call on developers to create applications using the MBTA Real-Time XML Trial Feed -- which includes data for specific bus routes -- accessible through the internet, mobile phones, land-line phones, text messages, software applications and any widely accessible software platform.

In December we emailed you some information about Aaron Ogle's Walkshed application (an entry in the NYC BigApps Contest) -- www.walkshed.org. Today, we'd like to let you know about David Zwarg (also one of our developers)'s BusMinder application (still beta), which enables users to create bus reminder alerts (’busminders’) to receive estimated arrival times of bus stop(s) that are important for them by SMS or email.  David will be entering BusMinder in the MassDOT Developers Real Time Challenge.

Azavea believes that geographic tools, like Walkshed and BusMinder, promote a more sustainable economy and environment, ultimately making our communities healthier, and more socially and economically responsible. We believe these tools can encourage the public to walk more or take public transportation more easily, and encourage municipalities to better plan for optimal public transit routes or better sidewalk networks and bike lanes.

Check out David's BusMinder: http://busminder.sourceforge.net/

The Cicero web API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.  A beta user of the ‘Cicero Free’ plan is Our Philadelphia, a new website built by Common Cause Pennsylvania. The site tracks campaigns contributions in Pennsylvania and will also soon focus on redistricting reform for  Philadelphia and the state, tracking the influence of lobbyists, and promoting higher ethical standards for public officials.

The free subscription makes available most of the Cicero API including maps of districts, district matching based on coordinates and contact information for local, state and national elected officials in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  The Cicero database now includes almost 10,000 legislative boundaries and information on almost 12,000 elected officials.  Details about the ‘Cicero Free’ plan are available at: http://www.azavea.com/Products/Cicero/Purchase/CiceroFreeAccount.aspx.

In 2009 Azavea released several new additions and improvements to the Cicero API including support for ESRI’s new ArcGIS Online premium geocoding service and a decrease in the price for Cicero services.  In addition, the firm launched a batch geocoding and district matching service.  The service uses the same Cicero API provided to developers, but it enables users to send Azavea a database of addresses that are stamped with geographic coordinates, districts and legislator contact information and then returned to the customer. 

“We now have a choice to continue defending ourselves in federal court, but it has already cost our company far more than we ever expected, and has reached the point where our continued defense will jeopardize the financial stability of the firm, and that is simply not acceptable,” said Robert Cheetham, Avencia’s President and CEO.

Avencia was founded in 2000 by Robert Cheetham to build innovative location-based web solutions and perform spatial analyses to enhance decision-making processes in order to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities.

Azavea’s mission will remain the same as Avencia’s. The firm will continue to work on projects with strong social value and create software that brings together the best aspects of geography and the web. The company remains committed to providing its clients access to advanced geospatial technologies (GIS) through highly-crafted and easy-to-use web and mobile solutions, and personalized geospatial analysis services.

Cheetham adds, ”More than ever, we aim to combine our experience solving tough geospatial problems, commitment to tailored service, and a genuine desire to “do well by doing good” in order to help our clients create stronger communities.”

In addition to its research, analysis and software development services, the firm will also continue to offer the same web products that serve a wide variety of industries:

Cicero – Web API for legislative district matching and elected official information
Sajara – Web-based geographic collection management software
Kaleidocade – Web-based geographic indicators and data reporting, visualization and analysis software
DecisionTree – Web-based geographic planning and location prioritization software
HunchLab – Web-based geographic crime visualization, early warning and risk forecasting software

Since its inception, the company has garnered recognition from peers and in the press. It received such awards as the ESRI Business Partner of the Year and ESRI Foundation Partner of the Year awards in 2006 and 2007 respectively as well as a Special Achievement in GIS award. In 2009, the firm was ranked in the Inc. 500|5000 and the Inner City 100 lists of the fastest-growing companies nationwide, as well as in the Philadelphia 100 list of the fastest-growing companies in Philadelphia.

With these achievements, Azavea is poised for continued success and growth. Effective immediately, all future business activity will be conducted using the new name. There has been no change in the company’s management or ownership, and it will maintain its headquarters in Philadelphia, PA.

About Azavea
Azavea is an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development firm specializing in the creation of location-based web and mobile solutions, as well as geospatial analysis services to enhance decision-making processes. Azavea is committed to working on projects with a strong social value component in order to promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Each of Azavea’s projects, products and pro bono engagements showcases this commitment. Azavea is a certified B Corporation. For more information, visit www.azavea.com

• Elected officials lookups – enter an address and find your representatives as well as a list of their top contributors (powered by Cicero)
• Campaign contribution database
• Election reform advocacy – including redistricting, campaign finance and ethics
• Open government and transparency advocacy
• City and state government watchdog

"Our Philadelphia is a powerful new tool for people who want to hold their elected officials more accountable," said James Browning, Director for Development for Common Cause/Pennsylvania. "And after last week’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the ban on corporate spending to influence elections, the influence of corporate donors and the potential for money to further corrupt the political process has never been greater."

Made possible by the Samuel S. Fund, Our Philadelphia will also focus on redistricting reform for the city and the state, tracking the influence of lobbyists, and promoting higher ethical standards for public officials. With a search tool powered by Avencia’s Cicero legislative district matching and elected official lookup web API, the website allows any Philadelphia resident to look up their elected officials by entering an address. The profiles of top donors to each elected official are the result of a year-long campaign by Common Cause to make campaign finance records more accessible. Over time, Our Philadelphia plans to create its own searchable database of campaign contributions, and to add profiles of elected officials and their top donors from Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties.

The Cicero API is no stranger to political advocacy and political watchdog websites. It currently feeds elected district boundaries and elected official information into several public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms. A recent example of an application powered by Cicero is the Redistricting the Philadelphia Region website.  Built for the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based ‘good government’ political watchdog organization, the website enables citizens to, based on their address, look up their political districts, visualize them on a map and learn about the process of redistricting.

About Common Cause Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government that serves the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process. Learn more about Common Cause's efforts to hold power accountable at commoncause.org/pa

If you would like more information about Avencia or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Avencia CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com.

Sarah Pierro joins Azavea also as a GIS Analyst and will be working with Mike at the Philadelphia Water Department. She most recently worked at the County of Hunterdon in New Jersey as a GIS Specialist.  While employed at the county, she was responsible for updating and correcting municipal boundaries, editing parcel and easement information, as well as designing custom maps for the public.  On her down time, Sarah enjoys snowboarding, traveling, photography and live music.

Following the upcoming 2010 census reports, states and municipalities will engage in a nationwide legislative redistricting process. But in some parts of the country, the redrawing of district boundaries for partisan advantage has been rampant, which ultimately reduces the impact of individual voters on the election, resulting in lower voter turnout, and less competitive races. The expanded use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has created both new potential for sophisticated gerrymandering and a possible means of implementing unbiased redistricting.

With Redistricting 2011 around the corner, Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based geographic analysis and software development firm, is releasing the "Redistricting The Nation" (www.redistrictingthenation.com) website to provide the public with better information about the legislative redistricting process and tools that support and encourage fair representation and competitive elections.

The site allows citizens and advocacy groups to:

• Enter their address (nation-wide) and view the "shape" of their federal, state, and local election districts.
• Learn who is in charge of drawing the boundaries of their election districts (e.g., independent commissions or elected representatives).
• Compare the "compactness" scores of their election district to other, similar districts (less compact and unusually shaped districts are more likely to be gerrymandered).
• Draw new district boundaries on a map and generate compactness scores for the new district.

Avencia is also concurrently releasing a revised version of its 2006 study of gerrymandering ("Redraw the Map on Redistricting 2010"). The new study expands the scope and methodology of Avencia's original "Gerrymandering Index" to include state-level districts, council districts, and political wards for several new cities, and introduces three additional techniques for measuring districts' compactness. While poor compactness scores do not prove gerrymandering, they are a measurable indication of the practice.

The whitepaper ranks the ten most gerrymandered local, state, and federal districts in the country based on four different measures of compactness. The study reveals some interesting findings. For instance, at the Congressional level, both FL-22 and NC-12 rank high in the study's Top Ten for all four measures of compactness, while some of the worst offenders at the local level are: Philadelphia, PA-District 7; Miami, FL-District 2; Jacksonville, FL-District 11; Houston, TX-District E; New York, NY-District 4; Philadelphia, PA-District 5; and Los Angeles, CA-District 15.

Avencia is no stranger to political and election-focused projects. Earlier this month, Avencia and Committee of Seventy,the Philadelphia region's premier non-partisan government watchdog group, launched a sister website to the "Redistricting The Nation" site, dedicated to raising public awareness in the Greater Philadelphia area about the potential impact of the 2010 census on federal, state, and local election districts, available at www.redistrictingthenation.com/philadelphia. During the November 2008 presidential election, the firm built a Voting Incident Tracking and Mapping web-based application that tracked voting problems in real-time to enable Committee of Seventy's record-setting 1,000 person volunteer force to respond faster and more efficiently. Avencia also worked for multiple candidates in races to generate campaign walking and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) maps, and most recently generated over 400 campaign financing analysis maps for MapLight.org for their 'Remote Control" report.

"It is exciting to be able to leverage our global database of legislative districts and GIS analysis tools to promote good government and nonpartisan redistricting," said Robert Cheetham, Avencia's CEO. "It is a process that can be easily manipulated to protect incumbents and discourage competitive races. Our goal with this new site is to both educate the public early in the Census 2010 cycle, and to create software tools that will promote a more open, citizen-driven and transparent redistricting process in 2011."

Political geography is at the center of several ongoing projects at Avencia. The white paper analysis of compactness of election districts was made possible by Avencia's Cicero product, a legislative district matching and elected official lookup web API, developed for local governments, unions, businesses, and non-profit political and advocacy organizations to matches citizens with their local, state, and national. Cicero taps a global database of legislative district maps and information about politicians, legislative bodies, and election events. Initially beginning with only a few cities, Avencia has grown the database to include national, state and local legislatures for the United States and several other countries and made an interactive version available to the public.

About Avencia
Avencia is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based geographic analysis and software development firm specializing in the creation of innovative location-based software tools to enhance decision-making processes. Avencia believes these location-based technologies can help promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant communities. For more information, visit www.azavea.com

If you would like more information about Avencia or to schedule an interview with Robert Cheetham, Avencia CEO and President, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 - 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com.

Now in its 11th year, the Inner City 100 provides unmatched original data on the fastest growing inner-city businesses in the U.S. For the 2009 list, over 5,000 nominations were received. The 2009 Inner City 100 winners grew at a compound annual growth rate of 40% and an average rate of 324%between 2003 and 2007. Collectively, the top 100 inner city businesses have employed nearly 17,000 people and created nearly 10,000 new jobs over the past five years. Avencia was ranked 13th according to their 5-year growth rate from 2003 to 2007 of 647%.

Among the top cities represented in the 2009 list, Denver has seven winning companies and Boston, Philadelphia, Oakland, and San Francisco each have four companies. Other Philadelphia companies that made the list include: Amuneal Manufacturing Corporation (51), Stroll (62), and Perryman Building and Construction Services (94).

"It is a tremendous privilege to be part of this list of thriving companies. Our firm was founded on the idea that location-based technologies can help promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant communities. So we feel proud and honored that our work and contributions are being recognized. We see our urban location as a competitive advantage with assets that include access to public transit, relatively short commutes for our staff, a major airport hub, a richly diverse cultural environment, strong academic institutions and a reasonably priced real estate market. We look forward to continuing to make a difference in Philadelphia's communities and around the country." -- Robert Cheetham, CEO and President of Avencia.

The list is intended to demonstrate the idea that doing business in an inner city area holds a distinct competitive advantage. ICIC has been studying the economic condition of the largest 100 American cities for more than a decade and is working to revitalize inner cities across the country by promoting entrepreneurship.

"We are delighted to celebrate businesses like Avencia that are playing a critical role to revitalize distressed urban communities throughout America," said Michael Porter, founder and CEO of ICIC. "By creating jobs, income, and wealth for local residents, these high-growth businesses are vivid proof that the most effective way to address economic inequality in America is to equip every community to prosper in the market system."

The 2009 Inner City 100 winners will be featured in the spring issue of BusinessWeek SmallBiz magazine

The Cicero team's most recent upgrades to the web service and database include: faster map generation, the addition of several new city council districts (Orlando, FL; Atlantic City, NJ; Tulsa, OK; Berkley, CA), foreign countries' legislatures, and non-legislative districts like School Districts and Watersheds. These additions coincide with an increased public interest in issues around Open Government, Redistricting 2010, the lack of online local legislative information nation-wide, and a general push by online media outlets, like The New York Times' recently released district and news lookup -- 'Represent' -- to enable information to be browsed based on an individual's political districts.

Several organizations and agencies are already using the Cicero API. Their uses range from political advocacy, arts advocacy, grassroots campaigns, open government campaigns, campaign contribution analyses, gerrymandering analyses, district matching, publishing Election Day results, and Business-to-Government services. For instance The Oregonian, serving the Portland, OR region, has been offering their online readers more innovative ways to access the news that affects them. On November 4, 2008, the day of the 2008 national elections, The Oregonian used the Cicero API to provide their readers with the ability to match their address to live tallies of votes for key political races in the legislative districts in which their address was located, in order to get election results more focused, local, and geographically relevant.

With Redistricting 2010 just around the corner, it is likely that tools like Cicero will become increasingly important. The Cicero team is preparing by constantly adding and updating data in its database as well as expanding the number of legislative districts they support. Their progress can now even be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CiceroAPI
The free CiceroLive can be found at: http://www.azavea.com/Cicero/LiveSample.aspx

Hatef Yamini joins Azavea as Marketing Manager with over 16 years of sales and marketing experience. He will contribute to both the online and offline efforts to communicate the value of Azavea’s services and products (including the production of several new Azavea product websites including DecisionTree®, a set of web-based planning and prioritization tools; Kaleidocade™ , a web-based software program that displays maps, charts, tables, statistics and reports for aggregated, geographic indicators; and Sajara® Azavea’s geographic asset management tool). Most recently, Hatef was employed as a Business Development Manager at Care2. In his spare time, Hatef enjoys photography, the outdoors, the performing arts and involvement in the NetImpact and NetSquared communities-and his lucky goldfish.

Kenneth Shepard joins Azavea as Software Developer on our Law Enforcement team. He previously worked in the financial services world, where he designed and developed several applications used for the automated electronic trading of various financial instruments. Several of the projects on which he will be working are the Philadelphia Police Department’s Public CrimeMap application; the HunchLab™ software system designed to identify and warn relevant authorities about changes and aberrations in the patterns of geographic events (such as crime); and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Firearms Analysis System. He has recently moved to Philadelphia from Connecticut, and is having fun exploring the radically different environment. He enjoys yoga, cooking, snowboarding, and music.

Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based geospatial software design and development company, has partnered with MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, to generate an extensive series of maps for MAPLight.org’s ground-breaking ‘Remote Control’ report that illuminates the connection between money, geography and politics. The maps clearly show the geographic origin, down to Congressional district of in-district and out-of-district campaign contributions (from 2005-2007) to all members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The study found that U.S. House members raised 79% of campaign contributions from outside their voters’ districts and that 91 members raised 90% or more from out-of-district. Of the top 20 zip codes contributing to U.S. House members, 15 are in the Washington DC metropolitan area. In other words, legislators raised about 4 out of every 5 dollars in campaign funds from outside of where their constituents live.

To come to this conclusion, MAPLight.org used campaign contribution data that was compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and is based on reports that candidates and contributors are required to file with the Federal Elections Commission.  Avencia then geocoded the street address of each contributor, assigning it specific geographic coordinates, which were then used to determine the House district in which it originated.  MAPLight.org examined contributions to 421 House members: all House members who were currently serving as of October 15, 2008, excluding House members who were elected or appointed after November 2006, members who lost primaries prior to June 1, 2008 and members from the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. 

Utilizing a combination of ESRI’s ArcMap ModelBuilder technology and custom software, Avencia created a set of tools to quickly generate over 400 maps --- a process that, if performed manually, would likely have taken several weeks  -- that illustrate the study.  These maps use graduated symbols to illuminate the relative amounts of money received from each House district in comparison to the contributions received from the legislator’s home district. To read more about the MAPLight.org study outcomes, visit the MAPLight.org website.

In this current election cycle, Avencia has consulted on several high-profile elections and voter anlaysis projects with a variety of organizations with a focus on state and local elections.  Cicero, Avencia's legislative district boundary and elected official web API, matches constituent locations with  their local, state, and national representatives by tapping into a extensive database of voting district maps and information about politicians, legislative bodies, and election events. In 2006 Avencia released a study of gerrymandering in the United States, showing that Philadelphia topped in Gerrymandering practices. Furthermore, to help grassroots campaigns hit the ground running, Avencia has also developed tools to quickly generate hundreds of canvassing maps that pinpoint likely voters and supervoters in each precinct. Their DecisionTree web-based geographic planning and prioritization tool is also used to build a prototype Elections and Advocacy application to enable campaigns to prioritize canvassing and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts based on a selection of over 30 weighted electoral indicators including voting history, demographic data, and civic participation. Avencia is also helping congressional campaigns improve fund-raising efforts by analyzing donor patterns and demographics as well as using innovative Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) tools to predict election outcomes based on a range of variables.  Finally, on November 4, Avencia will continue its work with the Committee of Seventy, one of the oldest non-partisan political watchdog groups in the U.S., tracking election-day incidents on a real-time interactive web application that displays a map of election incidents as they are reported.

Andrew Jennings joins Avencia as a Software Developer. He will be working on the systems administration team and providing quality assurance and software testing for several Avencia projects. Andrew spent five years at PENN Medicine’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations, where he rolled out a telecommuting program, helped implement an Active Directory infrastructure, and developed databases to assist the fundraising staff. He is currently finishing his Master of Computer and Information Technology degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reed Lauber, Software Developer, joins Avencia with over six years of experience building web-based applications. Reed is working with the ‘Land Records’ team on projects including the Property Conveyance Fraud Tracking application Avencia built for the Philadelphia Department of Records to track mortgage and deed frauds; ParcelExplorer, which enables the public to quickly and efficiently get vital parcel records information including scanned versions of the paper-based registry maps on any property in Philadelphia; and the Unified Land Records System (ULRS), which enables City departments across Philadelphia to use standardized geo-referenced data. Before joining Avencia he recently worked on a series of products for college Student Employment offices to help students find jobs and record their time worked.

Tamara Manik-Perlman, joins Avencia as a GIS Intern and will be working on Cicero™, Avencia’s Web API elected official lookup, and Kaleidocade™, a web-based software program that displays maps, charts, tables, statistics and reports for aggregated, geographic indicators that enables the US Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to provide stronger support and services to communities. She is currently finishing her Master’s in Geography at Temple University, where her research interests are focused on the geography of immigrant health and the changing relationship between government and the nonprofit sector. As a freelance GIS consultant, she recently worked on a project in which she mapped data from the Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia hotline and analyzed the relationship between caller needs, program locations, and target neighborhoods.

Sean McGinnis, Project Manager, will be working on several projects at Avencia, focusinginitially on the HunchLab™ software system designed to identify and warn relevantauthorities about changes and aberrations in the patterns of geographic events (such ascrime) - funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research(SBIR) grant - and the ‘Land Records’ team projects. He most recently worked at CivilSolutions where he was a Project Manager/Senior GIS Specialist. While there he wasresponsible for designing and developing business processes for specific geospatialapplications and designing, implementing, and managing enterprise GIS stacks for public,private, and nonprofit organizations.

The difficulty in searching and retrieving scanned maps in any Digital Asset Management tool arises from the fact that such assets are not based on point locations.  While a photo can be found at a particular address, a map covers a geographical area rather than a single location per se.  Sajara stores both the extent of the scanned map (a.k.a. asset) and its center point.  As a user performs a search at an address or neighborhood, the new system uses the scanned maps’ extents to determine if they intersect with the search window.  Sajara then places a visual marker for each scanned map’s center point, indicating to the user that assets are available in the search window.  If an asset’s center point is not within the search window, it appears at the edge of the search window in order to suggest its peripheral location.  This enables assets to be returned in search results even if only a portion of the scanned map intersects the search window. 



The digital maps in Sajara are fully searchable using the same criteria available for other assets -- address, keyword, time, topic, neighborhood, and map navigation.  For increased efficiency and ease-of-use, each search returns both point-based results such as photographs, videos or documents and map results on separate tabs. 

The enhanced user experience in the new version of Sajara is also made possible through the use of OpenLayers and Ext JS.  OpenLayers is an open source software toolkit that enables 'slippy maps' to be embedded in any web application and allows communication with most standards-complaint web map services such as ESRI’s ArcIMS, ArcGIS Server, and GeoServer, as well as other sources such as GoogleMaps, YahooMaps, and Microsoft Virtual Earth.  A second open source framework, Ext JS, offers customizable website pieces known as widgets that allow for greater ease in website design.  The result for users is a more streamlined system with robust search capabilities, and potential for a variety of future functions. 

“Sajara is evolving every single month.  Users are our best focus group.  Thanks to their ongoing feedback we have been able to continuously improve the software, implement new features, and create stronger search capabilities.  The strength of Avencia’s business model is that we both build custom software and create targeted solutions like Sajara, so our clients are constantly generating new ideas that can be incorporated into our software” – Rachel Cheetham-Richard, Vice President, Avencia.

Sajara is ideal for organizations, businesses, and agencies maintaining extensive asset collections that need to be searched geographically by the public or staff members located anywhere in the world. Such organizations include:  archives, museums, heritage tourism organizations, historical societies, municipalities, real estate companies, environmental agencies, and the restaurant/ tourism industry.

The system can be fully customized and skinned to reflect the brand of each organization. One Sajara implementation is at the Philadelphia Department of Records (DoR) PhillyHistory.org (www.phillyhistory.org), which has enabled the public to access tens of thousands of historic photos that had been essentially inaccessible and unsearchable for decades. Today, PhillyHistory.org houses more than 75,000 of the estimated 2 million photos at the Philadelphia City Archives, and, with this latest release, now includes more than 5,000 historical maps.

“I am impressed by the continual upgrades to your site!  Each month I am noticing new features, a smoother interface, and seemingly quicker response time.” – PhillyHistory.org user

HunchLab was inspired by a prototype Crime Spike Detector that Avencia developed to help the Philadelphia Police Department identify when and where unusual increases in crime are occurring.  The Crime Spike Detector, which has been in operation since June 2005, uses a spatial statistics algorithm developed in conjunction with Dr. Tony Smith (University of Pennsylvania) to compare current crime to historical crime across the city.  Each night this “data mining” service checks for spikes in different types of crime.  Unusual increases result in an email being sent to the relevant district captain.  The email details the severity of the spike and links to an online report with maps, charts and tables, supporting analysis of the result.

As part of their daily activities, police officers often formulate hunches based on observations and other sources of information.  Unfortunately, police officers spend much of their day responding to new incidents so there is very little time left over for collecting the data needed to develop hunches.  Large amounts of data about crime events are already available in electronic form, but the data usually exists in disparate systems that are difficult to integrate.  HunchLab applies the techniques and statistics developed for the Crime Spike Detector to enable the generation of ‘hunches’ about the relationship between different data sets.

“The Crime Spike Detector software has already proven its value in Philadelphia, where it is used to rapidly identify geographic clusters that might otherwise not be apparent.  With HunchLab, we hope to build on this success to create a powerful pattern detection and alerting system for a broad range of markets,” says Robert Cheetham, President and founder of Avencia.

Although HunchLab is being developed to assist with detection of geographic changes in crime pattern, its technology is relevant for any application in which events display geographic changes in distribution, such as disease occurrence, consumer buying patterns, and real estate sales.

“Since 2004, Avencia has completed several highly successful software projects and is currently working on a property conveyance fraud application for the Philadelphia Department of Records.  We look forward with anticipation to using the HunchLab software Avencia is creating to more effectively detect patterns in property and mortgage fraud.” – Joan Decker, Commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Records

HunchLab is supported by the Small Business Innovation Research program of the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Engineering, Division of Industrial Innovations and Partnerships, Award Number (IIP-0750507). 

This is the fourth time in two years that Avencia has been awarded an SBIR grant.  Previous awards were SBIR Phase I awards from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Tomorrow, citizens throughout the country will be voting for mayors, city council members, state legislators, governors and judicial candidates.  Our democratic institutions rely on citizens, businesses and other organizations that are willing to communicate needs and opinions to their elected officials. But do most of us know all of our legislators or how to reach them? No. And that’s a problem not only for citizens but also for advocacy groups whose mission is to empower their members to communicate with their elected officials and thereby influence the decision-making process.

Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based GIS company, set out to develop a cost effective and accurate web-based service for citizens, local governments, unions, businesses and non-profit political and advocacy organizations to find their local, state and national elected officials, all in one central place.  The system called Cicero™, simply matches addresses with the elected officials who represent these addresses. It can be used for free to look up single addresses or as a Web API (Application Programming Interface) that enables organizations to add legislator lookup capabilities to any website or software application.

Avencia built Cicero in 2006 to support the advocacy efforts of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. By the fall of that year, they offered national service covering 40 cities, but the services now includes more than 60 major U.S. and Canadian cities as well as legislator contact data for all U.S. state and federal legislative districts. Avencia continues to update Cicero as elections take place, legislators are replaced, and regions go through the process of redistricting, and can add additional locations based on customers’ requests.

"Working with Avencia, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance has moved to the forefront of online advocacy.  The Cicero software quickly matches our advocates to their local legislators -- a groundbreaking application of database technology at the grassroots level."  -- April Williamson, GPCA Advocacy Coordinator

Cicero returns elected officials’ contact information, affiliation(s), website, etc., as well as maps showing their district boundaries.  While other online legislative lookups return state and national at-large elected officials, Cicero uses Geographic Information Systems technology to precisely match addresses with all levels of legislature as well as create district maps. In the next few months, Avencia will release all U.S. school district lookup and Australian legislative districts.

 The backbone of Cicero’s functionality is a geographic database for local, state and national legislative districts.  There is no official repository of spatial data on local districts – Avencia has gradually gathered this data from each city individually, including digitizing the districts manually, when necessary.  Cicero is now the leading source of spatial information on local legislative districts and information about local legislators. 

 Robert Cheetham, Avencia’s CEO and President, is passionate about bringing democratic tools to citizens and is an advocate of local political advocacy groups such as the Committee of 70, Hallwatch, R.E.F.O.R.M Ballot and Philadelphia Forward.  He has engaged Avencia with several pro bono projects for organizations devoted to democracy and civic advocacy.  It is his hope that the Cicero service will grow into a global repository for elected official lookups.  With Canada and the United States as the starting point, and Australia and other countries in the works, Cicero is certainly on its way to becoming just that.   For more information on Cicero web services, visit www.azavea.com/cicero

Why is it is important to care? This increasingly widespread practice is having a serious and pervasive effect on American democracy. The redrawing of district boundaries for partisan advantage reduces the impact of individual voters on the election, resulting in lower voter turnout and less competitive races. The advent and consistently expanding use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has created both new potential for sophisticated gerrymandering and a possible means of implementing unbiased redistricting.

With Election Day just around the corner, Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based GIS company, set out to measure the gerrymandering of local and federal electoral districts across the US. The result of this study is a white paper, released today, ranking the ten most gerrymandered local and federal districts in the country. Click Here to access the white paper.

This analysis was made possible by Avencia’s Cicero™ Elected Official Web Services, developed in 2005 as a cost effective and accurate way for local governments, unions, businesses and non-profit political and advocacy organizations to find their local elected officials. Cicero was designed to enable these groups to empower their citizens and members to engage with local elected officials and thereby influence the outcome of decisions.

The backbone of Cicero’s functionality is a geographic database for local and state legislative districts. There is no official repository of spatial data on local districts – Avencia obtained the local information for each city individually, through local government websites where possible and directly from municipal officials when necessary. Thus Cicero is now the leading source of spatial information on local legislative districts, currently containing comprehensive data for more than 50 of the largest US cities. It was this large collection of data that enabled Avencia to investigate both local and federal gerrymandering on such a wide scale. For more information on Cicero web services, visit www.azavea.com/cicero

Historic photographs of Philadelphia’s buildings, streetscapes, parks,and waterways are now just a click away on a map-based website. The Philadelphia Department of Recordshas over 2 million photographs dating back to 1865. Among these photographs are stunning pictures of shipsarriving at dock, horse-drawn carriages on cobble streets, and the decaying Eastern State Penitentiary,America’s most famous prison. Today, the public can search for over 30,000 of these photographs by location,view the photographs online, and purchase prints to be delivered to their home or office.

The Photo Archives Website is a web-based GIS application which allows the public to search for historic photographs based on location. Users can search for photographs within a certain neighborhood, within a radius of an address, near a particular intersection, or by a place name like City Hall. In addition users can search for photographs during certain years and they can search the descriptions of photographs by keyword. For example, a user might search for a picture of ‘gas lamps’ or they might search for photographs near their own home address. All search results are returned with a map showing building footprints, streets, and the location of photographs in the area. The website was built on ESRI ArcIMS technology by Azavea, Incorporated.

The Department of Records takes photographs of all public works projects, both before and after, as a risk management tool. This business practice has resulted in the accumulation of many thousands of photographs previously unavailable to the public. At the time, their immediate purpose was for city records and liability concerns, but today they are valuable historic artifacts in the cities archives. Now while browsing the website, users can add photographs they want to purchase to their shopping cart. Pictures are then printed by photographers at the Department of Records and sent to the buyer. This e-commerce component of the website will enable the Department of Records to create a revenue stream that supports the upkeep of the project and expands the number of photographs available online. This component was a critical piece of the project, because it helps fund an innovative project in an shrinking City budget.

Azavea, an ESRI Business Partner, created the Photo Archives Website. Azavea is currently engaged in several projects with the Department of Records which leverage the GIS investments at the City of Philadelphia and that give citizens streamlined access to vital city records while creating a revenue stream for the Department of Records.

The CityMaps website has between 5,000 and 6,000 hits per day indicating that it has been a success inproviding Philadelphians with important geographic information in a user-friendly way. Robert Cheetham, President of Azavea, said ‘We are very proud of CityMaps. It was created using sophisticated geographic technology and we are pleased so many Philadelphians use this website everyday.’ CityMaps has been used to provide emergency services information to the City of Philadelphia and Philadelphia residents. In 2003 a snowstorm blocked storm drains and threatened flooding in several neighborhoods. CityMaps users were ableto type in any city address and find storm drain locations near that address.

CityMaps was built using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology from ESRI. Recent upgrades to CityMaps have included transformation from a conventional web-based application to a series of web servicesthat add spatial intelligence to any City of Philadelphia business process. These new services include address validation against a master address database, sophisticated aliasing functionality, geocoding, activity-tracking, map generation and service area location. Azavea worked with the GIS Services Group at the City of Philadelphia to create CityMaps.

Improvements to the application include 5 year trend data, customizable neighborhood reports, interactive charts, and downloadable GIS data. In addition users can export data from the website to use in preparing their own reports, maps, and proposals. Azavea is among the first companies to develop the ability for users to create user-defined neighborhoods. Today visitors to the website can decide the boundaries of their neighborhood, select them from a map, and return user-defined data for the area. This advanced technology was developed by Azavea to meet demands from users that pre-defined neighborhood boundaries don’t always make sense to community based organizations engaged in revitalization efforts.

The Neighborhood Information System is accessed by hundreds of visitors daily indicating its success at reaching community developers, businesses, city employees, and concerned citizens. Robert Cheetham, President of Azavea, said ‘neighborhoodBase is a solution we are excited to deploy in Philadelphia because itgives critical data to so many users engaged in community planning and revitalization. We look forward toworking with other cities to develop similar technologies.’ Marlen Kokaz, GIS Director at the Cartographic Modeling Lab, said that ‘Hundreds of users access neighborhoodBase to get data on their neighborhood that isvital to community-based planning efforts.’

NeighborhoodBase was built using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology from ESRI. Avenciaworks with governments and universities across the country to develop user-friendly web-based mapping applications. Replications of the neighborhoodBase project have occurred in Columbus, Ohio and Palm Springs, Florida. The Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System consistently ranks as on of the top online community data systems in the country.

Read CML's press release here.