Masachusetts Institute of Technology - Department of Urban Studies and Planning

11.521
Spatial Database Management and Advanced Geographic Information Systems
11.523
Fundamentals of Spatial Database Management

Metro Boston Modeling, PostGIS, QGIS, and Geospatial Services

22 March, 2018

Administrative

Overview

 

Discussion of Tuesday's Test

Review parts of our snowed out Lab #6: http://mit.edu/11.521/labs/lab6

Illustrate use of QGIS and PostGIS

select z.casenumber, c.stcntytr
  from gis.lonlat5m z, gis.msa5_tr90m c
 where st_intersects(z.geom,c.geom)
 order by casenumber 
-- limit 10;
-- half-second to do all 1520 variances
select z.casenumber, c.stcntytr, "H061A001" medhval
  from gis.lonlat5m z, gis.msa5_tr90m c, bzoning.msa5_tr90_data d
 where st_intersects(z.geom,c.geom)
   and c.stcntytr=d."STCNTYTR"
 order by casenumber;
select z.casenumber, c.pid_long 
  from gis.lonlat5m z, gis.ebos_parcels05f c
 where st_intersects(z.geom,st_transform(c.geom,26986))
 order by casenumber;
-- gis.ebos_parcels05f is in Mass SP NAD83-feet
-- takes 2 minutes with no spatial indices

    
    

    
Modeling Metropolitan Growth and (Re)Development

    

      
As indicated in Lab #6, 'Scenario 360' is part of a modeling tool
        called Community Viz that is a substantial 'extension' to ArcGIS and
        that was orginally financed by the Orton Foundation. Community Viz is a
        little like Model Builder. That is, you use it to develop a sequence of
        ArcGIS spatial data processing steps that model changes to the built
        environment and urban activities. However, Community Viz goes further
        than Model Builder in providing analytic formulas for modeling complex
        interactions and wizards and tools to help in building and running the
        model. Community Viz also focuses on scenario modeling - that is,
        playing out the long term consequences of growth and development in the
        face of various constraints and interactions regarding land use,
        accessibility, environmental constraints, and the like.

      
The ongoing MetroFuture regional planning effort for metro Boston has
        been using Community Viz to model Boston devleopment out to 2030. The
        Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is the organization that has
        built the MetroFuture model. We have their model but cannot currently
        run Community Viz on Windows-7 with ArcGIS 10. 

      
Here are the 6 steps from Lab #6 regarding our exploration of Community
        Viz using the tutorials and the MetroFuture model for Boston. 

      

        
(1) Skim the scenario 360 tutorial in the 'proj11' portion of the
          class locker: "K:\proj11\metrofuture\Scenario_360_Tutorials.pdf"

        
(2) Read the Your Guide to "Winds of Change"
          document in the class locker: K:\proj11\metrofuture\explore_scenario_woc.pdf
             This document explains one of the four scenarios that
          MetroFuture modeled using Community Viz. The 'indicators' and
          'drivers' on the last few pages are the assumptions and key
          relationships in the Community Viz model that explain the results of
          modeling the effects of a 'winds of change' strategy for metro Boston
          growth out to 2030.

        
(3) * Since the MetroFuture model is quite complex, start first with
          one of the Community Viz 'tutorial examples'. BEFORE RUNNING ANY
          COMMUNITY VIZ MODEL, be sure to copy the entire CVFiles directory tree
          to a local, writeable drive. 

        
(4) * Start Community Viz - Scenario 360 from the
          Start/Community-Viz/Scenario-360 menu on the WinAthena PC. Once ArcGIS
          comes up, you will see a new toolbar for scenario-360 and a dialog box
          asking you to choose the saved analysis you would like to open. Browse
          to your local copy
          of Communityville and select it. You will end up with an ArcMap window
          something like the one below: 

        
Screen shot of Community Viz startup with Communityville example.

        
Note the new icons that appear in the panel on the left. In order to
          see the Scenario 360 toolbar, you may need to turn on th Scenario 360
          toolbar in the View/Toolbars and Tools/Customize 

        
The Communityville model calculates and visualizes the buildout that
          would be allowed for a hypothetical subdivision depending upon the
          zoning and environmental constraints that are imposed. Rerun the model
          after adjusting the assumption about minimum distance from the 'bird
          nest'. Note the reduction in allowed development that is computed and
          displayed as the distance-from-nest assumption is adjusted. Explore
          the diagram and formulas that codify the spatial and mathematical
          relationships. 

        
(5) * If Start/Community-Viz is missing, you may need to reboot the
          machine. Also, after Communityville has been opened inside of ArcGIS,
          you may see a message indicating that ChartFX is not working. In this
          case, exit from ArcGIS since CommunityViz will not work. The machine
          needs to run an 'msi' installation file in: C:\Program
          Files\CommunityViz\Scenario 360\ChartFX\ChartFX.msi Unfortunately, you
          do not have permission to run this file (otherwise you could just
          double-click on the file to run it.) Depending upon the order of
          consideration of bootup files, these charting tools occasionally do
          not work. If you reboot the machine, the 'msi' file may get run
          properly during the bootup. After running ChartFX.msi, go back to step
          (4) to restart CommunityViz. 

        
(6) * To run the MetroFuture model, copy the entire
          directory: K:\proj08\CVFiles_metro to a local,
          writeable directory. Then start CommunityViz as before (or start
          ArcGIS, make sure the CommunityViz extension is loaded and viewable,
          and choose scenario-360/analysis to browse to your local
          MetroFuture_BCCS_may2007 location).

        
(7) * Explore the effects of changing some of the assumptions for
          water or type of housing. (Rerunning the model after you have changed
          these assumptions takes some time, but much less than changes in many
          other assumptions.) 

        
* The CommunityViz extension to ArcGIS is not currently installed on
          any CRON machines. These steps are indicated to give you a sense of
          how one runs the model with ArcMap after installing the Community Viz
          software.

      

      
The MetroFuture Community Viz model

      
      
 

      
      
 

      
      
The "Future Urban Mobility" project in Singapore

      
    

    
Intro to Internet GIS and Geospatial Web Services

    
    
Class Project

    

      
 Today's class is the last meeting for the 11.523 portion of the
        semester. The remainder of the semester is the 11.524 portion of the
        class and will be focused on the class project plus a few exercises to
        help us utilize geospatial services. Right after Spring Break, Eric
        Huntley will introduce Leaflet and CartoDB tools for building web
        mapping services using shapefiles from our ArcGIS analyses and a
        'backend' Postgres database.  The remaining weeks of the semester
        will be focused on the class project.  On Tuesday, April 10 in the
        W31-301  computing lab we will discuss class project
        possibilities and begin narrowing our focus.  That week, we will
        discuss class project possibilities with staff from the Metropolitan
        Area Planning Council (MAPC) and other Singapore researchers with whom
        we will be collaborating. For the class project, we will be focusing on
        Boston issues concerning metropolitan growth and community development
        (most likely related to current efforts to examine regional changes in
        vehicle ownership and miles driven) plus some aspect of our ongoing
        'Future Urban Mobility' project in Singapore. 

      
The Boston projects build on the work we have done during the past
        several years to examine (a) the implications of MetroFuture's
        alternative development scenarios for metro Boston, (b) the effect of
        built environment on vehicle miles traveled, (c) travel patterns in the
        recent MassDOT household travel survey and a special survey
        journey-to-school issues for grade schools in Massachusetts, and
        (d) the viability of energy efficiency improvement strategies in
        Cambridge (using electricity and gas meter readings combined with the
        building and assessment data that we have seen in our labs). 

      
The Singapore projects build on current efforts of the 'future urban
        mobility' interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore/MIT Alliance
        for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre. Past projects include
        building a hedonic price model for the effect of amenities and
        accessibility on housing prices, analyzing travel patterns evident in
        the EZLink (tap in / tap out) transit cards, and developing, utilizing
        and evaluating local activity indices for downtown shopping
        districts.  This year, we are likely to focus on analyzing and
        visualizing housing relocation and vehicle ownership patterns predicted
        by the agent-based microsimulation platform (SimMobility) that is under
        development. 

      
For the project, we will have available a number of datasets beyond
        those that we have used in 11.523 exercises. These data include detailed
        parcel, transit, land use and zoning data in both Boston and Singapore;
        multi-year, geocoded estimates of annual mileage for every registered
        private passenger vehicle in Mass; and various household travel surveys,
        taxi and transit fare card transactions, and real estate sales data. We
        continue to use PostgreSQL and also its GIS extensions (PostGIS) that
        can be added to a Postgres installation so that spatial proximity
        questions (like distance from, contained within, etc.) can be included
        in SQL queries. Use of QGIS in place of ArcGIS will also be an options
        for certain project purposes. 

    

    

    

      
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        Created by Joseph Ferreira; last modified:
            21 March 2018 [jf]