Overview

• Lab #6 and Problem Set B (database design) due on Tuesday and Thursday following Spring break.
• Comments and demo concerning Lab #6 (
  • East Boston value surface
  • Community Viz
• Introduction to geospatial services: Internet GIS and Web 2.0 approaches to internet GIS as 'intelligent middleware'
• Discussion of Class Project part of semester - beginning Tuesday after Spring Break - IN ROOM 9-251.

Lab #6 Notes: Modeling Housing Value in East Boston

• Demo use of zonal statistics to average lab 5 interpolated housing values over each East Boston block
• Demo visualization of results in ArcScene

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' the 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 model as a sequence of interconnected ArcGIS spatial data processing steps. 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 oingoing 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 this model and has arranged for MIT to have 21 floating licenses to run it. We will experiment with Community Viz using, first, a simple example included in the CommunityViz tutorial, and second, a version of the Boston MetroFuture model that was used during the past couple of years as part of the MetroFuture planning process.

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 C:\CVFiles\Scenario 360 Tutorials.pdf

(2) Read the Your Guide to "Winds of Change" document in the class locker: K:\proj08\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 summarize the inputs and results from 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'. I will illustrate 'Communityville' during the lab and (if the lab machines can actually run Community Viz today!), you can try it as well. BEFORE RUNNING ANY COMMUNITY VIZ MODEL, be sure to copy the entire CVFiles directory tree to a local, writeable sub-directory.

(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 about the analysis you wish to do. Browse to the sub-directory in which you have stored your local copy of CVFiles\Communityville and select it. You will end up with an ArcMap window something like the one below:

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 it on in the View/Toolbars and Tools/Customize Rerun the model after adjusting the assumption about distance from bird nest. Note the reduction in development that is allowed 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 and run the 'msi' installation file in: C:\Program Files\CommunityViz\Scenario 360\ChartFX\ChartFX.msi 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. After running ChartFX, you can restart Communityville.

(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.) On WinAthena PCs, browsing the file system in this manner takes a *long* time. In this case, use the file browser (windows explorer) to find your local copy of the CVanalysis.mxd file within the directory for a CommunityViz model and double-click it to start Community Viz and ArcMap and load that model.

(7) Explore the effects of changing some of the assumptions for water or type of housing. (Beware that some model runs can take 10+ minutes and the MetroFuture model is too large to create and explore using the diagram option. )

Intro to Internet GIS and Geospatial Web Services

For part of the project, we will want to put some interactive maps on the web. For an overview of internet GIS technologies and choices, we use a set of powerpoint slides from the Fall GIS class, 11.520. These slides were originally assembled for an internet GIS workbook developed by Prof. Zhong-Ren Peng (of U. Wisconsin, Milwaukee) and myself (Joe Ferreira) for use in workshops we have taught for the non-profit Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA). The 11.520 version of the slides includes some additions by Prof. Mike Flaxman and is available at: http://mit.edu/11.520/www/lectures/internet_gis08_slides.pdf that introduced internet GIS and geospatial web services. I'll highlight parts of the slides during today's class and you are encouraged to review the rest. We will learn a bit more when the time comes in the project to put some of our results on the web.

Web 2.0 approaches to internet GIS as 'Intelligent Middleware' for customized spatial analyses

As location information becomes embedded in more and more of our information systems, interest in spatial analysis tools and internet GIS has exploded. We will take a quick look at one example application that combines relational database management technology with internet GIS using a service-oriented architecture - in particular, geospatial services - in ways that provide some user customization capability. Suppose we wanted to use internet GIS to allow the location and type of zoning variance requests to be accessed and visualized online. In addition to mapping the zoning variances and showing the attribute table 'as is' we might want to give users the opportunity to customize their spatial analysis and interpretation of the zoning variance patterns. For example, we could let them change the owner names or the categorization of zoning variance requests to identify and group together, say, all 'city owned' property. However, expecting typical users to write SQL queries is unrealistic and allowing them to change the underlying data is problematic. Our Lab #3 and associated lecture (See the readings and lecture notes from Lab #3.) discussed the use of lookup tables and SQL queries to changes and reclassification of the zoning data without changing the master file. If we embed this SQL processing within web services, we can build applications that run in browsers and other desktop software while offering some customization capabilities.

We will take a quick look at one such effort - an ongoing research project led by MIT and involving the Boston metro area regional planning council (MAPC) and other local organizations (with funding from the Brookings Institution) to develop "Intelligent Middleware for Understanding Neighborhood Markets". A diagram of the system is here: umi_diagram_v2_11x17.pdf. We will only have time for a brief discussion and demonstration.

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. On Tuesday, March 31, WE WILL MEET IN ROOM 9-521 and we will discuss class project possibilities with staff from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and, possibly, MassGIS. They will be collaborating with us on the project. For the class project, we will be focusing on one or another of two issues concerning regional assistance to local communities within the urban core. One involves anticipating and planning for the impacts on Somerville of the Green Line extension and the so-called Urban Ring. The second involves estimation of the potential energy efficiency benefits of programs (such as those in the stimulus plan) to improve insullation and electricity consumption in older urban neighborhoods.

For the project, we will have available a number of additional datasets including parcel data for Somerville and new data layers from MassGIS that divide the state into 250x250m grid cells and encode the population and land use characteristics of each cell. We used some of these raster layers for last Spring's project. The project work is still available in the proj08 part of our class locker. In addition, I included a summary of last year's project work in the powerpoints for a talk that I gave last Summer. A PDF-formatted version of that presentation is available here.