UPDATE 20110614
Fareed Zakaria of CNN #GPS and #Google’s Eric Schmidt hold court at Direct Relief International in Santa Barbara and discuss #innovation -
Excellent presentation by Oculus & Azavea specialists on location-time analysis via CrisisMappers -
————- Horizontal Across the Verticals – Enterprise Geospatial Technology Applied to the Emergency Management, Cultural Resources & Environmental Domains
Please join the RICS Southern California Chapter, Geospatial LA, RAND, the Getty Conservation Institute, and HIFLD members for a collaborative event focusing on the synergies (and cost savings in these lean times) of geospatial technologies used in:
1. Homeland Security & Emergency Management
2. Cultural Resources and Facilities
3. Environmental Considerations
Date: Friday, October 22, 2010
Time: 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Location: RAND Corporation 1700 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90401
Please RSVP with our host, Mr. Adrian Overton – overton@rand.org / 310.393.0411 ext. 7138 – and note that there is no cost for this event.
Agenda:
Introductions by RICS, RAND, and Geospatial LA
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Dissemination of Research Products in the Application Marketplace: A proposal for turning knowledge into discoverable tools
Daniella Meeker – Associate Information Scientist. RAND Corporation
Bio – Daniella Meeker received her PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from California Institute of Technology in 2005. She completed a fellowship in Health Economics at RAND in 2009 and joined RAND’s staff as an Associate Information Scientist. Her current research includes health economics, machine learning, and social network analysis.
Project Overview – The results of research of the type conducted at RAND are typically disseminated through print media. However, many valuable research products can be developed as services and packaged as “apps” to enhance decision support, analytic methods, and data visualization. I will highlight some examples from GIS and other domains that are active areas of research at RAND. Finally, for discussion I will bring up some of the challenges of translational research and propose some protocols and practices to address some of these challenges.
Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) – Jordan: An Open Source GIS-based Archeological Site Inventory and Management System
David Myers – Project Specialist, Field Projects Department. Getty Conservation Institute
Bio – David Myers is a project specialist in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Field Projects department where he has worked since 2001. He now works on projects developing the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) for Jordan and Iraq, preparing a site management and conservation plan for the Valley of the Queens on the West Bank of Luxor, Egypt, on research on applying consensus building and conflict resolution methods to cultural heritage place management, and on building capacity for conservation and management of rock art in the countries of the Southern African subcontinent. He received an M.S in historic preservation in 2000 and an advanced certificate in architectural conservation and site management in 2001, both from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1991 to 1995 he served as a legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Project Overview – The emergence of new digital technologies and rapidly spreading internet access together present possibilities for widely accessible, Web-based national information systems for the inventory and management of heritage sites. The increasing development of Open Source software tools further provides that such systems may be purpose-built, adaptable and extensible to the needs of specific situations, and that once developed they can be available to heritage authorities, which are often poorly funded, without associated licensing or upgrade fees. Working collaboratively with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA), the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and World Monuments Fund (WMF) have developed MEGA-Jordan as a tool to inventory, monitor, and help conserve and manage the thousands of archaeological sites in Jordan. MEGA-Jordan allows DoA officials to address needs such as infrastructure and development control and the development of national and regional research strategies. MEGA-Jordan is Web-based, bilingual (Arabic-English), and was developed using state-of-the art and Open Source information technologies. It was designed to be modular and easily extensible, allowing it to evolve with the DoA’s changing institutional requirements and to be adapted by other countries. Work on an Iraq version of MEGA is slated to begin after the Jordanian system is fully deployed, which will include the system’s expansion to contain data for the protection of historic buildings. The GCI and WMF plan to subsequently make the system available for adaptation by other countries.
Building a Sustainable Enterprise GIS at the Port of Los Angeles
Daniel Elroi – President. NorthSouth GIS LLC
Bio – A GIS consultant with 20 years of GIS implementation and software development, Daniel has been consulting in GIS in the US since 1990. Daniel studied Geography, Cartography, and GIS at UCLA in the early days of commercial GIS, and began his career with one of the first ESRI sites, the City of Los Angeles. He then spent eight years honing his skills as a consultant and software developer in mining, local government, nuclear waste disposal, real estate, pipelines, and engineering, before setting his own course in business in 1998. Since then he has worked with over 100 clients, developing custom software applications and integrating GIS into various clients’ business processes.
Project Overview – The Port of Los Angeles – the largest container port in the US – hired NorthSouth GIS to develop an enterprise-wide GIS. The resulting server infrastructure, geodatabase design and content, and software applications are very solid and based on best-practices. However, it is the way in which the “soft” side of the implementation – people, group dynamics, training, user buy-in, and management participation – that make this implementation stand out and will ultimately determine the project’s long-term success and its sustainability. The presentation will focus on the means taken to accomplish the “soft” side of this successful implementation.
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Participatory Sensing and Named Data Networking
Jeff Burke – Director, Technology Research Initiatives. UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television & Area Lead, Participatory Sensing. NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
Bio – Jeff Burke is Director of Technology Research Initiatives for the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT), Adjunct Assistant Professor, and Executive Director of REMAP, a joint research program of TFT and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. REMAP’s core projects investigate the interrelationships among community, culture, and technology and how embedded and mobile computing can support community development and cultural expression. He also helped to form what is now the Participatory Sensing area at the National Science Foundation Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).
Project Overview – This talk will briefly introduce Participatory Sensing and Named Data Networking, and discuss their intersection and relevance to the geospatial community. Participatory Sensing seeks to enable everyone to use their mobile phones, along with cloud-based computing resources, to safely collect, analyze and share data about things they care about most. Named Data Networking (NDN), also known as Content Centric Networking, replaces the so-called “thin waist” of the internet, the IP protocol, with a name-based protocol that enables communication to be routed based on content names rather than host addresses. It also provides intrinsic content caching and per-packet data signatures. NDN is the subject of a recent National Science Foundation “Future Internet Architecture” award to a group led by UCLA and PARC, in which Participatory Sensing is a driver application for the NDN architecture.
All NGO et al partners can join the US DoD SOUTHCOM APAN (All Partners Access Network) to collaborate and get the latest GEOINT and logistics updates – an excellent resource. http://www.southcom.mil/AppsSC/APAN.php
Video
Empivot and sustainable housing & shelter that could help inform the rebuilding of Haiti
WHO (OMS) Health Action for Haiti Earthquake Survivors (in French)
“Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.”
To better coordinate regional enterprise GIS data efforts with the advanced analysis research occuring at RAND and amongst our allied academic, private, and DHS S&T partners, this will be a valuable forum and please RSVP with Adrian Overton (see below) – joel@nordicgeospatial.com
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RAND Corp GIS Brown-bag Seminar Announcement
Enterprise GIS (e-GIS) for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Public Safety : Approaches for integrating geo-analytic decision support applications and tools into the enterprise
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Location: The RAND Corporation Headquarters at 1776 Main St., Santa Monica 90401 – rm 1226
Time: 11:00AM-1:30PM PST
Please RSVP to overton@rand.org – non-RAND guests will need to be on our visitors list to be admitted
Come learn about several recent innovative RAND geoweb 2.0 applications in the areas of Emergency Health Preparedness planning and Homeland Security, and discuss and learn about local initiatives and approaches to deploying GIS data and services to support geospatial decision making for public safety and homeland security.
Featured presenters and highlights:
Jeanne Ringel, Sr. Economist at RAND
Mapping Vulnerable Populations – A RAND Health project recently released a demonstration geoweb application to support local health departments in identifying where vulnerable populations may reside in their jurisdictions for strategic planning for public health emergency preparedness. The application uses demographic data from the 2000 census to create high-impact visualizations of where vulnerable populations are located within a jurisdiction. To assist HDs in using the geographic information to improve planning, the tool also contains information on exemplary practices that have been used in other jurisdictions to better address the needs of vulnerable populations in public health preparedness planning and response activities.
Paul Sorensen, Sr. Operations Researcher at RAND
POD Location planning tool – A RAND Health project recently completed work on a demonstration application to support local health departments in evaluating and identifying optimal sites for distribution of oral vaccines from the national stockpile for emergency bio-terrorist attacks or pandemic outbreaks of disease. The application assists decision makers in optimally locating multiple points of distribution or PODs.
Ryan Keefe, PRGS Fellow at RAND
Thomas J. Sullivan, Senior Information Scientist at RAND
RAND Actionable Hotspot Methodology – Presenters will demonstrate a RAND developed space-time “hotspot” decision support application to assist tactical planners in identifying and prioritizing “hotspot” locations for resource allocation/deployment. The application was originally based on the challenges of tactical commanders in Iraq interested in reducing the risk of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), but has applicability to homeland security and law enforcement as well.
Mark Greninger, Geospatial Information Officer, County of Los Angeles
The presentation will describe how LA County is deploying web 2.0 technologies in the form of blogs and GeoRSS feeds, to improve the accuracy and expand deployment of geospatial data in the county. Specifically, this presentation will show how the county is moving to a single entry point for the maintenance of county facilities and services.
Joyce Edson, Police Applications Division Manager for the City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency
The presentation will discuss how the City of Los Angeles is developing a GIS data repository and how ITA is addressing the challenge of providing geospatial information and tools to City and Regional Public Safety users by using web GIS to collaborate with service and data providers; such as the USGS.Shakecast application and it’s integration with existing public safety applications.
Paul Hardwick, Regional GIS Project Manager for Homeland Security Regional Technology Center at the SDSU Research Foundation
The San Diego region has embarked on the planning phase for the San Diego Regional Emergency Geospatial Information Network (SDREGIN). SDREGIN will serve as a regional geospatial data source and connect local jurisdictions, public agencies, and utilities to the regional geospatial database through a network that serves the needs of public safety personnel both on a day-to-day basis and during catastrophic emergency events.
