Steven can plan

I want to have more conversations about transportation equity

My master’s project is all about it. You might have read me talking about it a little here two weeks ago. A then I shot off a post with some key quotes I’m using about the topic in my project.

The purpose of the map is to show the difference in distribution between 2008 and 2009.

This post, though, is all about the graphic above. A lengthy conversation has begun in the comments on the Flickr page. I want more people to get talking about why 2008 might look the way it does, and why 2009 looks the way it does. Perhaps you need a little background on 2009: I made sure to visit the most underserved Wards you see in 2008 and ensure they receive new bike racks in 2009.

A big question is why people in those areas aren’t asking for bike racks. Does no one there ride a bike to the store? Or maybe they do but don’t know how to request a bike rack or know the purpose of one? Maybe they got a bike stolen and need some tips on proper locking.

Those are all questions I want my project to answer – and I’m working hard 20 hours per week to answer them! But I want more questions. I want ideas that point me to look in new directions. If you don’t like my response, tell me.

Bike parking is almost always mentioned in nationwide bike plans as a necessary way to complete the urban bicycling network. Mia Birk, “famous” bicycle planner, and principal at Alta Planning and Design in Portland, Oregon, says that bike parking is part of “the tool kit for successful 
bicycle infrastructure in cities.” Another Portland entity is aware of equity: BikePortland.org.

What’s going on here? Photo by Eric Rogers.

We all woke up this morning to see news that another earthquake has happened in Haiti, near the center of the first one eight days ago.

“The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) employed nearly 400 Haitians in cash-for-work activities to jump start the local economy and facilitate the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”

This post is an update to my previous article about how GIS is used for disaster relief efforts. I recently came across a webpage on Harvard’s China Earthquake Geospatial Research Portal that lists copious, up-to-date, GIS-compatible data from organizations around the world. The portal began in response to the Sichuan, China, earthquake in May 2008.

Visit the Haiti GIS Data Portal now.

For new GIS students, this would be a great starting point for a class final project. The Portal is hosting the datasets as a public service and invites anyone with relevant data to submit it to the site operators for wider dissemination. Data comes from the United Nations, several universities, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the German Center for Air and Space Travel, among others.

“Petty Officer 3rd Class Cameron Croteau, a Damage Controlman aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Oak, carries an injured Haitian girl to an awaiting Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010. Coast Guard and Navy helicopters airlifted injured Haitians to a private hospital in Milot, Haiti. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandyn Hill.”

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are many photos on Flickr when you search for “haiti earthquake.” When I wrote the post on January 14, 2010, there were only about 300 photos, and now there are over 6,900. Only 1,200 have a Creative Commons license, though (both of the photos above have a Creative Commons license). It seems that the United States Military, the United Nations, and major relief organizations are providing the majority of photos. And they’re uploading them fast. The number of photos on Flickr jumped by 50 from when I started this paragraph.

While Geographic Information systems software can definitely produce pretty maps, its power lies in analyzing data and plotting or comparing sensory or observed data to spatial data (like roads or terrain). The earthquake in Haiti rocked the capital city, Port-au-Prince with a shock of magnitude 7.0 on Tuesday, January 12, 2010.

A photo from a United States military flyover shows damage in the Port of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo taken by Petty Officer 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen and uploaded by Chuck Simmins.

There are several applications for GIS to help with earthquake response, and two blog posts that appeared this morning shed light on how.

The first article came from ESRI, the California-based makers of ArcGIS, the most used GIS application. The article linked to a user-built map on their ArcGIS Online service showing on Bing maps where the earthquake and its aftershocks struck (the map sits behind a registration wall). ESRI even has a disaster response team that helps organizations get their response projects off the ground quickly.

Infrastructurist posted the second article, showing some before and after satellite imagery of Haiti, provided by Google and GeoEye.

So what can GIS do? From ESRI’s list, “GIS for Disaster Response“:

• Rapid identification of potential shelter/housing locations (schools, libraries, churches, public buildings) appropriate for supporting affected populations.
• Determine how many tents will be needed based on the location of populations affected by the disaster.
• Analyze areas where large numbers of refugees can establish camps out of harm’s way that are accessible for supply delivery and have access to water and other resources necessary to support large numbers of people.
• Many more examples.

Want more information? Here’s where to get it:

• Haitian rapper, Wyclef Jean, is soliciting donations via text message to Yéle. So far, the program has raised at least $1 million. Before you donate to Yéle, though, read The Smoking Gun’s article about the organization’s “funny money.”
• Boston.com, home of the Boston Globe, has posted a second series of photos. Some are graphic and hidden until you activate them.
• The White House has advice on how Americans can help.
• Various people and relief agencies (like Red Cross, Salvation Army and United Nations) have posted at least 300 photos to Flickr. I noticed a couple were taken with mobile phones, so I’m glad regular people are also uploading what they see.
• If you’re looking for real news about the earthquake, avoid FOX News because it is dedicating too much space on the internet and time on television to covering non-news quips from Pat Robertson and others of his low-class ilk.
• The New York Times published an article on Wednesday about how poor building practices played into the destruction.
• The United States Geological Survey, the government agency that tracks seismic activity worldwide, has a variety of maps and technical information about the Haiti earthquake.

A collection of links and news stories I liked yesterday, Monday, June 4, 2010, the first business day of a new year and new decade. I hope you’ve started on this new year’s resolution.

• Riding The Rails: How $8 Billion in Stimulus Funding for High-Speed rail Could Change the Face of the midwest—or Get Derailed* (Mindful Metropolis – The article presents nothing new, but for novices on the topic, it combines all of the talks, plans, and dollar amounts that have been discussed over the past few years. New to me, though, is feedback from a meeting of train advocates and industry types at the Spertus Institute in October 2009. *Links to Flash version of entire magazine issue. Download accessible PDF, look for page 28.
• Columnist warns of forced porch-sitting, with possible mandatory neighbor interaction (Sprawled Out) – John Michlig takes Milwaukee Sentinel writer to task about shoddy journalism and defends real, walkable neighborhood designs. Also, a mention of a new neighborhood design called “coving.”
• ‘Fewer’ people use fast train (China.org.cn) – The world’s fastest high-speed rail opens in China (Wuhan to Guangzhou); two weeks later there’s subtle criticism of low ridership reports. China.org.cn is interesting; known as “China Internet Information Center” and “published under the auspices of the State Council Information Office and the China International Publishing Group in Beijing.” It’s hard to know what information comes from the government and what doesn’t.
• Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity (New York Times) – The State of New York has joined the State of Michigan’s lawsuit against the State of Illinois to force Illinois to close the waterway connection between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. The states fear that Asian carp will soon invade the Great Lakes and destroy the ecology. The State of Illinois operates eight locks and dams along the Illinois Waterway and Illinois River. See map below (made with Google My Maps).

View Lake Michigan to the Mississippi in a larger map

A bike ride around my dad’s neighborhood.

I got a GPS receiver and logger for Christmas. It’s a GlobalStar DG-100. More on the device later. Basically it records the location of every place it goes. It can even give you live, real time information; so far I’ve got this working in Windows, but not yet in Mac.

The GlobalStar DG-100. Not mine, from roland.

This map shows a bike ride around the neighborhood. I mistakenly set the device to only record points every 5 seconds. Obviously, in a bike, car or train, you can go far in 5 seconds and the route won’t match the road.

I want it mainly to use in automatically geotagging my photos, but I also want to use it to record my bicycling routes to track statistics like distance and speed.