[OSGeo-Discuss] The Open Indicators Consortium

[Raj Singh]

The Open Indicators Consortium

The University of Massachusetts Lowell announces the formation of a
national open source consortium to develop a new system for
integrating and visualizing neighborhood, municipal, and regional data

Project Leaders:
Georges Grinstein and William Mass, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Charlotte Kahn, The Boston Foundation

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has announced the formation of  
a national consortium dedicated to improving access to important data  
about communities and regions.  This consortium will develop a new  
open source software system for the analysis and visualization of  
economic, social, and environmental indicators at the neighborhood,  
municipal, county and regional levels.  The effort will be led by  
faculty members Georges Grinstein (Professor of Computer Science and  
Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research)  
and William Mass (Director of the Center for Industrial  
Competitiveness) and by Charlotte Kahn, Director of the Boston  
Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation.  Consortium members  
include organizations from Greater Atlanta, Georgia; Metro Boston,  
Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Chicago, Illinois and  
New Haven, Connecticut.  Additional partners will be announced soon.
Up to ten founding members, each of which will contribute funding to  
the joint initiative, will guide development based on local  
preferences in order to achieve universally useful functionality.   
They will test progress through quarterly releases of the program,  
with the goal of establishing fully operational websites in each  
participating region by the end of 2009. In the second year of the  
program, additional features will be added, such as online networking,  
collaboration within and across regions, personalization, and user  
history.
Once complete, the open source program will be made fully available,  
with constraints only on commercial use.  Users of the new software  
will likely include researchers, planners, educators, the media, and  
the general public.
The founding members see many opportunities to use this new tool for  
complex data integration and visualization.  Michael Rich, Director of  
the Emory University’s Office of University-Community Partnerships and  
Associate Professor of Political Science, is a lead data and  
technology partner for Atlanta’s Neighborhood Nexus.  Rich is excited  
about “creating a tool that will make information about neighborhoods  
and communities available to a wide audience in an easily accessible  
format and the tremendous potential for comparative research on cities  
and neighborhoods to inform policy and evaluation.”
Joshua Connolly, Manager of Data Analysis for Arizona Indicators at  
Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, looks  
forward to “filling the gap in public knowledge” so that “public  
policy decided through voter initiatives can be based on an accurate  
understanding of conditions in Arizona rather than on partisan  
positions.”
David Norris, Community Data Manager at Community Research Partners in  
Columbus Ohio, sees “the opportunity to benchmark across communities  
in ways we never could before in Central Ohio and, in the process,  
save a lot of money.”
Holly St Clair, Director of Data Services at the Boston-based  
Metropolitan Area Planning Council, notes that “efficiency and  
sustainability are key challenges facing the nation, but data centers  
are tightening their belts. This tool is a sophisticated yet cost- 
effective way to help us see how our communities are doing, despite  
the downturn.”
The product of this effort will be a high-performance, highly  
interactive software system that supports the analysis of local and  
regional datasets through a variety of visualizations such as scatter  
plots, bar or pie charts, line graphs, and multi-layered maps.  The  
software will allow multiple visualizations to be displayed  
simultaneously, and action on any visualization will automatically  
update the others allowing for quick comparisons. The system’s mapping  
capability will cover a variety of boundaries and jurisdictions,  
including parcels, census tracts, voting precincts, zip codes,  
neighborhoods, municipalities, legislative districts, and watersheds.
Simplicity, ease of use, and security are key goals for the software.   
Different configurations will be tailored for novice, intermediate and  
advanced users, and individual users will be able to further  
personalize the site.  The system will be “browser-based,” requiring  
no special software and facilitating collaboration by simultaneous  
users at different sites for joint development, technical assistance,  
and training.  It will also support voice and chat functions to enable  
collaboration.
The University of Massachusetts Lowell brings a wealth of talent to  
the task ahead, including graduate students in the departments of  
Computer Science and Regional Economic and Social Development as well  
as staff at Institute for Visualization and Perception Research and  
the Center for Industrial Competitiveness.  This team has diverse and  
deep strengths in interdisciplinary collaboration, project management,  
programming, and data base management support.  Key expertise will be  
provided by Computer Science faculty Cindy Chen and Jesse Heines, post- 
doctoral fellow Jianping Zhou, project manager Mary Beth Smrtic and  
project architect Alex Baumann.  Several computer companies are  
participating as advisors to the project.
The Consortium’s commitment to open source software and the  
democratization of data will inspire ongoing innovation among a  
growing community of users.  The open source tools being used have  
already attracted large and well-established developer communities and  
are freely available. The Consortium is structured to promote  
university, community, industry, business and public partnerships, and  
to expand current organizational capacities.
William Mass’ presentations for planning communities in New England  
and research on Indicator Projects around the country, made him aware  
of the potential value of new, powerful information visualization and  
mapping software tools for extending these organizations’ reach.  
Georges Grinstein, a leader in the field of information visualization  
and visual analytics, believes that “this community of open source  
practitioners and developers will support innovation regionally,  
nationally and internationally and that the freely available software  
will have great impact on increasing the public’s access to data.” For  
more information contact Grinstein atGrinstein at cs.uml.edu This e-mail  
address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled  
to view it or 978-934-3627 or Mass at William_Mass at uml.edu This e-mail  
address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled  
to view it or 978-934-2721. 
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