[Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA: IBM Partner

Wed Feb 25 10:21:42 PST 2015

Bob ,
Welcome to the Club! You are now an official Chair!
Which means you will be providing comfortable seating for our audience. ; -)
You not only have an idea, but a plan that is mapped out.
Please take all the leadership you need to push your idea to fruition.
Helena Mitasova and Sasha Stepanov have expressed special interest in putting their hugely relevant expertise into this.
And we are all here to help you achieve that beautifully sustainable idea you have in mind for all of us!
Tell us what you want, tell us what you need, let’s start where you wanted to end up,
with an international cadre collectively working on a common enterprise.
It never works like that, someone is always stuck doing most of the work.
But if we can be specific enough for what we want, get a tomato target in place,
invite criticism and ownership, then who knows, maybe this time the magique will work!
-Patrick

Helena Mitasova

Professor at the Department of Marine,

Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences

and Center for Geospatial Analytics

North Carolina State University

Raleigh, NC 27695-8208

hmitaso at ncsu.edu<mailto:hmitaso at ncsu.edu>

Alexander 'Sasha' Stepanov
astepano at cp.umass.edu<mailto:astepano at cp.umass.edu>

-Patrick
(650) 604-5656 (office)
(650) 269-2788 (cell)

From: Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) [mailto:bob.basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us]
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 9:32 AM
To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); Charles Schweik
Cc: Doreen Boyd; Ingo Simonis; Anthony Beck; Chris Pettit; Gabor Remetey; Stepanov Alexander; Chandola, Varun; Jim Miller (miller at ittc.ku.edu); Giuseppe Conti; MELICK Brandt
Subject: RE: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA: IBM Partner

Hi Patrick,

I have an in here at the City, as a GIS System Developer, and a desire to partner with academia for all the stated reasons.  I believe there are all kinds of opportunities for both sides in this type of partnership.  I have tried locally to get something like started for some number of years, with no luck.  There is desire in the education side, but no one group within a particular school willing to foot the bill so to speak.  Each of the colleges I’ve approached were too fragmented with their respective funding to get something started that went across their respective jurisdictional boundaries.

The thought we had when we put together our Grant app from the non-profit was to try and get something started from the outside, and hopefully hand the process off to the community as a collaboratively run system after the fact.  We want to run a  system for three years in order to get folks hooked on the idea that publishing and sharing data was in general a good thing.

Bobb

From: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX) [mailto:patrick.hogan at nasa.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 10:15 AM
To: Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul); Charles Schweik
Cc: Doreen Boyd; Ingo Simonis; Anthony Beck; Chris Pettit; Gabor Remetey; Stepanov Alexander; Chandola, Varun; Jim Miller (miller at ittc.ku.edu<mailto:miller at ittc.ku.edu>); Giuseppe Conti; MELICK Brandt
Subject: RE: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA: IBM Partner

Bobb,

Massachusetts and Minnesota! Mmmmm, mmmmm good!
And of course rest of academia and municipalities guided by OSGEO.
Sounds most interesting! Lots of keystones for this arch.
Municipalities should be driving the requirements and academia,
the world’s most resourceful and innovative engine, delivering the future.

By way of example, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were university students, they got an NSF grant, guess what their effort is today? We citizens who backed that bet are still looking for our return. The best thing we can do is continue delivering the future, but as open source, so all can benefit and truly challenge the commercial world of value-added to competitively deliver that value.

-Patrick
 650.604.5656 (office)
 650.269.2788 (cell)

From: Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) [mailto:bob.basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us]
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 7:53 AM
To: Charles Schweik; Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX)
Cc: Doreen Boyd; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>; Ingo Simonis; Anthony Beck; Chris Pettit; Gabor Remetey; Stepanov Alexander; Chandola, Varun; Jim Miller (miller at ittc.ku.edu<mailto:miller at ittc.ku.edu>); Giuseppe Conti; MELICK Brandt
Subject: RE: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA: IBM Partner

All,

We (SharedGeo, a local non-profit I work with) wrote a NSF grant request a couple of years ago that made it to the final round before being rejected.  They suggested at the time that we find a academic partner and  reapply, but we’ve been busy with other projects since.  I think it might have a high level of relevance here.  It dealt with the same types of Open data and Sharing of data issues and design philosophies were based ideas originating from a regional community (not just Municipalities) with similar principals defined.  SharedGeo would be very interested in partnering in the effort if that is the consensus.  The grant we wrote had a large component of it focused on the implementation of services, both hardware and software, and another big component being outreach focused.

Charlie, let me know if you are interested in taking a look at it.  I can dig up a copy.

Bobb

From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> [mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Charles Schweik
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 8:09 AM
To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX)
Cc: Doreen Boyd; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>; Ingo Simonis; Anthony Beck; Chris Pettit; Gabor Remetey; Stepanov Alexander; Chandola, Varun; Jim Miller (miller at ittc.ku.edu<mailto:miller at ittc.ku.edu>); Giuseppe Conti; MELICK Brandt
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA: IBM Partner

Ok, if we as a community want to try and go for an US NSF Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant, I think this is the NSF program we should target: Geography and Spatial Sciences Program (GSS).

See [1].

It lists RCN as one of its funding streams. It's listed goals are here:

·        To promote scientific research in geography and the spatial sciences that advances theory and basic understanding and that addresses the challenges facing society.
·        To promote the integration of geographers and spatial scientists in interdisciplinary research.
·        To promote education and training of geographers and spatial scientists in order to enhance the capabilities of current and future generations of researchers.
·        To promote the development and use of scientific methods and tools for geographic research.

Does anyone on this list know any of the program officers listed in the contacts of the link below [1]?

What I'd like to do is try and outline a draft letter to them sketching out our RCN ideas and seeing if they would be interested in entertaining an RCN proposal from us. If I take the lead on this and work on an outline (I have time right now), can I solicit some help on some sections? I think I can write about our network and bring in theoretical on the idea of global "commons based peer production" networks, which is what we are. I can sketch out the educational idea I have proposed related to flipped, service learning, team based learning and blended learning with the network idea and some kind of coordinated webinars, recorded lectures, etc. While I am a public administration faculty with GIS and IT background, what I don't have is experience on a set of core application areas or state of the art on Urban Science/City Analytics. I'll need help on that.

Are you all game if I forge ahead on trying to outline this?

While I'm a big proponent of openness, I don't think we want to use a wiki page for a grant proposal, though. I'd need to know who wants to be closely associated with this (contact me off-line) and we try to use Google Docs or something that can be more controlled.

Also, if anyone knows of another grant opportunity outside of the US that we can use the same ideas or link, let me know.

Cheers,

Charlie

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505034

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX) <patrick.hogan at nasa.gov<mailto:patrick.hogan at nasa.gov>> wrote:
Charlie and Sasha ,
We should involve everyone we can. This is probably the area, due to the common interest and identical needs, where the most ‘collective’ activity can take place. Additionally, it’s also the area where the positive results of this collective effort can be significantly experienced. Cities are in dire need. Here is just one example of a very wealthy city but in utter disrepair and needing to be a lot smarter about managing infrastructure. They are not alone.
http://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/

We should involve universities and essentially have them take the lead with us supporting ‘them’ however we can.

Master programme in Sustainable Cities at Aalborg University Copenhagen http://sustainablecities.aau.dk/

Climate Adaptation Guidebook for Municipalities
http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/documents/10180/14193/FY13-0119+Climate+Adaptation+toolkit+lowres.pdf

Recommend we establish a formal letter that describes our purpose, includes our signatures and is extended to organizations and institutions offering our support as well as inviting them to participate.

-Patrick
 650.604.5656<tel:650.604.5656> (office)
 650.269.2788<tel:650.269.2788> (cell)

From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> [mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>] On Behalf Of Charles Schweik
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 2:36 AM
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: Stepanov Alexander; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>; Ingo Simonis; Anthony Beck; Chris Pettit; Gabor Remetey; Doreen Boyd; Chandola, Varun; Jim Miller (miller at ittc.ku.edu<mailto:miller at ittc.ku.edu>); Giuseppe Conti; MELICK Brandt
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Urban Science - City Analytics - NEW IDEA

One other thing on this thread folks - my colleague Sasha reminded me of this:
Should we consider trying  to partner with IBM (always a supporter of open source I think)?

See http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_cities/overview/

Cheers,
Charlie

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Charles Schweik <cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu<mailto:cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu>> wrote:
Hi Urban Science working group:

1) Great to see the edits/additions on the wiki [1]. Keep them coming.

2) I have an idea. (sorry for a long note, but I don't want to add this to the wiki, at least yet).

I have added my colleague, Alexander 'Sasha' Stepanov to this email thread. He is the 'GIS Architect' for our university campus. Sasha and I have had an idea of offering a different type of advanced GIS course for students that follows new pedagogies: "flipped" (uses online open access information read outside of class), team-based learning, and service learning.

Sasha's enterprise GIS for our campus is amazing. He has been emphasizing to me that it is a "small city" and there is an opportunity for students to do projects working with him on different "city management" GIS applications. For example, last semester we had two students do campus GIS projects on Tree Management, and also Recycling Management. (this was using ESRI technologies).

What I am wondering is how many others on this thread are at universities that are using GIS to manage their campuses.

If there are some, I wonder about the idea of an educational grant proposal to support our network that would:

1) Establish "City Analytics" systems to support our campuses;
2) Develop parallel "flipped, Team Based learning, Service learning" classes run at the same time/semester across a network of campuses;
3) Include some webinars that all our classes would attend;
4) Build together a MOOC with open educational material that we would all use and share in these courses.
5) We could test the learning of people just doing the MOOC versus the MOOC and service learning as a research question.

Reactions? Anyone working at a university campus who would be interested in these ideas?

Charlie

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_UrbanScience_CityAnalytics

--
Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dept of Environmental Conservation and Center for Public Policy and Administration

Personal website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik
Publications: http://works.bepress.com/charles_schweik/

Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012) - see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545

--------------------------------------------
Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es

--
Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dept of Environmental Conservation and Center for Public Policy and Administration

Personal website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik
Publications: http://works.bepress.com/charles_schweik/

Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012) - see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545

--------------------------------------------
Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
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