Geospatial Technology, Web Mapping and Spatial Services
May 24, 2009 Leave a Comment
The video from our Where 2.0 presentation is available. If you haven’t been following what the GNOCDC is doing down in New Orleans, this is a great introduction. You can download the presentation here.
April 14, 2009 3 Comments
I’ll be presenting at Where 2.0 this year with Denice Ross of the GNOCDC about the work we’ve done with our Repopulation mapper.
“Junk Mail” and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery
There is like 2 more hours of the 25% discount left (hopefully you’ve been paying attention). We should have some cool new stuff to demo and even Matt will be coming to help show off the GNOCDC work. If you’ve never heard GNOCDC talk, you really should take the time to listen because their work in New Orleans is really interesting and who doesn’t need to hear a feel good story about junk mail?
Update (04/16/2009): Looks like there is now a great discount for Where 2.0:
To celebrate Earth Day’s 39 years of existence, we’re offering an unprecedented 39% discount off any Where 2.0 Conference package. Use discount code: whr09erd when registering, and make sure you sign up between now and 11:59 pm PST April 22.
September 1, 2008 1 Comment
I was very pleased to see today that USA Today published part of the GNOCDC Repopulation Map on their website.
GNOCDC Data on USA Today
Seeing this data and the map getting some visibility (plus the link back to the detail map is great) makes all the hard work everyone put into it worth it. At least at this point it appears that Gustov isn’t as bad as Katrina, but remember people were feeling pretty good right after Katrina passed over 3 years ago. We’ll see tonight and tomorrow how everyone did. The GNOCDC staff was able to evacuate safely and are still working at helping people get information about NOLA, Katrina and Gustov.
August 28, 2008 7 Comments
We’ve just rolled out the latest update to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) Repopulation Google Maps application. Thanks to Matt Priour figuring out how to add the Street View imagery to our New Orleans Repopulation Map, you can now not only see where people are coming back to The Crescent City, but the rebuilding efforts from the street level.
Repopulation Indicators for New Orleans
The map is powerful because you can look at the address counts by block between June 2005 and June 2008 and see how many people are returning to New Orleans. Of course you can pan over to the Lower Ninth Ward and see neighborhoods that are struggling to recover, but overall much of the city has recovered substantially. What is unique about this map is the source of the data. Getting accurate counts of the population of New Orleans has been difficult, but as this Wired article mentions, “Junk Mail to the Rescue”. Now the Google Street View imagery has been very good at helping see the reasons why changes have occurred after Katrina. The aerial imagery of New Orleans was taken on March 2006, near the low point of the recovery. If all you ever use to see the recovery of New Orleans is the Google Maps or Google Earth satellite imagery, you are many of the changes that have occurred more than two years since those images were taken. Even the Google Street View imagery is a year old which can distort realities on the ground. The USPS repopulation data is updated monthly so it is actually the most relevant data in this mashup application.
While some areas are still struggling to recover...
...rebuilding in New Orleans continues
What the Valassis data is great at documenting the recovery at a macro level, and the Google Street View data helps you analyze the results on a macro level. Being able to visualize the recovery this way gives you a great appreciation for how much work has been accomplished and how much more there has to be done. Unfortunately there was no “Marshal Plan” for the recovery, but progress has been made and hopefully tools such as this Repopulation Map will help further the rebuilding of New Orleans.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Denice Warren Ross, deputy co-director of the nonprofit Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and Joy Bonaguro on this project. Their vision of how they wanted this data presented to the community was to make it as simple as possible to use. The ability to take data created in ESRI ArcGIS Desktop and serve it from Amazon’s S3 and integrate it with Google’s simple visualization tools (Google Maps and Google Street View) created a map that tells quite a story and is so much more useful than the PDF maps that existed before Katrina.
Also, one thing to keep in mind is August 29th is the 3 year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans. The GNOCDC’s Katrina Index is a great way to see the progress of the recovery of New Orleans, three years later.
Hurricane Gustov continues to head toward the Gulf Coast so everyone please be careful in its path.
August 6, 2008 4 Comments
Yesterday the Lt. Governor of Louisiana, Mitch Landrieu, wrote up why Google Street View is so important to New Orleans and its recovery on the Google Blog.
In this time of recovery and rebuilding, it is important that we share real images of life in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast. As you explore the streets of New Orleans, you will discover a city marked by extremes. You will see some areas spared the worst of Katrina’s fury which have quickly recovered, and you will find other neighborhoods that remain flattened by the floodwaters that broke the levees. You will see that our residents call both FEMA trailers and antebellum mansions home.
I’ve been lucky enough to be involved on a couple projects with the New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC). Their idea is to bring “paper” and PDF maps to the internet so the community (both local and national). Together with Matt Priour (who has done some amazing work with the Google Maps API) we’ve been moving their data from their “classic” pre-Katrina mapping to a more interactive experience. The push is on this month to get more mapping online and the release of the Street View for NOLA should bring more opportunities to both tell the story of the recovery and help those who are living there gain access to city services.
I encourage everyone to download the The New Orleans Index Anniversary Edition: Three Years After Katrina available on the front page of the GNOCDC website. It will help put into perspective the recovery which is still going on 3 years after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. As the Google Street View shows (look at the Lower Ninth Ward for perspective), New Orleans is still fighting hard.
