PhillyTreeMap.org: crowdsourced census of Philadelphia’s tree canopy

Map rendering of some 180,000 cataloged trees in Philadelphia, via PhillyTreeMap.org.

Philadelphia is crowdsourcing a census of its trees, and, yes, would you mind helping?

Unveiled on Arbor Day during Philly Tech Week, PhillyTreeMap.org is a wiki-inspired web application that allows users who register free to collaborate with the project partners — City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – to map,  inventory and preserve the Philadelphia urban forest. The project was built by local mapping company Azavea.

Nearly 180,000 are already cataloged, though the species and other core details are missing.With guidance from the site, users can ascertain species type, estimate trunk diameter and height and fill in other specifics that will help the coalition of groups to better ascertain what is lacking and what is working in Philadelphia foliage.

PhillyTreeMap is meant to help Parks & Rec with its 30 percent tree canopy goal outlined in Greenworks Philadelphia by engaging residents around tree planting and stewardship, Azavea Project Manager Deb Boyer said during the Green Tech Showcase unveiling. Currently Philadelphia has an average of roughly 20 percent canopy across the city, though some parts have fuller coverage and other parts have far less.

Funding has not yet supported a mobile interface, which would allow users to more easily update entries while at the tree, Boyer said, but the browser experience is a user friendly one. Team members will offer some project oversight in case of false information, but the hope is for Philadelphians to help with this cause, she added.

According to a press release [PDF]: “Azavea built PhillyTreeMap using open source code contributed by the Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco and plans to collaborate with the group on future urban forestry projects.  The development of PhillyTreeMap was supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.”

How Azavea is helping the Wilma Theater uncover new markets with GIS

A feature on Azavea building tools for the Wilma Theater, and other art organizations, to find trends in their subscriber base, from Directions Magazine. It is not unlike this project from MPIP and the Cultural Alliance.

The Wilma faces many of the challenges common to nonprofit arts organizations nationwide, including the need to attract and retain stakeholders, whether they are patrons, subscribers, volunteers or donors. To that end, the Wilma embarked on a focused analysis of its core audiences in 2005 that would enable it to describe and understand expectations of existing audiences, identify “gaps” in the marketplace where new potential audiences and donors might be found, and apply this knowledge to enhance the experience for all.

via A Geographic Gap Analysis Uncovers New Markets for Nonprofits – Directions Magazine.

Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance to increase collaboration, make beautiful data with Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project

By cross-listing social indicators and staff outreach, a Temple University-housed data shop is going to give the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance a tool to determine areas within this region where partnerships between arts organizations working on social issues and other activist groups are most likely to be successful.

“We tell stories with data and information,’ says Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project coordinator Michelle Schmitt. “This project is a perfect example of that.”

It’s called the “Road Map for Regional Activity Analysis,” and the tool, expected to be completed in the spring, does three main things:

• inventories existing partnerships between arts and activists groups, including various work
• surveys the education and outreach directors of member organizations on their priorities and programs
• documents and maps those results to help show trends for Alliance members

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Switch preview: Josh Marcus on the future of CommonSpace from Azavea

Many in Philadelphia’s technology community already know about CommonSpace. Josh Marcus wants you to know how the online mapping application came to be.

Marcus, 34, the lead developer for the project from Callowhill-based GIS development company Azavea, will be presenting CommonSpace at Switch, the demo event Technically Philly is hosting tomorrow, Wednesday, Oct. 6.

(Admittedly, we’re on shaky editorial ground here — we recently called CommonSpace one of the 10 coolest interactive maps of Philadelphia.)

Marcus expects much of the audience may have at least heard of the tool, which was developed in partnership with nonprofit technology consultant NPower, the Sustainable Business Network and a handful of other partners, including funding from the William Penn Foundation. So he’ll chart the path of why it looks the way it does and seek feedback on where it should go.

“It’s an opportunity for folks to shape a project trying to promote locally-owned Philly businesses and Philly as a great place for a sustainable lifestyle,” Marcus tells Technically Philly. “And we will sweeten the opportunity by announcing four $100 gift certificates to locally-owned Philadelphia restaurants to folks who give us feedback on our site.”

To Marcus, a long-time West Philly resident near Clark Park — “I am in ‘Squirrel Hill’,” he says, “although that’s not an actual neighborhood name I would normally use” — the project is a case study trying to answer two questions.

“Sure, we have cutting edge technology here in Philadelphia, but how do we build compelling applications with it, and how do we use it to promote our social goal of creating an economically and environmentally sustainable Philadelphia?” Marcus says, preparing to hit you with his firm’s new tag line. “And now is the time for next-generation location based services that go beyond simply putting dots on a map.”

Come get inspired by Apostrophe and four other Philly innovators at Switch on October 6th at the Levitt Auditorium. Get your tickets today.

A big thanks to our sponsors: First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures, The University City Science Center,MCD Law Partners, VC Deal Lawyer, The Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Corzo Center for the Creative Arts, and University of the Arts.

New Philly mapping app gives dazzling directions to local businesses

This piece is reported in partnership with PlanPhilly, a news site that covers planning, design and development in the region.

This afternoon, I made last minute plans to meet a colleague to discuss some pressing business. We both had a packed schedule. I’d be biking from University City. He’d be on foot from 5th and South.

Sure, we could go to a staple favorite in Old City, one that’s convenient for him and I both. But what about trying something new? I usually rely on word of mouth, but I had no new ideas. And as for search engine results—where’s the serependipity?

I decided to try CommonSpace — a web application which soft-launched Friday morning — a joint project between Callowhill-based geographic information system firm Azavea, nonprofit tech consultant NPower, the Sustainable Business Network and a handful of other partners, and funded by the William Penn Foundation. [Full Disclosure: PlanPhilly is funded by the William Penn Foundation through PennPraxis and the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.]

The glossy new mapping tool — which helps Philadelphians find under-the-radar businesses and events —is impressive.

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[UPDATED] Friday Q&A: Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Avencia

Cheetham asked to clarify several statements. Substantial edits are demarcated with cross-out text.

Robert Cheetham can’t quite speak Japanese anymore.

In the early 1990s, the founder and CEO of Callowhill-based geographic analysis and software development firm Avencia worked for three years as an international relations coordinator for a small municipality an hour train ride from Kyoto. It was a chance to return to the land of the rising sun after studying there during his undergraduate days at the University of Michigan in his home state.

He returned back to the United States for an Ivy League education, at the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate school of design. Unsure of his future in landscape architecture, his path led him to a class in geographic information systems, which gifted him a career in chasing data.

In 1997, fresh out of Penn, he and another landscape architecture graduate took the natural first step. They were asked to find a way to make sense of the crowd of data the Philadelphia Police Department was collecting.

“For about six months, we were tossed in a room and told to do whatever we wanted with the data so long as it came back looking interesting and allowed conclusions to be made,” Cheetham, 41, says now to Technically Philly.

By spring 1998, a new police commissioner came to town, John Timoney, high on the CompStat movement of a far wonk-ier New York City police department.

“He found our unit, and we were set,” Cheetham says. He helped lay the foundation of the city police department’s data analysis, crime-mapping and internal projection systems. By 2001, after a stop in what is now the city’s division of technology, Cheetham launched Avencia.

After the jump, we talk with Cheetham about the state of municipal government data, the company’s 10 percent time, and why they decided to base operations in Callowhill over the ‘burbs.

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Event highlights for the week of July 20 – July 26, 2009

Philadelphia, you’re a city of routine, and we like that about you.

Even when the sun is shining and thoughts are drifting toward lounging at the Jersey shore, you aren’t afraid to grab a few drinks and stick to your meetup schedule.

Every event on our calendar this week is part of a monthly series, and most involve beer.

On Tuesday, grab a brew with Philly.rb at their pub night. We hear that they specifically hit on people using Ruby puns. And by “hear” we mean “hope.” The next day, IdeaBlob hosts BlobLive, its monthly open mic for entrepreneurs. Step on up and give an elevator pitch to complete strangers.

To close out the week, Philly Mapping and GIS host “Mappy Hour.” Talk cartography and get in on the group’s open source map project at a local watering hole.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Events highlights for the week of June 22 – June 28, 2009

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking, “I wish I could design a map using Twitter that was a good user experience and utilized Google Book Search.”

Well Technically Philly reader, you’re in luck! Our fair city has a diverse slate of events this week that will make your strange hypothetical dream a reality in no time.

Get started after work on Tuesday and join the pun-loving OpenStreetMap enthusiasts over at the Prohibition Tap Room for “Mappy Hour.” Although, you shouldn’t have too much to drink, as it is awfully hard to chart the trails in Fairmount Park when you can’t walk straight.

PhillyCHI (which is not a box score for the upcoming Phillies-Cubs series) is getting together Wednesday to listen to Kyle Soucy, their former chair, talk usability testing. This is the first time in weeks that the group has held an event in city limits, so you best take El out to University City if you have been meaning to catch PhillyCHI in action.

On Thursday, you can either continue the usability theme with the UX Book Club meeting over at P’unk Ave, or you can head to Center City for the June Philly Tweetup.

Round out the week on Friday as University City continues its Google obsession with a meeting about how Google Books and Google Scholar affect librarians. Librarians, whatever you decide, please leave the card catalog alone. That thing is awesome.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Software development firm Avencia releases Philly election data

The primary election for a host of local candidates is being held Tuesday — from district attorney to city controller, municipal judges and others.

On the heels of releasing a new version of a subscription-based district-matching and legislative data API, Callowhill geographic analysis and software development firm Avencia released yesterday a free Web-based tool to search and map Philadelphia’s election results from 1992 to 2008 (click at bottom right to proceed anonymously for preview).

The application runs on Avencia’s Kaleidocade Indicators Framework, which enables users to visualize, interpret, and map large data sets. The “Philadelphia Election Results, 1992-2008″ application, the data set includes more than four million records, like the results of elections held in Philly for all state and national offices for those 16 years, along with the results of the 2007 elections for city offices, both at the precinct and the ward levels.

“This is a very important data set, one that doesn’t exist anywhere out there, so we’d like to expand it, by adding years further in the past and continuing to update it,” says spokeswoman Abby Fretz.

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