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.”

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.

“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

“For example, we might find that two theaters and a community education group all have programs that work to improve student reading skills in one town or neighborhood,” says Cultural Alliance research analyst Nick Crosson. “Knowing this would be the first step in those organizations coordinating their efforts and working together.

From Schmitt:

MPIP is developing the framework for a Regional Activity Analysis by cataloging current pressing social issues and related programming for residents, cultural organizations and social service organizations of Greater Philadelphia. After identifying these areas of concern, MPIP will draw from its extensive list of community level indicators to determine areas within the region where partnerships between arts organizations working on social issues and other organizations are most likely to be successful.

That type of work has become a main focus of MPIP, which relies on foundation funding. Founded in June 2003 by four Temple University faculty with disciplinary backgrounds in geography, political science, and sociology, the project launched with support from the William Penn Foundation. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is currently operating a research project with William Penn Foundation funding.]

Its mission includes helping organizations “think regionally while acting locally” by way of information that can help connect local work to broader patterns and trends. That, Schmitt says, is particularly challenging considering that the 353 municipalities of the Philadelphia area — in nine counties and two states — represent the largest number in a single metropolitan area in the United States.

“I love when someone says, ‘here is this mess of data, can  you do something fun?” says Schmitt, who was an MPIP research assistant from 2003 to 2004 and has been project coordinator since 2006.

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.

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.

On the site, I entered mine and my colleague’s address, our preferred modes of transportation and the amount of time we were willing to travel. I filtered restaurants that are a part of SBN’s network. And low and behold, a cafe neither of us knew: Essene Market & Cafe, on South 4th Street.

I added the restaurant to an itinerary and emailed it to my colleague so he could see the results. His response? “This is amazing,” he wrote back. [The permalink for those results is here]

The consumer-focused web application is impressive, though organizers say its only a pilot with more features to come.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The William Penn Foundation administered a $180,000 grant to NPower, which managed the project with insight from the Sustainable Business Network. Azavea handled development, including valuable in-kind hours as well, organizers say.

In planning the platform, NPower reached out to nearly a dozen stakeholders for feedback and ideas, including Phila Commerce Dept, PIDC, Cultural Alliance, Bicycle Coalition, Penn Future, Electronic Inc., Chariot Solutions, and Select Greater Philadelphia.

Always, the Sustainable Business Network — an entity funded in part by the William Penn Foundation — was the “client” of the project. The goal was to help local storefront businesses better connect with consumers.

“We had an eye toward developing a web app that solved an economic development problem while being consumer-friendly,” SBN Executive Director Leanne Kruger-Braneky said.

Additionally, a priority was to focus on SBN’s network in Philadelphia, which makes up half of its 500 regional businesses, all of which focus on sustainable practices. “When I visit a new place, I’m always seeking a truly unique business with local flair. [CommonSpace] is a way to find businesses with Philly flavor,” Kruger-Braneky said.

As the project was developing, management realized the potential to bring on additional partners. Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe events fit naturally, as the thousands of Fringe events can be cumbersome to find. Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation’s uwishunu arts and entertainment blog, Philly Fun Guide and Yelp were also pulled into the platform for their array of business listings.

Organizers hope to extend to additional content partners as it wraps up its pilot in November. There’s also the possibility for new platform integration, like a mobile application.

And other cities are looking at Philadelphia with envy, said the William Penn Foundation’s Patrick Sherlock, who helped coordinate the project. “When I’ve sent it to people from out of town, they’ve asked, ‘Could I bring this to Charlottesville, Berkeley, New York?’ It’s potentially a nice distinction for Philadelphia.”

For now, the groups are looking for feedback to fix bugs, address concerns, add features, and better manage traffic before a full November launch.

HOW IT WORKS

At first, Azavea had demoed technology that helped businesses find better ways to locate in the Philadelphia region. The firm was able to map businesses and geographically weight factors like demographic composition, household income, and retail traffic and growth. A heat map would then display best-location for an interested business.

But it wasn’t a home run, organizers said. What made more sense — and what had longer-term and wider potential was a consumer-focused approach that could still help businesses find those kinds of opportunities while connecting existing businesses with new customers.

So a team of two to four developers at Azavea, led by project manager Tamara Manik-Perman, began to rethink the process.

“We started from scratch, reusing some existing software frameworks,” she said, which would calculate routes and transit sheds on a map. It showed what restaurants, stores and other businesses were close enough to get to by walking, biking, or utilizing public transportation.

“It was something that fit with the goals of Sustainable Business Network; it emphasized local businesses and underscored the point that what seems to be close to you to in the city isn’t always intuitively accessible.”

The platform is built on OpenStreetMap data — an open source project to map the globe with GIS tools. The map is the foundation of the platform, which also helps directionality calculations (the math expects a bike-riding user is will ride the correct way down a one-way street). CommonSpace also pulls in SEPTA’s bus and rail schedules, and Manik-Perman said that there’s an opportunity in the future to include bike networks, elevation data and more.

Using the open source GraphServer framework, which correlates not only routes, but routes and time, too, the CommonSpace engine prompts a user for how much time he or she is willing to travel. Not just how far.

When a user enters an address, it is geocoded onto the map. Then, using transit and route data, tens of thousands of possible routes from that address are graphed behind-the-scenes. The application then calculates the amount of time it takes to get from the origin address outward. Then, using Adobe Flex, a polygon is mapped over Google Maps to show, in real-time, the “transit shed” of a user — the possible area that someone can get to in a certain amount of time using a particular transporation method.

Finally, using that polygon transit shed, the application filters selections from a handful of third-parties – in this case, the Sustainable Business Network, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philly Fun Guide, GPTMC’s uwishunu arts and entertainment blog,  and Yelp. Each posed a different challenge for interpolating data, whether it was Yelp’s API, SBN’s Salesforce database or uwishunu’s GeoRSS database.

But for a user, it’s all about ease-of-use.

Using the technology, users can not only map their own transit shed to find local businesses, but they’re able to include up to six friends in on the process, as well.

If there are six friends — each living in a different neighborhood — who want to find a restaurant or retail business they each can walk to, CommonSpace parses their addresses like a Venn diagram, finding only the businesses within the combined group’s transit shed.

Users are able to plan an entire night out with the platform’s itinerary feature. One by one, dining, shopping and event locations can be added or deleted from an interactive itinerary, which can be saved for later use and sent to anyone. Directions can even be mapped and printed so no one gets lost.

And though there’s a few bugs — like when the map clears myseriously with a mouse swipe — there are few gripes with this pilot launch.

“We wanted to build a buzzworthy project that would allow you to experience Philadelphia in a different way,” Sherlock said.

Buzzworthy and different, no doubt.

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.
Edited for length and clarity.

Where has the municipal data movement come from and where is it going?

I think the trend has been there for a long time, though perhaps it has been accelerated in the last few years. The cost of doing interesting things with data has dropped considerably, which may be part of the change.

In the mid to late 1990s, some police departments were part of this movement around community policing, not in Philly but other places. This led to a desire of sharing police department data with the public, first in Chicago, San Diego and many smaller towns and then elsewhere.

This I think transformed and went along to begin a movement of increased attention to performance management of municipal departments through data. This happened in New York and Philadelphia as early as 1997. This began in Baltimore as CitiStat and has since spread to other cities, like PhillyStat in Philadelphia. Data-driven performance management created an increased demand of transparency in government operations.

The CitiStat and similar programs really raised the bar in terms of how data should be available. Those data sets are large, but they tend to be easier to manage now, too. They don’t scare us anymore.� Two million records can be put together and organized in a way like never before because of these tools that are now available.

What’s changed in the last few years is a number of things. Google Maps, Bing Maps and similar programs acted as a shot in the arm to make things available in a really specific way and address geocoding. Address geocoding refers to the process of transforming a single address into a longitude and latitude. The cost is getting low enough to round down to zero, making the transformation of a list of addresses into a map far easier.

Will that movement continue?

The Obama administration, with what’s being called its open government, is helpful in continuing this, but many governments have been giving it away for decades. It’s just now we have to tools to do something with it.

Still, things can come and interrupt it, like 9/11. That closed the door on many data sets, some temporarily but many permanent. You can’t, say, walk into the water department today and ask for information on where all their water lines are… But we’re still moving in the general direction of greater transparency and more open access to government data. Pennsylvania’s open records law that went into effect last January really opens the gates, more than I think many realize yet.

What is Avencia’s role in all of this?

Government can keep making data more available to the public, but simply making data feeds public is going to prove problematic. Making data available doesn’t mean you’ve made it useful or easy to interpret. We can get swamped by the avalanche of data, and sometimes without being synthesized that data can be used to make some false or detrimental conclusions.

That’s where I think Avencia fits in, processing the data in someway to make it more useful.

How do you make money?

Our revenue producing business is to build custom software to perform geographic analysis for folks who want a certain question answered, and secondly, we develop projects that can be replicated and sold nationwide. So something like PhillyHistory.org [mapping historical photographs] is now a software solution that can be used by special collections and museums anywhere.

Our work ranges from crime data mining to political advocacy to historical collections, we’ve done that, geography, data and the web being the common thread.

Your company does pro bono work, too. Why?

We don’t advertise. We build our business largely based on relationships. In general people come to us. We have no sales team. People are usually coming to us to solve a problem. So how do we communicate that? It’s a marketing question, and how to extend our network and thirdly how to develop our tools and skills.

We’ve found that we can virtually hang a sign out there, in Philly and nationally, by, one at a time, doing pro-bono work for organizations that could probably never hire us anyway.

What’s an example?

Our current project is with Nature Conservancy. They’ve done climate-change modeling with universities, and everyone wanted to look at sea level change. So, to create spatial models that will look at sea level rise, they are collecting information. Our work with them will be to create a Web site that will enable the public to display the impact of sea level rise based on various atmospheric carbon levels. Out of this experience, this may generate ten ideas on how to improve it. They will then take that concept to potential funders and try to extend it.

Below watch Cheetham present at Ignite Philly in June 2008.

Tell us about Avencia’s 10 percent time.

Ten percent time is there for our technical staff, to give them one day every couple weeks to dig in on something they’re interesting in that pushes their skills forward. Because their client work might be interesting, but not fascinating or it might be fascinating but not pushing their skills.

So after submitting a written proposal with clear deliverables, they get the time to work on a project of their choosing… maybe pro-bono work or something open-source or something else that fits with our mission and can challenge them.

It has PR value and keeps folks motivated, but it also can lead to some real neat stuff. Like Aaron [Ogles]‘s WalkShed project. Will business arise directly out of it? Maybe, but now Aaron can go talk about it and feed a curiosity.

Also, once a quarter, we have an R&D social, which is a chance to do a show and tell and get feedback from folks on those projects.

Why is Avencia in Callowhill and not a leafy suburb?

Yes, we’d save tax money. I’ve testified at council about what this city’s tax structure does to businesses, but I love this city. My wife is from Paris and loves this historic fabric. We don’t own a car, so we’re wealthier because of that. I bicycle and my wife walks everywhere. We have a modest rowhouse, and it’s very pragmatic. We are close to transit and a 10 minute walk to most of our clients. There are lots of wonderful things about basing your company actually inside Philadelphia.

Yes, the tax burden is real, but we save lots of money as individuals, on our house, on not owning a car, on having such great proximity to so many cultural elements and restaurants. It’s a great environment, and we couldn’t be happier anywhere else,

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia�s technology community. See others here.

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.

Tuesday, July 21: Like they do every month, the Philly Ruby User Group will be grabbing some brews and talking Ruby, possibly on Rails. This week they set up shop at T.A. Flannery’s Saloon. While we’ve never been, being a Saloon, we assume that grown men can challenge other men to duels in the street outside. You know, like Hamilton. So bring your knowledge of databases and a revolver. On second thought, leave the revolver at home. 6:00 p.m. Rittenhouse. DETAILS. [view more events]

Wednesday, July 22: Bloblive is described by its creators as “open-mic night for entrepreneurs.” Attendees get a few minutes to stand up in front of attendees and give their best elevator pitch to the room typically eliciting advice and support from their peers. Bonus points if you can give your elevator pitch in the form of a short rap song. Bonus points from us anyway. 7:30 p.m. Art Museum Area. RSVP. [view more events]

Thursday, July 23: Philly Mapping and GIS has its monthly “Mappy Hour,” a social gathering for all those interesed in the group’s open source map project. The group is taking a break from mapping University City to kick back a few beers and welcome new members. Just don’t show up late claiming you “couldn’t find the place.” 6:30 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events]

If you have an event that you think we should be listing, email us. We promise that no email falls in to the contact form netherworld.

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.

Tuesday, June 23: There are two kinds of events held by Philly’s OpenStreetMap group: the drinking kind and the mapping kind. This one is the former as the group is socializing and talking cartography in Center City. If you have a GIS (geographic information systems) itch to scratch, we recommend you show, as they are beginning to plan their next mapping party set for the end of the summer. 6:30 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events]

Wednesday, June 24: If you’re new to the concept of usability testing read Don’t Make Me Think, then head on over to this week’s PhillyCHI meeting where Kyle Soucy will teach you everything the laymen needs to know. Demos will be available as Saucy covers everything from different testing techniques, to making sure you should be testing in the first place. And she would know, Saucy has had clients as large as the pharmaceutical company giant Pfizer and is the former head of PhillyCHI. 6:00 p.m. University City. RSVP. [view more events]

Thursday, June 25: Make it two days of UX in a row at the venerable P’unk Ave for a chat about the book Art and Fear with the UX bookclub. Kind of like Oprah’s book club, but less “Tom Cruise jumping on couches” and more “books about avoiding mission creep in design projects.” If you can’t make it out, or you haven’t read the book, next month’s pick is A Project Guide to UX Design. We expect a report on our desk by Friday. 6:30 p.m. Passyunk Square. RSVP. [view more events]

Thursday June 25: If user experience isn’t your cup of tea, this month’s Philly Tweetup should provide you with a breezy alternative. The city’s Twitterers will be gathering at McGillins, a bar that is easy to miss being tucked away on Drury Lane. We hope the city’s most popular users don’t all show up at once, lest the Center City cell phone towers crumble under the weight of a tweet every 3.4 seconds. 6:30 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events].

Friday, June 26: As any journalist can tell you, Google can shake up entire industries and turn them upside down. Google Book Search has recently been catching heat from the publishing industry and the U.S. Government and Google Scholar has caught the attention of researchers. Affected by both, local librarians and publishers are gathering at Drexel to talk about the search giant’s role in their respective industries with Drexel’s iSchool. No word on whether a Bing session is planned. 9:00 a.m. University City. RSVP. [view more events]

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.

The Philly election data is a sample of what KIF can do — showing off the heavy software for potential buyers. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is using KIF to analyze juvenile delinquency data, and Temple University’s Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project has crunched its own collected social data that was formerly stuck on paper only.

Some of Avencia’s clients keep their data in-house, but others use KIF to put their data into the world, Fretz says.

KIF provides many options for interpreting the data, from visualizing election results on a map which enables users to detect spatial patterns in candidate performance, to using a table or viewed as statistical summaries and compared through ranked lists of results.

Avencia says the tool’s Philly election sample has its own host of values, from lessening the burden on election commissioners to helping grassroot political organizations and campaigns.

The company’s DecisionTree geographic planning and prioritization software has also been used to enable campaigns to prioritize canvassing by using data.