CalGIS2016

12:00 Noon-1:00 PM
Garden C 

California GIS Council Working Session - Everyone is welcome!

Facilitator: Mark Greninger, Council Chair

The California GIS Council is the primary organization for GIS professionals to work together to promote the greater understanding and use of GIS across the state of California, and is open to GIS professionals who share an interest in promoting GIS across the state. This working session of the Council will be a brainstorm session focused on developing the Council’s Strategic Plan, focused on the following areas:

1. Planning and Strategy
2. Advisory
3. Collaborative Policy Development
4. California Spatial Data Accuracy
5. Collaboration
6. Communication

Come bring your experience and expertise to help develop strategies and tactics for the Council around these areas.  Everyone is welcome! (Pick up a lunch at one of the hotel outlets and bring it to the meeting. Lunch is not provided.)

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority teamed up with AmigoCloud to create a multimodal open trip planner (OTP) implementation for Santa Clara County, CA.  By injecting large amounts of real time transit data into the trip planner, VTA and AmigoCloud have fundamentally changed how transit trip planning operates.  Focusing on inter-modal trip planning capabilities and real time transit information VTA has provided an innovative experience for existing and potential transit riders.  VTA is able to use 100% of the data collected by the OTP to improve transportation in Santa Clara County.  Providing multi-modal opportunities to the community will improve transport opportunities for all.  The project is based on open source software and its currently available on the VTA website; tripplanner.vta.org

Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways with severe morbidity and mortality in California. It is also an environmental justice concern, as it disproportionately affects poor, communities of color. Asthma attacks are triggered by a variety of environmental exposures but analyzing the relative importance of each exposure is difficult using traditional epidemiological methods. Our research uses a portable GIS sensor to track location and time of rescue asthma inhaler use.
For each inhaler use, we retrospectively estimate environmental exposures, including (1) climate, (2) traffic-related air pollution, (3) ambient air pollution, (4) land use type, and (5) proximal pesticide exposure. We use this data to build an ecologic niche model to map the relative contributions of each environmental layer in predicting the likelihood of asthma inhaler use, and create a predictive model of future asthma attack risk.

For local and municipal government GIS was the technology that was suppose to integrate or unify the information and data within the walls of government agencies to streamline business processes, provide business knowledge to all staff in an organization and reduce the need for redundancy. GIS on every desk was the mantra in the 1980s.  Well either developer found this too hard to do or it just wasn’t cost effective or both. 

Throwing a web-based application up and giving staff access to basic mapping functions and minimal integration with the rest of the organization was just a shortcut but did not solve the real issues within the walls of a government or utility based organization. Typically GIS in local and municipal government and the those utility agencies that serve them usually ends up as a map making endeavor or specialty applications for work orders, permit processing and the like. These applications usually require GIS software and some other vendor to work with. 

A good example of this would be GIS and document integration. This usually requires 2 vendors (a GIS vendor and a document manager vendor) then these applications pulled together to provide a point and shoot and document retrieval application. 

But these applications are again specific and tend not to be a framework for unification of information required for business process improvement.  One usually finds basic assessor information with rudimentary document attachments to be the focus of a general web based applications intended for all staff. 

The Enterprise Data Window uses the mobile model for deployment, cost and application maintenance to provide all of the advantages of a web/mobile application while maintaining the robust powerful nature of a solid client side application. You can see the difference in this respect between Google earth where the client is downloaded to the workstation and Google map a browser based application.

As GIS applications permeate our social workspace, an increasing number of public issues affect, and are affected by, what we do.  GIS professionals have specific expertise that can inform important public policy, and we are also impacted by public policies propounded by others.  Let's review several examples with the intention of getting more involved in the issues we know and care about:

• Assuring access to our governments' geospatial data
• Calculating ROI for GIS data to account the benefits of geospatial applications
• Monitoring legal definitions of the professional boundary defining the work of Surveyors and GIS Professionals
• Using NSRS for geodetic control of geodatabase themes
• Preserving GPS infrastructure
• Responding to proposed Federal legislation that concerns mapping agencies' procurement policies
• Balancing divergent concerns about the use of UAS (drones) for mapping

• Advocating for Addresses to become the eighth FGDC Framework Theme

Presenter: Bruce Joffe, GISP, Principal, GIS Consultants, Piedmont, CA

In order to provide for their families, farmers in Northeastern Thailand need to cultivate their farms throughout the year, even during the dry season, when they do not have enough water to irrigate their crops. However, most farmers leave their land fallow during the dry season because they do not have adequate information on which dry-season crops to grow where, how to grow them, and where to market them. Without adequate information and guidelines for dry season farming, farmers in Northeastern Thailand will continue to leave their farms fallow. This research creates a decision support tool that helps farmers identify the best-suited dry season crops for their specific areas, and also provides them with information on the best practices for growing the identified crops, economics, and marketing information for the crops. GIS and remote sensing technologies were and will be employed to develop the application. Two experts who evaluated the algorithm that the decision support tool is based on indicated that the algorithm is useful and logical. However, the experts recommended that an accuracy test to validate the decision support tool be undertaken before it is introduced to Thai farmers.

Presenters:
Watanyoo Suksangiam, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
J. Kimani, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA

One of the primary goal of the RVETS pilot project is to map and publicize all American war memorial sites using data collected over many years and curated by disabled American Veteran and RVETS member Brian Rooney.  

Interactive Web maps will enable broad dissemination of the memorial site locations, their descriptions and other details such as their physical condition. A team of volunteers armed with mobile data collectors will support Mr. Rooney in his mission by collecting updated information about existing sites and new sites. Information about all of these sites will be carefully curated and become available to the general public through interactive and engaging web maps with photos, descriptions, links, directions and other information.  

With cutting-edge web and mobile GIS technology, the enthusiastic cooperation of valuable partners and contributors, and the technical support and resources provided by Burns & McDonnell, Mr. Rooney will be able to get closer to realizing his long-held dream and personal mission to increase the visibility of all memorial sites in memory of all those who have served and sacrificed for their country.

The United States electric power infrastructure is in an urgent need of renovation. The recent incidents of major power outages in the city of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Simi Valley, San Diego, and San Francisco have drawn attention to the unreliability of California's electric power system. President Obama discusses America aging power infrastructure and California Public Utilities Commission calls for a comprehensive review of the causes of the recent power outages. This report explores Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their aim to identify a correlation between the power plants age and the power outages in the state of California. Utilizing ArcMap Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) modeling tool, data analysis shows no correlation between the power outages and the infrastructure age.

Presenters
Vivian Sultan, MBA, MSIS, CPSM, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, CA
Ahmed Alzahrani, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
Hind Bitar, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
Norah Alharbi, PhD Student, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA

Social media is the de facto communication apparatus to disseminate one’s self revelations. These profound disclosures often contain double-talk, peculiar insights, or contextual information about real-world concepts. Natural language processing is regularly used to uncover both obvious and latent knowledge claims within disclosures submitted amid such a complex environment. For example, a bystander may have first-hand knowledge of criminal incident, and using social media publish critical information about it. A geographic information system (GIS) is capable of large-scale point data analysis and possesses methods that enable processing, evaluation, and automatic spatial visualization of its dataset. Such artifacts when fused with traditional environmental criminology theory and social media erect guidelines, tools, and models for substantive construction and evaluation of GIS crime analysis solutions. On condition that a social media stream is timely and correctly processed, corrective action can be taken.

The construction of a natural language processing social media annotation pipe, to identify latent indicators extracted from a social media corpus, was an integral part of societal mishap prediction. Spatial visualizations and regression analyses were used to describe and evaluate project artifacts. As a result, social media corpora was operationalized; and subsequently used as a proxy for a traditional environmental criminology risk layer in construction of a social media GIS crime analysis artifact. Using such multi-domain collaboration, the artifact was able to increase the predictive crime incident outcome with an overall R-squared increase of 7.26%. This result is the state-of-the-art; there are no other results to compare it to.

Presenter: Anthony Corso, Ph.D., M.B.A., Assistant Professor, California Baptist University
Riverside, CA

GIS professionals are key to streamlining rapid damage assessments. I will demonstrate and show real world examples of the newest geospatial technology for conducting rapid damage assessments. Any local, county, state or federal GIS professional and emergency manager can utilize these tools following a disaster. I will demonstrate off the shelf and open source GIS platforms that can be used to drastically increase response time and decrease recovery times for communities. I will show advantages and disadvantages around using the three imagery collection techniques to conducting PDAs: satellite, aerial, and ground. As well as show cost saving methods for aerial and ground imagery collection, the preferred methods. Lastly, I will present a quick outline on how the use of the TCPED (Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation and Processing) process can help organize and streamline the technology and PDA process.

Presenter: Cory MacVie, Product Manager, Fulcrum Mobile Solutions, St. Petersburg, FL

Blazing fast Streaming 3D Maps elevate projects to a game changer!  Accurate, yet light, smart 3D buildings with multiple attributes plus surrounding terrains make planning, design, analysis, and communication easier and more cost-effective.  Add them to an open source globe and voila! cloud magic with Streaming 3D Maps!  These Streaming 3D Maps work in all environments including desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.  Streaming 3D Maps are the cutting-edge way to leverage your project in  government and AEC markets with interactive data that is compatible with major software platforms and delivered in most 3D file formats.  Make 2016 the year your city or project goes from flat 2D to state-of-the-art Streaming 3D Models.

Presenter: Kevin DeVito, Founder, Executive Director CEO, CyberCity 3D, Inc., El Segundo, CA

The demand for airborne LIDAR elevation data and derived products across diverse business sectors has grown significantly over the past two decades. To meet this increasing need in a cost-effective manner, sensor developers, data collectors, and production sources are always looking to improve the efficiency of their operations. 

Originally developed for US military applications but becoming increasingly available in the non-defense market, LIDAR systems built with Geiger Mode Avalanche Photodiode (GmAPD) detectors provide significant efficiency gains for airborne mapping when compared with currently available linear mode sensors. Because GmAPD detectors are physically compact and single photon sensitive, they can be packaged into large arrays and powered by readily available lasers with sub-nanosecond pulse widths. These two factors enable the development of GmAPD LIDAR systems that can collect very high density airborne data (i.e. 10 20+ points/m2) at very high instantaneous area of coverage rates (greater than 1000 km2/hour). This increase in collection rates does come at the cost of much noisier point cloud data and alternative collection strategies.

This presentation will describe the processes and technologies developed over the past 15 years for efficiently and cost effectively collecting and producing high density point clouds and derived products using GmAPD LIDAR systems. Topics to be covered include: 1) GmAPD sensing fundamentals, 2) collection strategies for GmAPD collection, and 3) efficient, high volume data production systems. Examples of high density GmAPD products will also be shown.

Presenter: Anthony Palizzi, Major Accounts Manager, Harris Corporation, Highlands Ranch, CO

he presentation would focus on specific GIS integration projects with StreetSaver Pavement Management software. Presentation content will be pulled from work with the cities of Compton, Bell, and St. Helena.

Topics will cover the following:

• GIS setup, coordination, and products required at the beginning phases of a new pavement management survey collection. 
• ntegrating the pavement survey information back to your GIS. 
• Map products and data overlays to assist with the Street Improvement Project development.
• Developing map solutions to help communicate the newly developed Street Improvement Projects.

Presenters:
Mark Dumford, GIS Manager, Interwest Consulting Group, Elk Grove, CA
Brad Findlay, GIS Analyst, Interwest Consulting Group, Elk Grove, CA