Follow-on Proposal

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) has completed a grant with the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research (HUD) on Global Urban Quality: An Analysis of GI Science and Urban Indicators. This grant included sub-awards to five UCGIS universities and an advisory board composed of representatives from the international partners. The deliverables for this grant were: 1) two symposia; 2) development of cooperative efforts between UCGIS participating universities and their international partners; 3) identification of which sub-city urban indicators are available and appropriate to support each university’s application project; and, 4) proof of concept training materials.

This funding was in response to an unsolicited proposal for a three-year project, and was negotiated for a one-year initial grant. The initial completion date was September 30, 2001. UCGIS received a no-cost extension for completion of the work under the one-year initial grant to May 30, 2002. UCGIS has requested funding for a phase-two grant of eighteen months to complete the original three-year project so that it can move from the pilot project to development stage.

The long-term goal of the original three-year proposal was to support activities involving US scientists and developing country affiliated organizations that demonstrate innovative applications of GIS to support local decision-making activities and realize the HABITAT goals of improved quality of life. The first year was devoted to pilot projects that build relationships, identified existing data, determined appropriate application indicators, designed necessary databases, and created pilot training materials. These are important building blocks.

These deliverables are only a foundation for developing successful analytical models and training materials to support planners and public servants interested in using GIS to evaluate and improve urban quality of life. Research needs to continue. Two distinct research areas should be addressed: basic research on optimizing analytical tools to support urban decisions, and design and development of technology and methods web-based training modules.

Basic Research

A major strength of UCGIS institutions is their emphasis on advanced original research in GI Science. The continuing phase of this project would better serve the goals of HUD and others—including HABITAT—by focusing on the intellectual strengths and experiences of UCGIS in the GI Science areas that are needed to advance the HABITAT agenda beyond the findings of the Cities 2001 report. A critical need for urban managers is the development of models and tools to support better decisions about the location of services at the sub-city level, which is not a part of the HABITAT program.

Optimizing spatial analysis methods using existing micro-level indicators to support location analysis would be a primary focus of the next eighteen months. For example, a common urban indicator might measure the geographic accessibility of an urban population to a set of defined urban services. However, these indicators do not tell how far from optimal these services areas are or how much accessibility could be improved by adding additional service locations. Current methodologies rely on descriptive statistics rather than on statistics that measure the gap between current levels of services quality and what could be attained based on geographical need distribution and available resources.

In the next stage, UCGIS would work with HUD and HABITAT to identify a list of urban observatory cities to work cooperatively with UCGIS. Urban observatory projects and some of the five current UCGIS/HUD projects would be identified where such optimal location problems are important to local decision makers, and where all or most, of the requisite data is already collected in a GIS. Statements from the urban areas confirming their interest and the availability of the appropriate indicators would be required. An early meeting in the demonstration area will lead to a written report describing details of the work plan for the next eighteen months.

Training

The goals of the training research would be to:  Evaluate the training materials developed in the first year and to determine their effectiveness and modify them as required  Generalize the training materials so that they can be used for more than one city within the country, with a country-wide system as the overall goal  Sponsor student and faculty exchanges for intense training through summer courses at both participating UCGIS universities and international partners  Involve secondary schools in the partner countries to build career skills  Design new training modules to support the optimized resource allocation models created  Support neighborhood level extension of training.

Development of training modules meets the community outreach goals of HUD, HABITAT and UCGIS. Throughout the first year of the project, good relationships were established between participating universities and their partners. Each has a better idea of the requirements for effective GIS tools. However, without adequate training neither the end-user in cities and universities currently involved nor other city managers and planners will be able to use these tools to optimize decisions to improve quality of life. Internet training will be augmented by intense workshops. The participating universities will also reach out to other cities within the countries represented.

UCGIS member participants

For phase-two, the UCGIS Research Projects Committee would select a total of seven universities. Preference will be given to the existing awardees. Two new universities and 10 new partners would be incorporated into the research.