Implementing GIS to tackle local government issue - Part 3

Part 2: http://daneshatlas.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/implementing-gis-to-tackle-local_13.html

Steps Required Making the Product:

     1) All the datasets are compiled and stored in a geodatabase. The metadata and the projections used in these datasets are checked to ensure consistency. Functions needed are data inputs into geodatabases (network, feature datasets)

         2) Since the product (Current Accessibility of City of Yarra) involves various maps, analysis on datasets are done separately to simplify the operations. For example, GIS analyst focusing on clinical accessibility would use datasets on population characteristics, transportation network and clinical locations. The analysis would involve network analyst and geocoding addresss. The GIS analysts may consider imposing index values for accessibility.

     3) Once the maps are done, the GIS analyst(s) should ensure the maps produce meet good quality cartographic standards. These maps initially produced in hardcopy format are submitted to town planning officers to assess the current accessibility.

     4) A web-enabled GIS is created meantime integrating the spatial data used in the project. GIS analyst(s) and/or cartographic technicians will design the website and the necessary characteristics of the online maps. This website is accessed to city council’s intranet. At the same time, list of existing facilities and the total targeted population (income disadvantaged) served are produced in documents (hardcopy formats).

Frequency of Use:

Function	Number
Dataset Input	1
Geocoding addresses	4
Creating Network dataset	2
Population characteristics input	4
Spatial Analysis (Closest Facility)	2
Create ArcGIS reports	1
Cartographic Editing	1
Printing	1
Display in website	1
Updating	4
List/other documents production	16

Product	Annual Production
Maps (Hardcopy)	80
Lists/Documents generated	80
Website	1

Logical Linkages:

Logical Linkages	Examples
List to graphic entity	Street address to community service facilities
Map to map	Topological network of the map overlayed on residential maps Facility map showing locations to community service facilities
Attribute to attribute	Population characteristics to census collection districts Type of clinic to clinic locations

  

 Error Tolerances:

Error Type	Error	Tolerance
Referential	Incorrect facility attributes Incorrect facility names	5% 5%
Topological	Disconnect in street networks Disconnect in public transportation network	0% 0%
Relative	Incorrect locations of public transport stops (wrong side of street)	+ 5m
Absolute	Incorrect street address	+2.5m

Wait Tolerance: Low (10-60seconds) and Medium (1-5 minutes). These tolerance categories are justified for the products as there are not urgent in production and they have limited dynamics.

Response Tolerance: For hardcopy maps, the time required from start to finish is 8 hours minimum. This has taken into consideration of the GIS officer has 1 year working experience in GIS and the analysis involved in producing the map. If the product was requested for the first time, it will be 16-24 GIS hours work due to datasets cleaning and other associated works. For the website, it will be additional 8 hours minimum, in addition of 2 hours of integration of GIS data into the online system. The updates to the online GIS system roughly consume maximum of 3 hours.

Current Costs:

      1) GIS dataset costs

Datasets	Cost
Address	$756
Administrative Boundaries	$1584
Planning	$223
Property	$893
Transport	$112
Total	$3568

      2)   Labour, other related and Total costs

	Hours	Annual Cost for making	Total Costs (AUD)
Labour (hardcopy)	60	$192*(1 product)	$15360
Labour (website)	22	$506	$506
Miscellaneous			$200
Datasets			$3568
Total			~$19700

           *-Excluding website cost. Hourly rate is minimum $23 per hour

Benefit Analysis:

      1) Financial savings category: With implementation of GIS in this strategy, it would eliminate costs required to hire consultants.

      2) Direct benefits to organisation: With GIS, the town planners are able to make informed decisions of providing facilities. They too would be able to estimate appropriate costs involved through the output maps.

c    3) External benefits: The general public will be well served indirectly through GIS implementation. The future facility and affordable housing will be well placed to serve the disadvantage population. The state government is able to access these maps or web-GIS to assess the achievements of city council.

Sign off: The head of SPU will be signing off the IPDs and benefit analysis statements. Finally, every sample hardcopy product must require signature of the head to demonstrate his/her satisfaction of the product.

Part 4: http://daneshatlas.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/implementing-gis-to-tackle-local_8447.html

Implementing GIS to tackle local government issue- Part 2

Part 1:http://daneshatlas.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/implementing-gis-to-tackle-local.html

Information Products required

Title: Current Accessibility of the City

Name of the Department: Council Strategic Planning Unit (SPU)

Name of the person in Department: Danesh Prakash Chacko

Summary: The decision-makers at the council will utilize the product for current assessment of fulfilment of housing strategy. Since this product covers various topics for the strategy, council will be accessing to hardcopy maps and a web GIS application. The web application will shows user-customized maps showing areas of affordable rent and relative accessibility to various community facility services. The hardcopy maps produced will be showing the accessibility of residential areas (affordable) to clinics, child care centres, public transportation, disability services and others. They are produced on demand either through the web application or requests to GIS teams. Finally, there will be lists of community services facilities such as bulk-billing clinics with their details (address, contact number, number of personnel).

Map Requirements: Below here is sketch hardcopy map

Figure 1: Sample Map of Walking Accessibility to Clinics

List /Report Requirements: There will be tables of community service facilities divided into different categories (i.e. clinics). Below here would be example of clinic list

Name	Address	Contact (Telephone)	Practitioner Name	Service Type	Waiting Time	Bulk-Billing	Opening Hours
Medical One	297 Church St 3121 Richmond VIC	0394282649	Andrew Blecher	GP	N/A	Yes	9 a.m. -5 p.m.

Document, Image & Schematics Requirements: Aerial Image is required as base image for the web GIS application. This is because it allows novice or new user/comers to city website orient themselves in the council area.

Part 3: http://daneshatlas.blogspot.com/2013/11/implementing-gis-to-tackle-local_16.html

Implementing GIS to tackle local government issue- Part 1

Last year, when I was still studying my course, all of students of GIS course was required to write a proposal how to set-up a GIS to tackle a selected issue. This is A HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSAL and no WAY reflect Council GIS policy and matters. I have segmented in my report in couple of parts for the ease of reading:

Implementing GIS in Social & Affordable Housing Strategy in City of Yarra

The strategic issue

City of Yarra includes Abbotsford, Burnley, Clifton Hill, Collingwood, Cremorne, Fitzroy, North Carlton, Princes Hill, Richmond, sections of Alphington and Fairfield suburbs (City of Yarra, 2012). Home to 79 500 people, only 1% of the population whose incomes below AU$37 000 year can afford housing (City of Yarra, 2012).

In November 2011, City Council adopted the Social & Affordable Housing Strategy. The strategy is in line with Council Plan 2009-2013 in which the council strides to make Yarra liveable and sustainable. There are 4 objectives in this housing strategy of which GIS system can assist to fulfil one of them (Accessible & Appropriate Service) (City of Yarra, 2011). Yarra is home to largest population in Victoria residing in public housing and most of disadvantaged populace reside there (City of Yarra, 2009).

Social and affordable housing involves accessibility to various community services. Accessibility is related to spatial positioning of housing and services available. GIS planning would assist in the council in:
a) identifying the correlation between poor living standards and accessibility to services
b) identify the areas needed to have more resources allocated in services
c) Monitor changes in the planning execution and implementation

The issues that will be dealt in the strategy are the accessibility of community services (child care centres) and health services (health centres). The council strategy has made clear that barriers to these services needs to be identified (City of Yarra, 2011).

Information Products required

I have identified 6 possible information products which can be divided into 3 categories. The first category (NEEDS) includes Current and Projected Needs in City of Yarra products. The Current Needs of City of Yarra Product detail the population characteristics (e.g. age, ethnicity, income) in spatial format. The Projected Needs of City of Yarra Product projects the population characteristics in the next 5 to10 years. The second category (CONTEXT) includes Current and Projected Contexts of the City Products.

The Current Accessibility of City Product identifies the transportation network (public and private), residential areas and community services. The Projected Accessibility of City Product details the aforementioned characteristics of the city in the next 5 to 10 years. The final category (SITE SUITABILITY) includes the Current and Projected Suitable Sites of the City Products. This category is the outcome from the relationship deduced from the earlier two categories (Needs and Context). The Current Suitable Sites Product identifies the suitable location of community service facilities. The Projected Suitable Sites Product takes consideration the changing population characteristics and context of facilities. This Product will display the suitable location for community service facilities in the coming 5 to 10 years.

I shall be discussing Current Context of City of Yarra Product. I chose this product because data is readily available in terms of datasets and facilities. It would be easier to understand the current situation in comparison to the projected scenarios. Finally, this product is underpinning the connection between the needs of the city and facility site selection. Below here is the Information Product Description (IPD) for the nominated product:

Part 2: http://daneshatlas.blogspot.com/2013/11/implementing-gis-to-tackle-local_13.html

Selangor Housing Type and Price

View Larger Map
(Press the View Large Map to view more layers)

For this month, I have used ArcGIS Online to display the housing prices in Selangor for 2nd Quarter 2013. At beginning of October, I asked my friends what map should I produce. They requested:
1. Housing Prices
2. Topography
3. Crimes
4. Location of free-Wifi Spots in Penang

I chose Housing Prices (Median Price) and narrow down for Selangor. I sourced the Data from Jabatan Penilaian dan Perkhidmatan Harta (JPPH)- Property Valuation and Service Department,  http://napic.jpph.gov.my/portal/portal/eps/Online+Services/Publication/PublicationPortletWindow?uri=/Publication_EN/PSRMain_EN.htm&action=2
For Population Density, it came from Klang Municipal Council and Malaysian Statistics Department,  http://www.mpklang.gov.my/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=b9bbc4fb-2f76-4231-b6ed-58fa36eab0a4&groupId=283929 
For Spatial Data, from DIVA GIS and was modified to show the modern district boundaries (with some inaccuracies).

Housing Stock Type

What I am Really Interested is how the users feel toggling between multiple layers of the online map. It is advisable that you should turn one layer at one time. I think it is challenging for me to host so much data in online GIS as the audience would be largely from non-GIS background.

-I, Danesh Chacko, disclaim from myself from inaccuracies arises from the data, portrayal of the data or any misuse of the data for other purposes. The maps above should be strictly for general reference purposes or personal-use.

Basics of Map Projection

Following up from my recent educational video on geodesy, we need to understand a map is a 2D representation of a 3D surface. Map projections converts the world into a small sphere and later flattened on plane surface. In that process, distortions happens (Wondering why Greenland is bigger than Africa?- Because of the map projection!). Important fact: There is no such thing as WRONG PROJECTION. It is either good or poor choice of map projection for the map use. Learn more in the video.
Happy Learning!

Representing the Earth's Surface

One of the important principles of mapping is to understand the surface of the Earth. Since the Earth (terrestrial surface) is so complex for mathematics, scientists (i.e. physicists) and geodesists (specialists on Earth representation) came out with different models to represent the Earth. Understanding how to represent the surface is needed to create reference surface for heights and the coordinate system. Happy Listening.

P.S. For map-makers, this is for people who have no idea about geodesy

Mapping and Elections: Part 2

Mapping in Addressing Election Issues

Voter Registration Outreach Program

Since most countries around the world practice democracy and conduct elections, the success of elections is determined by the percentage of voter participation. The fate of the country and its future depends on voters and it takes sometimes a small number votes to change history. Voter participation fluctuate on election basis and could be strengthen if the election offices extend the registration of new voters. Depending on the country, local councils or states or federal government would be responsible in reaching out to new, unregistered voter. In order to create awareness, these institutions need to find ways to market the idea of registration in effective manner and GIS proves a decisive tool in this process.

Let's take an example, a council, south of San Francisco, (San Mateo) wanted an effective way of distributing resources in reaching out under-represented ethnic minorities in the area (targeting the Latino voters). The resources would be sending personnel familiar with Latino culture and voter materials that suit the needs of the community. The major question would be WHERE to send these resources. This is where GIS (or mapping in general) plays critical role.

Application of GIS in identifying potential voter registration program

In the case of this council, they asked the service of GIS company to produce maps for this program The company intersected the datasets (refer to diagram above) in the GIS. The polygon data of the datasets were adjusted according to election boundaries and with that, the population per election district were quantified. Moreover, the maps produced showed where voter registration was low and how it correlates to the percentage of Latino community per election district.

The outcome would be reduced time, energy and financial costs in finding areas of low Latino registered voters. Secondly, the council can organize effectively to distribute culturally trained personnel and relevant language pamphlets to potential voters. Hopefully, it would have translated increased registrations.

Election Redistricting

Depending on each country, election redistricting (boundary delimitation) is done to balance the population of election districts. Any manipulation of election redistricting will result in gerrymandering and malapportionment (unequal voting distribution across election districts). Redistricting impacts the future of political process of the country and the funding allocated to the election districts. Prior to GIS, election officials would have used paper-maps and it is time cumbersome process and may result in unfavourable boundary outcomes. With the advent of GIS, census data (critical information for redistricting) can be overlayed on other election boundary data easily.

On top of that, some political institutions and selected American States have started using GIS to show transparency in election redistricting. These proposed election districts are shown online for the public to review. In the case of America, the users can propose back to election office of new election districts while able to access other documents related to election redistricting. All in all, this would allow better decisions to create fair distribution of electoral areas:

Malaysian Election Problem

In the case of Malaysia, the boundary delimitation rules stipulated in the constitution is vague. This becomes more obvious when election districts should not be redistricted in such a way that impact rural areas or reaching to voters become difficult. The ratio of the largest constituency to smallest constituency in Malaysia range from 1-4 (only 3 out 13 states had ratio between 1-2). In Projek Tindak Malaysia research, Durack, federal election (Australia) seat is 4.8 times of Malaysia and 50 times bigger than the biggest electoral district in Malaysia. Using Malaysian logic, Durack MP in theory have extreme difficulty in reaching the voters. While this is true, today's technologies will narrow the distance gap. Moreover, using Malaysian logic, Durack should be split in many districts. Basically, Malaysia has gerrymandering and malapportionment problem. Since election redistricting is geographical problem, GIS plays an important role in addressing gerrymandering in Malaysia.  GIS can:

• Identifying areas where election districts have too many voters and too little voters.
• From this, we can zoom to election precinct level (in Malaysia called as daerah mengundi). At this level, election precints can be adjusted to the respective electoral areas with population thresholds. The GIS is able to overlay election boundaries and census data.

However, there are some challenges if voluntary election organization had to go through in any delimitation exercise

• Volunteers recruited have different mapping standards
• GIS data for election districts is hard to find or might be expensive for a voluntary project
• Malaysian Election Commission (SPR) maps have different geographical clarity and quality, thus complicating the delimitation mapping exercise
• Choosing the right software to draw the boundaries and subsequently display them for public viewer

Election Issue Awareness
Finally, maps are used by NGO groups or organizations to highlight and pinpoint issues pertaining to elections. Maps can piece complex data stories of elections into easy but powerful tools for election monitoring. For today's post, we'll take examples from Burma (Myanmar) and Malaysia

Burmese Election Tracker Home Page

Above website documented the election violations that happened in Burma. The homepage shows a Simple Burma Map using Open Street Map as the base map. The red proportional circles highlight the number of election violations per region. From the homepage, the user can go to election violation subcategory. The circles on the map changes to reflect the spatial distribution of the violations. Having said that, clicking on the circle only provide the number of violations of the city or area. Specific incidents to election violations are only found via the text links on the website.

For Malaysia, Sarawak Report with other media groups used MapBox (online mapping tool) to produce Election & Bribe Abuse Map of Malaysia.

Election Bribe & Abuse Map (Malaysia)

This online map, compared to other to Burmese one, is better (I would say) as the user can share the link on social media, tweet and contribute reports to build the map more complete. The pop-ups have contain personal account or news report of election violation with combination of photos, the ability to comment and share the story. However, not all pinpoints are at the correct location plus some pinpoints contain news without much geographical component (i.e. cities). Moreover, the base map is bit too dark and should consider using another map instead. All in all, this online mapping tool is very useful and could be dynamic during election time

Sticking back to Malaysian election 2013 issue, BERSIH 2.0 (Coalition of Free and Fair Elections)- broad based NGO fighting for election improvements- posted on its Facebook page of a simple map on how Election Commission (SPR) arbitrarily divided voters in different constituencies.

Kampung Abdullah Voter Registration Pattern (courtesy of Bersih 2.0)

Referring to this village, Kg Abdullah in Selangor (opened in 1940s) was arbitrarily divided into two constituencies. Referring to map above in detail, you can observe the division hardly make sense. During the People's tribunal on elections recently, this map was shown to demonstrate how families were 'divided' up when it came to voting in which constituency (in this case P140 and P141). The witness, Mr Ong Guan Sin said:

"The map shows how our village, Kg Abdullah, established more than six decades ago in the late 1940s, being divided arbitrarily by the Election Commission in 2003. We plotted each of the voters according to their registered address and the map is the result: each red dot is a voter of P140 Segamat, and each blue dot is a voter of P141 Sekijang.

......We have known for a while that some of the voters were transferred out from the original P140 Segamat constituency to the newly created P141 Sekijang. But little did we know that it was so arbitrary, so 'unnatural' that the division bears absolutely no consistent patterns or principles of any sort. Many households ended up with "divided family" - some family members vote in P140 while the rest vote in P141. "

The map alone itself received 117 likes and was shared 169 times.

In short, the above examples illustrate how maps are effective communicator of election discrepancies and elections. Maps are just mere tools for the wider change. With more and more free online mapping tools (such as free base maps of Google or software like MapBox) available, activists and NGO are being more literate in using maps to communicate their ideas.

Sources:

1. http://www.fargeo.com/presentations/gis_for_gotv_campaigns.pdf
2. http://computing.ornl.gov/internships/rams/archive/rams05/websites05/j_hemby/images/GIS_8LAYERS.jpg (For GIS Layers image)
3. http://geography.uoregon.edu/infographics/lcweb/images/countyto.gif (Oregon Map Voter Turnout)
4. http://wpsa.research.pdx.edu/meet/2012/hanewicz.pdf
5. http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/7041-Delimation-FAQ
6. http://www.ndi.org/election-stories-unfold-on-a-map
7. http://election.sarawakreport.org/#6/3.57921/108.39111
8. Kg Abdullah Map was sourced Bersih 2.0 Facebook Page (21st September 2013)