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Race, Potholes and GIS

More GIS-related news keeps coming out of Milwaukee...

Over the past week or so, their has been controversy regarding whether or not there is a timeliness bias on fixing potholes in Milwaukee's minority communities. The issue was brought to light by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Most likely ESRI is the 'mapping software' that is used for the analysis. For a description of the analysis look here and here.

Wisconsin Geospatial Events Calander

The State Cartographer's Office, has put out a great geospatial events calendar that covers not only those occurring in Wisconsin, but those nearby. There's a lot more going on that you may have realized. Its a great resource to find out what is happening. Be sure to subscribe the RSS feed so that you do not miss an event.

Milwaukee Police Dept: More Than Dots on a Map

Just a few weeks ago, I described how Milwaukee PD could be inspired by Martin O'Malley. From a recent JS Online article, it looks like MPD has made some substantial improvements already. While not mentioned directly, GIS is obviously part of the solution. The best quote of the article follows (and hits on a gripe of mine - that GIS is more than a spatial inventory of features and events - its about locational analysis. An inventory alone doesn't solve problems, analysis does).

"[Detective Lt. John] Hagen compared past efforts at data-driven policing to a 1980s arcade game. 'We’d put some maps up and dots up. You might as well play Pac-Man like in the old days and go ‘goop, goop, goop, goop, goop’ and eat the dots. It meant nothing,' he said. Now, Hagen said, the data is more up to date and more usable, helping police assess trends, identify specific hot spot neighborhoods and fight crime, which was down 4.5% in the first six months of 2008 compared with the same time last year."

JS Online 8/21/2008

ESRI User Conference Proceedings

MANY, of the ESRI-UC Conference Procedigns are now available online.
http://events.esri.com/uc/2008/proceedingsCD/index.html3

Before you had to wait months to get the CD in the mail. Now you can see many of the:

• Professional Papers (STuff by non-ESRI people)
• Technical Workshops (PowerPoints of the ESRI presentations)
• Industry Sessions

If you didn't go, or even if you did, here's a wealth of information that won't be found anywhere else (except perhaps after long hours with tech support).

via LIO-Tech - Thanks Jerry!

Solving City Problems

Of all the news to come out of the ESRI-UC, one story was a little more inspirational than the rest. The story talked about how Martin O'Malley, current Governor of Maryland and former Baltimore Mayor, used GIS to help fight crime and improve City services.

Last January, new Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn asked for help in improving their access to crime data. He was quoted saying,

"How many crimes did we have in the last 24 hours, the last week, the last month? How does it compare to last year at this time? How does it compare to two years ago at this time? Where is it occurring? We have an extraordinarily hard time producing that level of data right now."

Let us hope that the solution includes geospatial technologies. Perhaps in ten years we'll be hearing about the Milwaukee success story.

Who went?

For the first time, ESRI posted a map of all the attendees of the user conference. Wisconsin has a good representation. Its good to also see that its not just people in Milwaukee and Madison that are able to go.

Outagamie County wins Special Achievement in GIS award

Outagamie County received the ESRI SAG (Special Achievement in GIS) Award at this year's for their work in improving efficiency in government and multi-jurisdiction cooperation.

Read more about it as ESRI.

Great job Brad, Luke and Traci!