|
In response to an unsolicited proposal, the Office of
Policy Development and Research, Department of Housing and Urban
Development granted $340,000 to the University Consortium for
Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) entitled "Global Urban Quality:
An Analysis of Urban Indicators Using Geographic Information Science
(GIS).
The mutual goals of the Office of Policy Development and Research
and UCGIS are to:
- Gain knowledge on the state of urban quality within cities in
developing countries that can be used to monitor change and assist
in developing and evaluating policies and programs that intend to
improve the quality of life in those areas.
- Establish a quantitative baseline of data that can be used in
the future to evaluate the effectiveness of new policies and
programs that are intended to improve economically distressed
communities, increase homeownership, and reduce homelessness.
- Transfer expertise in evaluating urban indicators using spatial
analytical techniques and geographic information systems from
participating universities to paired organizations within the
emerging nations. The transfer of knowledge will be through
web-based training programs.
- Build a local capacity to collect and use policy-related
indicators.
Develop long-term relationships between the UCGIS member
universities and the paired organizations in the emerging nations to
increase the capacity within the developing countries to continue
urban indicator analysis on a long-term basis.
UCGIS Solicitation
The HUD grant enabled the University Consortium for
Geographic Information science (UCGIS) to issue a solicitation for
proposals. The proposals were reviewed and five universities were
selected. The winning universities were:
Each university collaborated with academic
institutions and government agencies in emerging nations to develop
web-based training and analysis programs on the application of
geographic information systems for urban indicator modeling. The
project complements the Urban Indicators Programme of the United
Nation’s Global Urban Observatory, by use of UCGIS member institutions
to develop programs to train personnel in developing countries on the
application of geographic information systems (GIS) technology.
GIS is used to disaggregate country and city indicator data to
sub-areas within cities to help evaluate the spatial dynamics of urban
quality within larger metropolitan areas.
The
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team is headed by
Drs Emily Talen, Farank Miraftab, Lewis Hopkins and
Zorica-Nedovic-Budic. The University of Illinois is collaborating with
the Kathmandu Mapping Project in Kathmandu, Nepal, the Department of
Information Systems Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, and the
University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana.
Dr. Gerard Rushton and Michael McNulty head the
University of
Iowa team. The National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi,
India and the Department of Geography at the University of Ibadan,
Nigeria are collaborating with the University of Iowa.
Drs Robert Rugg and Weiping Wu are heading the
Virginia Commonwealth
University team with Dr John Accordino. VCU is collaborating
with the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and Faculty of
Architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and the Open
Research Laboratory of Remote Sensing at East China Normal University
in Shanghai, China.
West Virginia University's team is headed by Dr. Daniel Weiner
with Drs Gregory Elmes, Calvin Masilela and Dr. Brent McCusker as
co-investigators. Dr. McCusker is the project administrator. West
Virginia University is collaborating with the Universide de Catolica
de Mocambique in Beira, Mozambique.
Professor William Huxhold, Cheryl Ajirotutu, Jochen
Albrecht and Dr. Laxmi Ramasubramanian are heading the
University of Wisconsin —
Milwaukee team. The City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the City of
Dakar, Senegal, the Ecole Superieure Polytechnique and the University
of Cheikh Aanta Diop-Dakar are collaborators on the project.
Dr. Kenneth Dueker is the overall project
coordinator. His responsibilities include: providing oversight,
intellectual support and peer review for the UCGIS participating
universities, identifying possibilities and techniques for linking the
micro-level data developed through the individual projects to the
macro data, coordinating and producing the final report, and working
with the Advisory Board.
UCGIS private affiliate member
Environmental Systems Research
Institute (ESRI) is supporting the effort through donation of
ArcIMS and ArcView software to participating universities. In
addition, ESRI has provided GIS software to cities in developing
countries cooperating on this project with UCGIS and the
United Nations Centre for Human
Settlements (HABITAT) and its
Global Urban
Observatory Urban Indicators Programme.
Figure 1: Map of the Five Participating
Universities
Previous page |
Next page |
In
this Section
INTRODUCTION
