Taking the
pulse of an expanding urban region:
Greater Phoenix now and what it could be in 2100
VERSION 0.4
A
preproposal to the NSF-Information Technology Research Program (Information
Management and Applications): Group
proposal, <$1M/yr for 5 years.
Ramon
Arrowsmith, Department of Geological Sciences and Frederick Steiner, School Of
Planning & Landscape Architecture
AND OTHERS
Arizona
State University
The greater Phoenix Arizona region
comprises a desert landscape transforming to an urban center. The population of the region has doubled in
the last 20 years and is expected to double again in the next 20. What are the flows of materials, people,
other biota, and how do the changes depend on history and the current
configuration? What does it mean to
grow so rapidly? (To use a possibly
overly strong medical metaphor) we propose to take the pulse of the region and
present a prognosis for growth. We may
explore interventions to keep the region healthy. We want to know what has happened (all of the different
parameters describing the region such as biophysical features, the built
environment, and demographics and their variation with time), what is
happening, and what can happen. To
describe the history, we need to put together the datasets. Many are available off the shelf from the
various
stakeholders (municipalities, county, state, federal, private, academic). To figure out what is happening, we need to
establish a means of maintaining the databases that are built and their connectivity
and gather new data, so we have the pulse of the region. To anticipate the future, we have to train
our models on the history, situate them in the present, and send them forward
and test the results and visualize the various scenarios.
The opportunity that the greater
Phoenix region presents is one of many datasets with varying degrees of
interoperability that need to merged using the tools of information technology
to develop both theoretical understanding of how cities develop as ecosystems in
relation to their surroundings, as well as the application to managing
growth. On this year's ballots are
several growth management initiatives, but none has been evaluated
scientifically. We can take the complex
array of information and use visualization tools to present the spatial
relationships among the disparate datasets, most of which are spatially
based. More importantly, we can look at
the time dimension to produce a history of change and explore the future as
parameters vary.
In our discipline-oriented work, we
reduce complexity to understand. We
segregate phenomena to look at individual elements. However, to think about the past, present, and future of urban
systems such as Phoenix, in which processes are complexly intertwined, we need
the power of computer visualization to understand and represent the
system. Tools developed for visualizing
networks applied to the internet are really interesting
(http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ches/map/index.html). Such research is at the forefront in IT, and
can be challenged by the diverse datasets associated with the greater Phoenix
region.
Not only should we bring diverse
datasets together and establish the tools for their inquiry and visualization,
but also we can tap into data streams that give us the short term
representation of what is happening.
For example, traffic data are gathered in real time by the Arizona
Freeway Management system (http://www.azfms.com/), and even more importantly
for the desert large water management groups (such as the Salt River Project;
http://www.srpnet.comtrack their water flows carefully. Tapping into these and many other data
streams will let us compare short term high resolution datasets and their
variations with those collected over longer time periods and also anticipate
future behavior and data collection.
From Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “Atlas: 3 a : a bound collection of maps often including illustrations, informative tables, or textual matter b : a bound collection of tables,
charts, or plates.” One of the products of our work will be the construction of an
atlas of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. This digital atlas will contain constantly updated
representations of biophysical features (such as climate, air, geology,
physiography, hydrology, soils, flora, and fauna); built environment (such as
prehistoric settlement, development history, current land use, housing,
transportation, planned land use, landscapes, business types, tax capacity/real
estate value); and demographics (such as population growth, population density,
employment growth, median household income) ethnicity, age distribution, and
migration and mobility). These data
will be compiled by ASU experts with the aid of staff supported by this grant. They will include historic data such that
changes in the parameters can be compared in a common framework. Major historic time periods are Quaternary
(last 1.6 million years), Holocene (last 10 thousand years), prehistoric,
Hispanic exploration and settlement, pre-1900 Anglo exploration and settlement,
pre-WWII settlement, 1950s and 1960s modest growth, 1970s-2000 explosive
growth. Furthermore, we will include
forecasts of changes in these parameters over these future time periods: 2005, 2010, 2050, 2100. Interaction with the
atlas will use virtual reality tools (such as 3D visualization + texture
mapping and color along with animation to provide the 4 dimensional
perspective).
Access
to the atlas will include raw data availability, as well as web-based tabular,
graphical, and virtual reality representations. We imagine a website that includes interactive maps, but also
N-Dimensional representations (in which 3 dimensions come from the spatial
aspects of the view, a fourth dimension from time, and the variation of other
parameters denoted by color or texture map variations). These data would be freely accessible. At ASU, we expect to establish a
“DECISIONARIUM”-like “immersive
Environment For Collaborative Decision Making” (http://www.lgc.com/solutions/Decisionarium/Decisionarium.asp)
theatre/classroom/meeting room in which groups with diverse expertise come
together to interact with data and models and make decisions.
1)
Land use
modeling. What is the future of
Phoenix? Given its history, can we
develop a model that has a calibrated probability for landuse transitions based
upon history, what is near and what is far, and connectivity to test scenarios
for development? Can we go beyond the
empiricism to apply some mass balance or other potentially deterministic
constraints to improve the basis of the forecasts?
2)
What are the
relationships between land use and climate?
Can observations and models of climate (including air quality) be used
to evaluate land use change or its likelihood?
Can we go the other way and use observations and models of land use (an
other parameters) to anticipate climate (or air quality changes)?
3)
What are the
relationships between geology/topography/physiography and open space? Are the mountains which present natural
limitations (and threats via the washes that drain them) to development the
optimum open space geometries? What are
the optimal geometries of open space and the feature content for land use
relative to development pressures?
4)
What are the
natural and artificial patterns of vegetation and water flow? What happens to a water droplet as it enters
the Phoenix system either aritifially (having started as rainfall in the upper
Colorado River Basin), or naturally as rainfall within the greater Phoenix
area?
5)
In the next
five years (i.e., the lifetime of the proposed project), urban growth and thus
major change will occur in to zones of the greater Phoenix region: the outer fringe where desert is converted
to urban land use, and the interior along the major drainages. In particular, major development is expected
along the Salt River. The Tempe Town
Lake is an active example of this development.
The Rio Salado Project (references) will probably rejuvenate the Salt
River corridor through south Phoenix, and along it a new Light rail system will
carry people and promote development.
This growth prognosis provides us with an important target for
documentation and analysis. We can
provide an unprecedented dataset that captures the rapid changes in all of the
processes of the natural and urban system.
6)
Representation
is a major challenge. As we argued in
the introduction, the reduction of complexity to promote understanding is
common, but may be a limiting activity in the analysis of the urban
system. Furthermore, in the process of
bringing data together, we find that some so-called data include much
interpretation (geologic maps, census tracts, etc.) in contrast to
uninterpreted data such as remotely sensed imagery, raw data streams, etc. How we can represent the different aspects
of the greater Phoenix region in a coherent way? What about the scales of resolution in time and space? What is the uncertainty in the parameters
and how can it be presented as part of the inquiry?
7)
What is
common: time and space. How do we develop models of the
processes? Establish governing rules
for change and then check by taking snapshots.
We can also substitute space for time and look at different places (the
edge versus the interior of the urban environment) as an indicator of possible
change at a single place in time.
8)
What is
meaningful? Is it useful to compare
soil nitrogen versus voting blocks?
9)
Are layers
of data spatially referenced and temporally registered the best way to think
about the problem? What is the best way
to represent connectivity and pathways and processes?
10)
A couple of
basic themes in urban ecology come out in the American Scientist article by
Collins, et al ( Collins, Kinzig, Grimm, Fagan, Hope, Wu, and Borer, 2000, A
new urban ecology: American Scientist,
v. 88, p. 416-425.):
a)
Quantification
of the ecological footprint of the city.
How much natural productivity (measured in area) is required to support
the city?
b)
What is the
total energy expenditure per square meter for various portions of the greater
Phoenix area?
c)
What is the
variability in process types and rates with position (relative to the city
center(s)) or landuse type, or geologic or terrain unit?
d)
Can we
quantify or characterize the effects of forces of change and their timescales
in the urban ecosystems (disturbance events, ecological succession, disturbance
regions, land conversion, evolutionary change, climate change, erosion and
deposition)?
e)
What is the
probability of patch transition in space and time?
LTER
IGERT
GIS
certificate
GIS lab/VIS
lab/ARI-LTER lab
Remote
sensing
Herberger
Center
Morrison
Institute
Greater
Phoenix 2100
Departments
Setting in
large municipality
The project will be lead by the Arrowsmith-Steiner team with
significant input and interaction with colleagues from across ASU and other
Greater Phoenix 2100 stakeholders. We
will follow the model of strong collaborative ties among the diverse
disciplinary interests that has developed in LTER and IGERT. While most of the support requested is for
IT staff and data compilation, we request support for a professional Education
and Outreach (E&O) staff member who will work to present the interactive
opportunity of the Greater Phoenix project to educators and students, decision
makers and voters, and natural and social scientists. We hope that people from all levels of interest will find the interaction
with the data and models fascinating.
Education and outreach will include the development and testing of
explanatory and training materials and lesson plans.
Along with the E&O person, 3
other permanent staff will be hired, one each with significant IT experience in
these areas: data and databases,
modeling, and visualization. The
permanent staff will be supported by 6-8 technicians whose responsibilities
include data compilation, coding, webmastering, and sysadmin. We believe that the project will find focus
if its development includes research in aspects of its production,
idealization, and application.
Therefore, we expect to offer six graduate research assistantships per
year that will be awarded on a competitive basis to colleagues who submit short
proposals to the management team.
Evaluation will include intellectual merit, appropriateness for overall
goals of Greater Phoenix 2100, and sensitivity to the continuity of thesis and
dissertation projects.
We do not expect to have to buy very
much data. Most of the expense will be in the transformation of the data to
common reference frames and representation schemes. Physically, this project and its staff would be housed adjacent
to either the GIS lab or the ARI-LTER GIS lab and would include a series of
servers and workstations along with peripheral devices and the Data and
modeling theater.
|
|
|
Year 1 |
Year 2 |
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
Year 5 |
|
Category |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Staff |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 IT staff
($50k/yr) |
150 |
156 |
162 |
169 |
175 |
|
|
E&O staff |
50 |
52 |
54 |
56 |
58 |
|
|
Technicians (6) |
120 |
125 |
130 |
135 |
140 |
|
|
Professor/PI
summer salaries (4) |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
|
|
Graduate students
(6) |
90 |
94 |
97 |
101 |
105 |
|
Fringe (17% for
staff and 9% for students) |
|
139 |
145 |
151 |
157 |
163 |
|
Operations |
|
25 |
50 |
50 |
50 |
50 |
|
Hardware |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Servers (3) |
45 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Workstations (lab
and offices) |
24 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Peripherals
(printers/plotter/digitizer/scanner) |
50 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disks and tape
drives |
10 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Network |
10 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Data and modeling
theater |
100 |
|
|
|
|
|
Total direct |
|
837 |
646 |
670 |
695 |
721 |
|
indirect |
|
440 |
339 |
352 |
365 |
378 |
|
Total per year |
|
1277 |
986 |
1022 |
1060 |
1099 |
|
TOTAL |
|
|
|
|
|
5444 |
Perhaps
Fritz’ salary and some of the PI salaries and the hardware can be matched? But
we want to make a point that the University’s commitment to LTER and IGERT have
been substantial and are directly appropriate for this project.
Development
of indices: What should be
tracked? What is an indicator of
change?
I think that
the ideas of Phoenix2100 provide a very interesting hook for ITR in that we
have lots of data about the city that are gathered and have been gathered. We can ask many questions of each dataset,
but as we all know and need to argue persuasively, the big questions about how
people interact with their environment in a situation such as Phoenix require
inquiry of diverse datasets simultaneously.
ITR can support the development of the database infrastructure (the data
and organizing it), as well as the tools for the inquiry in which we are interested,
and the visualization of the results.
IF we also include some reference to the SimCity or other modeling
initiatives, we have it all.
Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center
Velocity Maps (SOPAC) http://lox.ucsd.edu/GPSProcessing/Vortex/vortex_help.html