The CEDEUS Data Centre: Using open source mapping and communication tools to support research on sustainable urban planning
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Steiniger, S.
1PONTIFICA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE Email: ssteiniger@uc.cl
Abstract
Sustainable urban planning requires to look at cities and their surrounding from different perspectives such as the built environment, access and mobility, available resources, and participatory planning. Hence, research on sustainable planning should address these different perspectives and bring together researchers from different disciplines ranging from engineering to architecture to sociology. The “Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable”, (Centre for Urban Sustainable Planning), a new urban research centre in Chile, has been created to address these different perspectives and to focus on the development of policies and methods that promote sustainable growth of Latin American cities. As urban planning is an inherently spatial process research on sustainable urban planning will require a multitude of spatial data, including for instance environmental data, demographic data, transportation infrastructure data, etc. Therefore a first challenge is to create a spatial data centre that will give researchers access to data and allows interchanging spatial data online. However, most of the researches that aim to work with the spatial data will neither have had training in using or creating spatial data, nor know how to access spatial data. This results in a second challenge: it is necessary to provide researchers with (online) tools that will make it easy for them to use the spatial data. Given the financial limits, which are common to projects undertaking in Latin American countries, a third challenge is to build the data and communication platform using free and open source (mapping) tools. Since the beginning of 2014 work is underway to create a spatial data infrastructure for the CEDEUS researchers. To understand the researchers needs and expectations on such a spatial data centre, and to get an idea about existing spatial data and the institutional structures we performed a user survey. Based on the results of this survey we have been able to define the functionality that the web-based data centre should provide: A basic-set of functions includes options for data upload, data search, data exploration and data download. An advanced set of functions should address tools for user communication, data creation and mapping, and the calculation, display and monitoring of sustainability indicators. Apart from these, it has also been wished that research results in form of maps, data, and reports should be made available to invited collaborators and to the public. Hence, the audience of the spatial data centre will not only be CEDEUS affiliated researchers in different disciplines, but also a group of invited collaborators and the general public. As a consequence it was decided to define three platform development stages: The first stage will address the basic functionality for the researchers of the centre only, the second stage will account for implementation of advanced tools, and the third stage (not necessarily executed after the second stage) will focus on how to provide maps, data and reports to the public. Our presentation at ICC 2015 will give an overview on the spatial data platform development, including (i) the results of the users survey, (ii) the different development stages, and (iii) the challenges emerging from the functionality needs and the diversity of the platform users. A second part will outline the technical architecture and the software stack of free and open source (mapping) tools that is used - or may be used - to address the user requirements.