DESURBS Deliverable 3.1: Specification of mapping and visualization

Transcription

1 DESURBS Deliverable 3.1: Specification of mapping and visualization Project full title: Designing Safer Urban Spaces Grant agreement no.: Lead beneficiary for Deliverable 3.1: Centre Internacional de Metodes Numerics en Enginyeria Dissemination level: Public Expected delivery date: Month 24 Author: Francisco Zárate, CIMNE Actual delivery date: Month 24 This project is co-funded by the European Commission within the 7 th Framework Programme

2 Contents 1. Introduction Background The DESURBS Project Work Package 3 (WP3) Role of WP Mapping tool Specification (WP3.1) Mapping and visualization software tool (WP3.2) Mapping tool description The Front Office The Back Office Further work with the visualization tool Conclusions Annex

3 1. Introduction This report constitutes Deliverable 3.1 of the FP7 Security Program research project Designing Safer Urban Spaces (DESURBS, Grant Agreement no ). It is the final deliverable of work package 3.1 (WP3.1) of the project and is a summary of the work completed. The purpose of this deliverable 3.1 is to present the mapping tool specifications and some applications to put in practice the viability of the requirements and at the time, create some visualization tools needed by other WP. 1.1 Background As security-related risk in cities has intensified, our concern with anticipating, preventing, preparing, responding and recovering from the disruptive challenges brought about by such enhanced risk has become a key concern of urban managers and built environment stakeholders such as urban planners, urban designers, civil engineers and architects. Security risks to urban areas are widespread. From crime and public disorder to terrorism, securitising cities has been a focus of policy responses. This has occurred alongside ongoing natural threats such as earthquakes and flooding, which include in many cases increasingly human induced risk and the ever present risk of accidents in evermore crowded urban areas. Through it all, enhancing resilience, which is the capacity to adjust to threats and mitigate or avoid harm and has physical, economic and social components, has become an important aim for urban stakeholders. Shaping new and existing urban spaces through planning, design and management is central to this. Resilient design is therefore a holistic endeavor involving a range of activities which shape and manage the built fabric so as to reduce its vulnerability to a range of hazards and threats. It is concerned with both the spatial form and re-design of the built environment as well as the processes that help shape it. Yet designing and redesigning urban spaces to make them more secure is often constrained by the limited local knowledge and experience of dealing with these different types of hazard and security threats. By sharing, analysing and understanding past experiences of how these risks have impacted on urban spaces improvements in the practice of resilient urban planning, design and management advances can be made. Nowadays information is essential and the new technologies provide us with a wide variety of sources. However, presenting that information in a more comprenhensive way is essential to take the right actions and decisions in a short period of time. The aim of the visualization tool we develop here is in that line. 1.2 The DESURBS Project DESURBS is a research-based project which aims to develop tools which assist built environment professionals and urban managers to create and maintain safer urban spaces. Through a series of integrated work packages and based on knowledge from past incidents, DESURBS is developing an online, interactive decision support tool to help users identify strengths and weaknesses in urban spaces and take the most appropriate steps to identify, mitigate against or eliminate the risks to them through enhancing resilience. The main objective of this project is to create a decision support portal to tackle this problem. The portal will consist of a continuously evolving urban space security event database, an Integrated Security and Resilience (ISR) task plan formulation framework for engaging and assisting local stakeholders in the decision support process; and comprehensive supporting models and tools to improve the design of new and renewed urban areas. Improved design will contribute to the creation 3

4 and maintenance of safer places, protect surrounding natural environments and making the urban space itself less vulnerable to damage. The overall strategy of the DESURBS work plan is straightforward and aimed at achieving the best possible workflow. The work is divided into seven work packages of which WP3 corresponds to the visualization tools. 1.3 Work Package 3 (WP3) An adaptive and user-friendly GIS-based mapping and visualization framework will be created, based on CIMNE s OpenGisUrb visualization tool, that interacts with an unlimited range of data (weak points in urban areas, urban space materials database, etc.) and simulation codes. Users will be able to configure it to read and write data in the format needed and interface it with any existing simulation software. 2. Role of WP3.1 This report covers work carried out in work package 3.1 (WP3.1), and some of the advances done in work package 3.2 (WP3.2) WP3.1 covers the state of the art in web based visualisation tools and the specifications of the form and content of the relational database. WP3.2 corresponds to the development of the mapping tool. In this case, a preliminary tool has been developed in order to understand the project requirements and to show the facilities and uses of the tool. 3. Mapping tool Specification (WP3.1) Understanding that this first phase will be the key for the success of the work package we have decided on some key issues to fulfil WP3. The essential ones are: Much more feedback from the partners more involved with security, urban and resilience design is needed. All the functionalities of the mapping tool must be defined at this stage in order to avoid misunderstandings and future problems. The integration process with the DESURBS DSSP in WP5 should also be considered in this task. There will be a web management tool, for advanced users only that will be used to administer the stored data in the urban security and resilience relational database. The tool will offer functions to geo-reference the urban vulnerabilities and analyze graphically the improvements of the urban spaces with respect to security threats The simulation algorithms results will also be uploaded to the server using this tool. It will be a web oriented system Having in mind these considerations, we have investigated and evaluated the mapping options available. A brief resume is presented: INTERFACES: Open Street Map 4

5 Open Street Map is a Worldwide free editable map with geographical information from all around the world and fully integrable using JavaScript map libraries Open Street Map does not need a username and password to work with There are no restrictions in its license to use it Google Maps Google Maps is a free tool offered by Google. It s a service with satellite images from all around the world. Only open public sites can use its satellite photographs Bing Maps Bing Maps is a tool offered by Microsoft. It s a service with topographic and satellite images from all around the world. A username and password is needed to work with Bing Maps Data Repositories Communication and data extraction protocols from external data sources will be set in order that this data can be managed, analyzed and visualized Any kind of Relational Data Base could be supported, also CVS, Excel REAL TIME REPRESENTATION ALGORITHMS Algorithms can be developed which will be able to set on maps the information obtained in real time. These algorithms will be able to represent graphically the data using thematic or coloured maps. There will be different layers for each type of data associated with the algorithms. We will be able to generate clouds of points with certain geometries and data patterns to make simulations to detect problems or anomalies in the urban space studied. The default data format for thematic maps will be shapefiles, also we could accept any ASCII format Privative formats should be studied if necessary Simulations and points of interest will be loaded using a back office Any type of information could be shown in the map viewer 4. Mapping and visualization software tool (WP3.2) With the idea to carry into practice the previous conclusions made at WP3.1, and also in order to show the tool capabilities to the partners we have designed the first version of the visualization tool. This visualization software has been developed based on OpenStreet Map with Open GIS. The preliminary visualization tool has the capability to visualize accidents and security related events anywhere in the world. The information related to each register includes pictures, comments and downloadable documents. All the recommendations decided on in WP3.1 have been considered. The visualization tool has two frames: the Front Office and the Back Office. In the first one the end user is able to search for incidents and visualize on the word map at a very close resolution at the main cities of the world. The Back Office corresponds to the data administration framework. Feeding the visualization tool with disaster information can be done in a complete online way with a very intuitive interface. Also the classification class criteria are fully customatizable. 5

6 The visualization tool is available at One of the most important innovations in the visualization tool is the inclusion of comments made at the internet social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The last comments appear at the Front Office framework and also some comments can be linked to events recorded at the data base. The tool has thus far been very useful for helping to carry out the WP1.1 security incidents analysis. A detail description of the mapping tool is presented in annex 1; however a brief description is made in the following section. 4.1 Mapping tool description. The tool is divided in two sections, the Front Office and the Back Office. Each section will be described below The Front Office The Front Office is the collection of graphical user interfaces for showing in a comprehensive way the data stored in the security cases data base. It has three well defined areas: The Tree tool, the World Map and the Social Network areas. The Tree Tool area: FRONT OFFICE at This Tree of check boxes allows to the end user to filter the security cases data base, according to different criteria like the time when the event has occurred, and the type of case like accidents, natural disasters etc. This tool is very intuitive and easy to use. Once the selections have been made, is necessary to click on the refresh button to present in the world map the cases found in the data base. 6

7 The Social Network Area : FRONT OFFICE: Tree Tool. On this area the latest comment made on the DESURBS Facebook account (Designing Safer Urban Spaces) and Twitter (@DESURBS) are displayed. With this information the end user is linked with the rest of desurbs users, and can be informed in real time. The World Map: FRONT OFFICE: Social Network area. On this area the matched events found on the data base are presented as dots in a map. Each dot is geographically positioned on the word. To move over the map there are the typical tools such as the 7

8 zoom in/out, like the zoom bar or the elastic box zoom made with the magnify glass icon. For moving the map, there exists the pan buttons or the dynamic pan hand. FRONT OFFICE: World map tools. The information related to the filtered cases can be recovered clicking on each dot, as is shown in the next figure, where the information related to the Lorca earthquake is presented, also if some additional files are stored, can be downloaded on this window. This is a very useful feature because there are no limits to the kind of files stored, like sound, videos, pdf, etc. FRONT OFFICE: World map tools. Information about the selected case 8

9 Another option is the facility to show pictures of the selected case in the same window. A photo gallery is linked with the event description, so the end user can have high quality information about the event. Finally each event is linked with comments made by the Facebook users. These comments can appear not only on the WP3 mapping tool, but also on the user account (if he/she allows it) It is remarkable the impact of the social networks nowadays, so this tool is a nice approach to the latest communication tools. FRONT OFFICE: World map tools. Facebook comments about the selected case The Back Office The Back Office is the tool s collection point where the data base can be fed with the events. Also the check box selecting can be updated for changing or editing the case classification. The Back Office is located at under password protection in order to guarantee the quality of the information. Inside the Back Office there are two different users that exist: administrators and users. The privileges are the same except for the second who are restricted from deleting records. The menu is simple and easy to understand. Only two options exist: update the user s profile and administrate the event data base. For the first option the Settings button allows the user to change the , password and name. 9

10 The Manage button allows administrating the Data Base. With the Type of disaster option, it is possible to establish the event classification. A pencil means update, and a red cross mark means delete. If a new classifications is required, this can be done with the add button. BACK OFFICE: Disaster classification window It is important to remark that any changes on the classifications are automatically display in the Front Office s check boxes. For the events, it is easy to update and input new records by just following the input form where the name, description, date and classification are required, as can be seen in the following picture. The event description can be done using hypertext so web references are easy to edit. BACK OFFICE: Disaster data input I 10

11 BACK OFFICE: Disaster data input II Following with the input format is necessary to give the geographical references. This can be done with the longitude-latitude format, or using the mapping facilities implemented. BACK OFFICE: Disaster data input III 4.2 Further work with the visualization tool Although it is a fairly complete version, the work that remains to be done with this preliminary tool is important because it is necessary to link the different databases that will be generated along the project, as well as including the project requirements revealed in the different work packages. Ultimately, thematic maps will be able to be generated, with the areas affected by disasters and other security incidents to be visualized at urban infrastructure design and planning scales. However, this visualization tool will fulfil two main aspects: Put in practice the Mapping tool visualization requirements. Cover a gap in the WP1 data base for visualization aspects. Therefore we can conclude that the objectives of the WP3.1 are fully covered. 11

12 5. Conclusions The mapping tool being developed will be a web map viewer where the user can indicate the disasters in the desired spatial position. The viewer will contain the zoom, pan, measurement, selection and editing spatial points functionalities. For editing points, a form is generated with the information needed to specify the incident. Also, thematic maps will be generated with the areas affected by disasters and other security incidents visualized at urban infrastructure design and planning scales. All of this will ultimately be integrated into the Decision Support System in WP5 Finally, the first version of the mapping tool has been developed and tested. Now we have a powerful tool to work with and to improve to fulfil the project requirements. 12

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