Sustainable Seattle: Urban Transportation & Accessibility
One of the top priorities in Seattle neighborhoods is accessible public
transportation and walkable communities. This also matches with the
goal outlined in Seattle’s comprehensive plan to reduce single
occupancy vehicles in the city as well as the Mayor’s Climate
Change Initiative- to reduce green house gas impacts. In order for us
to understand this issue better, we would like maps created that
indicate distances to key destinations (within walking, biking, or bus
routes). Secondly, we would like some analysis such as the development
of an indicator (example) % of neighborhood population within 5 minutes
walking of main business district, bus stop, grocery stores, etc. We
would like the team working on this project to explore accessibility
using GIS and maps.
Sustainable Seattle: Mapping Indicators of Healthy Business
District
One of the top priorities identified in Seattle neighborhoods is having
healthy, thriving business districts. A few of the indicators
(measures) that have been linked to this theme include mix of
businesses, hours of operations, and presence of local businesses
versus chain stores. This project would require some actual data
collection (using established methodology) in a handful of Seattle
neighborhoods (number to be determined based on how time/labor
intensive the data collection process is, so that this project is
reasonable for the student team’s workload); determining a way of
geocoding these data into a GIS, organizing a well-structured
geodatabase for handling your data. Finally, you would need to develop
a series of maps of the three types of indicators listed above, with
basic analysis of the findings. If you are interested in a project that
gets you outdoors and out in the city in addition to your lab-based GIS
work, this is the project for you!
Seattle Parks and Recreation, Department of Urban Forestry:
Predicting Species Composition in Seattle Parks Restoration Sites
Seattle Parks and Recreation is interested in developing a predictive
model for species composition to be planted in restoration sites in
Seattle parks. This would entail adapting a number of available data
sets to a model that you will create, then comparing its predictions to
Chappell plant community data for the Pacific Northwest. The model
would be able to tell restorationists what types of plants to install
in specific sites, and hopefully increase the efficiency and success of
restoration projects in Seattle parks.While this project would not
produce a hard-copy map, the finished product would be a model that
data for specific restoration sites could be applied to for future site
determination. The main questions Urban Forestry would like to answer
are:
What is an appropriate raster size for a predicative vegetation
model?
What is largest appropriate unit size to define a restoration site if
using points and not polygons?
Can we predict desired Chappell plant community for restoration sites
based on existing data sets?
In answering these questions, you would contribute to a more efficient implementation of restoration in Seattle parks. Plants could be purchased and installed with more success, allowing the volunteer operations to be more effective.
University of Washington Extension: GIS and Non Profits: Using
GIS to Secure Funding & Improve Customer Service
While GIS has long been used in the public and private sectors, the non
profit sector has turned to GIS more recently. Non profit organizations
that use GIS range from large organizations with a national or
international scope, to very small organizations that work in areas as
small as a single neighborhood. Many of these groups experience
difficulty in gaining access to GIS training that is tailored to the
unique kinds of GIS applications that they undertake (for many non
profit organizations, access to hardware, software and appropriate
spatial data is also a challenge). The University of Washington
Extension program is interested in offering a 2-3 day workshop on GIS
for non profits, at which participants will learn what GIS is, how it
works, and what kinds of GIS applications non profit organizations
might find useful to support their work.
Facing the Future: Analyzing Program Areas & Service Needs
Facing the Future is a Seattle-based non profit organization that
provides educational materials and teacher training nationwide,
focusing on environmental issues, population, and sustainability. The
goal of these activities is to develop “…young
people’s capacity and commitment to create thriving, sustainable,
and peaceful local and global communities.”
(http://www.facingthefuture.org) We are interested in project that will
develop assess the spatial patterns of our outreach efforts across the
U.S. and the users of our materials. Ideally, we would like to develop
a database in which we can track our outreach locations and users on an
ongoing basis, for future mapping and analysis beyond this project.
UW Geography & Sociology: Spatial dynamics of Homelessness
& Affordable Housing
Faculty from Geography and Sociology are working collaborative research
in which they would like to learn more about the changing landscape of
affordable housing in downtown Seattle, as well as of real estate
values more generally. Many discussions of homelessness cite the loss
of affordable housing -- and especially the loss of single-room
occupancy hotels (“SROs”) -- as the explanation for why it
emerged in the 70's. In this project, you would need to determine
several relevant variables that you and the faculty researchers agree
are useful in measuring or examining affordable housing in downtown
(real estate values, changing rental costs, either one of these
compared with median incomes, or loss of SROs). Your next step will be
to acquire or create spatial data sets needed to explore these
variables and their spatial characteristics in the Seattle area,
especially in downtown. The final step will be producing a series of
maps that illustrate these characteristics.
Solid Ground: Food
Security in Seattle and King County
Solid Ground is a social justice, advocacy, and service organization
that operates a wide range of food, housing, transportation, and
seniors programs. To support the work of their food programs, they are
interested in developing spatial data and maps that will help them
understand and illustrate patterns of food security (and insecurity) in
King County, especially South King County. People living in low income
communities may face several problems in gaining reliable access to
food resources and in having access to healthy affordable food. In many
cases, geographical dispersion of food resources is a partial cause,
compounded by limited transportation options to get to food banks,
distant grocery stores, etc. There is a growing literature, academic
and popular, on issues of food security, and you will tap this
literature as you learn more about food security to inform your work on
this project. This project will involve developing spatial data and a
series of maps and analyses at different scales and resolutions.
Lettuce
Link: Community Fruit Tree Harvest
The Community Fruit Tree Harvest, a project of Lettuce Link at Solid
Ground (formerly the Fremont Public Association) envisions a
substantial mapping project pertaining to issues surrounding food
security, historical agriculture, and community development. The
Community Fruit Tree Harvest (CFTH) brings homegrown apples, pears, and
plums from private household owners to local food banks, meal programs,
and senior housing facilities with support from Seattle Tilth and
dedicated volunteers. In it second year, the CFTH was able to glean
over 3,000 pounds of produce predominantly from North Seattle
neighborhoods. As we try to increase efficiency and expand the project,
your work would be highly valuable to us. With the information that you
gather and the maps created, our staff as well as our volunteers will
have a resource to guide community outreach and awareness, scouting
trips, and expansion to other neighborhoods in Seattle. Working with
Lettuce Link staff, we envision a group of students creating several
maps visually displaying historical fruit orchards in the King County
area, existing fruit orchards (official and park-based), trees that we
have already harvested, and potential sites to explore.
UW Geography: Mapping Global Studies into Geography – An
Undergraduate Curriculum Project
The “Mapping Global Studies into Geography” initiative is
intended to do several things:
1. Integrate basic GIS learning, literacy, and exercises into more
of the non-GIS courses that most of the Geography faculty teach;
2. Establish the basis for an integrative Geography and Global Studies
Track with in the major;
3. Create curricula plans that demonstrate how particular suites of
courses build GIS competency and link with global studies learning in
the major.
One of the key parts of this initiative will be designing several learning modules that use GIS to explore themes in global studies. The point is less to “teach GIS” in non-GIS courses than to use GIS as a means of incorporating critical spatial reasoning and representation in these courses in new ways, and to do so in a way that strengthens students’ substantive learning about global studies concepts that link across departmental curricula. A major practical challenge in such an initiative is how to design GIS-based activities that can be completed by students and faculty who may not have prior experience in using ArcGIS. The team that works on this project will develop a geodatabase that includes a variety of thematic data for countries of the world, such as health, economic status, and population characteristics, and develop prototype GIS activities using this database, for eventual incorporation in undergraduate human geography courses.
