Building Grassroots GIS Capacity: Making the Case with Data What one practitioner learned the hard way. CLT Network Grassroots National Conference Building Community…. Learning Together Portland, Oregon August,

Assess Relationship of GIS and Data to Mission & Goals Tools needed to Support Mission and Goals Fundraising  Story Telling Portray or describe a problem or situation Demonstrate inequities/differences.  Evaluation Depict current conditions versus improved or degraded or future or past conditions. Planning, Organizing and Advocacy  Maps and Data drives us to ask questions, to change, to consider other possibilities. They encourage us to develop a theory to share widely for discussion and action.

Typical Maps – Community Profile  Location map. Where is your geographic area? Neighborhood in the city. City in the state. Streets, landmarks. Aerial or ortho photo. Dated.  Zoning or development map with parcels  Demographic information Population Income Ethnicity Housing Profile

Organizational Capacity  Board and management buy-in (i.e. they need to believe this relates to the mission or helps accomplish the mission.)  Budget Ideally there is a line item in the organizational budget for technology and a separate line for GIS that includes personnel and training.  Dedicated Staff Resources To learn To manage and document To build capacity and pursue resources  Skilled or knowledgeable staff Someone with an aptitude for technology  Sustainability Document work, data sources, metadata.

Internal Technology Capacity  Minimum Hardware Needs Platform PC-Intel Operating System Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6a (or) Windows 2000 (or) Windows XP (Home Edition and Professional) Memory 256 MB RAM Processor 800 MHz or comparable. Or higher  Internet Access 56 K or faster  Tech Support, warranties, licenses, etc. Who do I call if it breaks  Transportable Media, Zip Drive, Flash Drives, Writeable CDs, etc.  Print and Presentation Capabilities

Internal Technology Capacity  Software Microsoft Office Excel or other spreadsheet software. Mapping GIS Software  Pitfalls. There are lots of mapping software packages out there. We spent way too much time investing in multiple packages such as  ESRI’s Arcview 9.0 (My favorite)  Community Maptitude (A HUD package)  Map Info Internet Web Browser Anti-Virus and other System utilities

Integrate with other applications  Community Viz. GIS-based analysis and real-world 3D modeling that allows people to envision land use alternatives and understand their potential impacts, explore options and share possibilities, examine scenarios from all angles — environmental, economic, and social — and feel confident in their decisions.  Business Planning software  Analytical Packages

Where to get the Base Maps  City Assessor’s Office  State GIS Offices  Census maps  ESRI

Where to get The Data  Federal, State, Local Agencies  Online sources.  Buy it. Business Data  Create your own.  Review the data.

External Capacity  Universities  Planning, Policy, Geography Departments  Student volunteers  Classes  Field projects,  Thesis projects and Case studies Formalize a partnership Don’t reinvent the wheel each time. Archiving and data storage assistance

External Resources  Newspapers and TV stations  Planning agencies (City, Regional, State)  Environmental Agencies  Partner Agencies (other nonprofits)  Funders  Consultants  Web-based Online Mapping resources

Interactive Mapping examples  Mass State GIS  Boston Atlas A/main.pl?ht=768 A/main.pl?ht=768 3D Affect is nice with VRML  Enviromapper Maps.epa.gov  Census Factfinder

Cool websites  Data Place: Knowledgeplex html?buid=10: &rm_ind=1&z=1\  Neighborhood Knowledge California. TOKEN=  Google maps Maps.google.com

More resources Policy Link’s- Equitable Development Toolkit efault.html efault.html Lincoln Institute of Land Policy /index.html /index.html

Resources/Software/TA   software and hardware discounted or donated to nonprofits.  Connections to Dell, HP,Microsoft for donations and resources  ww.communityviz.org & ww.communityviz.orgwww.orton.org  Fantastic Information

Planning Web Sites  (NPR radio show)  (international)  (European)  (oldest planning portal for urban planners   (APA)  