Sean mentioned in his blog about how pooling together of efforts by Andrew, Sean, Bill et. al, the Fortifacture/MapuCommons folks were able to bring to you in record time the near-real time pollution data from Beijing. As we were working on this, we realized that there is a huge difference in the perceptions between the host nation and most of the western world/media on what constitutes severe air quality problem. For eg. see below the two pics, both dated 5th August, 2008. One shows Beijing “Clear skies” while the other has haze/smog blanketing Beijing. Wonder whether they are talking about different places and different days!
Xinhua Photo

The photo taken on Aug. 5, 2008 shows the clear sky above the National Stadium, namely the Bird’s Nest, in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua Photo/Li Ziheng)

BBC Photo

5 August PM10 reading: 104 micrograms per cubic metre. The World Health Organisation guideline maximum is 50 micrograms per cubic metre, averaged over 24 hours.

Knowing that many countries in Asia, including India and China share the dubious distinction of having the most polluted cities in the world, the media’s obsession with hazy skies should come as no surprise and that much of the media coverage of Beijing Olympics has been about the quality of air. See for example, this split picture of Beijing skyline on a clear and a hazy day on the BBC’sBeijing Pollution: Facts and Figures.

BBC has, for last several weeks, a daily pic of Beijing skyline with a running commentary on the hazy conditions, on their Beijing Pollution Watch site. So we at FortiusOne/Mapufacture decided to generate a daily map of the official stats on PM10 published by Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (BMEPB) and compare it with BBC’s Beijing Pollution Watch. PM10, the airborne particles consisting of dust from construction,landfill sites, vehicle exhaust, industrial sources etc. of size 10 microns or less, are the main culprit behind the hazy skies /bad air days in Beijing.

The map below is based on the air quality monitors spread across dozens of Beijing districts along with the locationsof Olympic events (red circles). The six slices of each pie-chart show share of PM10 at each location between 5th and 10th Aug, 2008.

th

The second map shows today’s readings of PM10 (purple colored proportional circles) for each of the air quality monitoring stations, along with a pie-chart that has share of the SO2, PM10 and NO2.

For comparison, see BBC’s pic of the same day below.

BBC: 10 August PM10 reading: 278 micrograms per cubic metre. We test for 10 minutes at midday from a seventh floor balcony in central Beijing..

While the official readings in nearly half dozen air quality monitoring stations nearby have readings near 90, it has apparently, not had an adverse effect on the athletes thus far in the games. As BBC offers daily pics of the smog, we will have daily updates on the air quality all through the Olympics. In the mean while you may explore on the Finder! the air quality data (SO2, NO2 and PM10) for the last six days i.e, 5th to 10th August, 2008, the road network, and the “>district polys as well as Olympic Athletic Venues,and Olympic village. Search using keyword “Olympics.” You are welcome to download, add, update and upload these data back to Finder!

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It’s been three years since Hurricane Katrina hit and with hurricane season here, it is no wonder why the Lt. Governor of Louisiana, Mitch Landrieu, stated the importance of Google Street Maps to the New Orleans community. The tool offers the people the opportunity to view the progression in New Orleans. For a better perspective on the recovery, visit The New Orleans Index Anniversary Edition: Three Years After Katrina.

The use of GIS for natural disasters is now trickling over to emergency preparedness. The World Vision International, a faith-based disaster aid organization, is beginning to embrace GIS. The main mission of the organization is to ‘overcome poverty and injustice by reducing the impact of natural disasters with area development programs that concentrate efforts with long-term commitment to maximize their impact.’ Because there is a direct correlation between poverty and areas prone to natural disasters, World Vision International will use GIS to help save lives and prevent loss of life.

The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) is now official. A meeting was held this week at the ESRI User’s Conference in San Diego, where organization members voted on their new officers. Currently the coalition has 11 organization members including, the Cartography and Geographic Information Society, the GIS Certification Institute and the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping.

Geospatial professionals are integrating with social networks. Apparently, social network creator Ning has about 22 members and is steadily growing in their Geospatial Professionals Network. Fellow professionals are encouraged to join and engage.

Finally, as the Olympics get underway, we want to say good luck to Director of Operations Matt Madigan, who is currently in Beijing coaching the women’s quad sculling team.

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With several friends competing at the Beijing games the office has been following the stories about pollution and its possible impact on the games very closely. The best analogy a friend of mine gave after a practice at the rowing venue was “it is like training at altitude”. We thought it might be useful to build a map showing the daily pollution levels in different parts of Beijing on a map that included the Olympic venues.

Raj found a Chinese government source for daily pollution levels in Beijing then geocoded it for us. Andrew used Mapufacture to turn the data into a dynamic geocoded feed, so we could put it on the map and have it updated in real time. Finally Bill used Finder to create a data set with all the Olympic venues. The whole thing came together in a day and we’ve embedded the map below. You can also go to Mapufacture and grab the embed for yourself or the KML and keep track of it in Google Earth or another compliant GeoBrowser.

The icons with the Olympic rings are Olympic venues and the orange squares with the Mandarin character for “atmosphere” are pollution sensors. When you click on the environmental data you’ll see totals for three different pollutants:

1) SO2 - Sulfur Dioxide
2) PM10 - Particulate Matter- that is 10 micrometers in diameter or less
3) NO2 - Nitrogen Dioxide

These three measurement compose the API - the air pollution index. The USA and Canada both use AQI, air quality index, which is similar to API but the indices are set according to different formulas based upon concentration. Therefore, one cannot compare API or AQI between countries without knowing what concentration is represented by the indices.

API Rating (Beijing)

0-50 Grade I (Excellent)

51-100 Grade II (Good)

101-200 Grade III (Lightly Polluted)

201-300 Grade IV (Moderately Polluted)

300+ Grade V (Seriously Polluted)

Interestingly Honk Kong uses the same API index but how they rank between “seriously polluted” and “excellent” is far different.

To keep things honest we used the Honk Kong scale for the map we created. If you would like to do some comparisons (knowing the formulas) of API in Beijing to AQI in other cities you can check out the EPA data set in Finder with AQI for major urban counties in the USA.

*Special thanks to Andrew’s wife Corrie for deciphering the enviro science for us. If you would like to get the PhD. version check out her blog on the topic here.

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Matt is FortiusOne’s Director of Operations and employee number one spun out of George Mason. In addition to keeping all the gears working at FortiusOne, he moonlights as a national team rowing coach. He’s worked his way up the ranks and realized his goal this summer of being selected as a coach for the Beijing Olympics for the womens quad. They won a silver at the Lucerne World Cup so keep an eye on them over the coming weeks. Matt has been sending emails on his experience in China and I thought it would be fun to give folks a first hand account of the Olympics from the inside.

Matt’s China Report

The course is beautiful especially when the air clears to see the starting line 2000 meters away and the mountains in the background. The boathouse is a modern structure with a dozen boat bays, upstairs air conditioned athletes rooms for stretching and resting, lounges and offices. The colors on the course are vibrant. Bright blues, greens, oranges and reds decorate all of the banners, grandstands, towers, tents and military barracks next to the course. Bike paths go around the full course and the coaches spend much time there, catching up with familiar faces from around the globe as well as taking video of practice, times and evaluating your crew and competition.

However, while trying to watch your team practice one needs be wary of the speeding cars that whiz by delivering apparently important people where they need to be. The venue is also home to a spectacular man-made whitewater river surrounded by grandstands. Whitewater canoes/kayaks used to be run on natural courses in the mountains, now they are built with huge turbines and elevators that carry the boats with the athletes in them for practice. If you get a chance to see this on TV you should check it out.

Today was by far the cleanest day and air quality that we have seen since we arrived. The countryside is awesome when you can see the mountains and have significant visibility. When we landed on Sunday, you literally could not see the end of the terminal or planes on the tarmac. I got to go to the Olympic Village downtown and was surprised to barely makeout the Bird’s Nest stadium and Water Cube pool, and I wasn’t more than a ½ mile away.

Our first day on the course was about the same and we could barely see beyond the grandstands which extend for nearly 500 meters of the 2000 meter course. They have added contingencies to the significant steps of closing down factories and cutting traffic in half through the even/odd last number on your driver’s license plate in order to cut down should the weather conditions make it necessary to reduce air pollution. At any rate, we hope it stays as beautiful as it is now.

Our hotel is an extremely nice five star about 1.5 miles from the course, nothing around but a beer factory, another hotel and agricultural fields. There is marble everywhere, much friendly help and importantly good food. As I mentioned before “certified food” was a big concern, but everyone is quite pleased with the diet. A significant amount of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables adorn every meal. Entrees include lamb chops, beef, chicken, pork, eggs, stir fries, rice, fried rice, spaghetti and a soup/hot cereal. Notably missing are desserts and cheese, which are hardly served and have people trying to get a cookie or chocolate fix from their personal stash. The bean curd dessert is okay, but is no ice cream brownie sundae.

Not only is there plenty of help at the hotel, but there are many people always around us. Security is tight and we literally go through security 11 times a day including 5 trips through metal detectors manned by hotel staff, military and Olympic volunteers. We bike to and from the course and there are many workers picking up bits of garbage with chopsticks, sweeping the road with bamboo brooms, watching the bridge, hosing down the freshly planted grass and flowers, guarding each property along the way, etc. Everyone has a job no matter how small. We are in an agricultural zone and I did a double take when I saw 15 people working in a field with a horse pulling a plow to till the soil. I’ve got to try and get a picture of it, because it is old school.

On the same note, no one makes a decision without multiple consults. At the airport, accreditation, security, the course and the hotel, we have asked a question and the person asked, immediately asks someone else, who then asks someone else and then a phone call is made and an answer brought back by as many as 9 people. Answers by committee for the good of all. It takes a while, but at the end of the day we are well served and have everything we need.

Rowers stand out in the real world and certainly here, we do not look like the locals, who look politely and with a certain curiosity at us. I always smile wave and and say hello in Chinese and it gets a huge reception. Just knowing about 3 words in Chinese and smiling to the same people you see everyday, whether it be the street sweepers or the venue management, shows an effort and garners a warm reception and big smiles in return.

Man hours put in to beautify Beijing are visible. From the airport to the Village and on our road are freshly planted and manicured horticultural displays that go for the full 25 miles to the center of the city. Additionally banners hang on lampposts that run the full length of the same roads at about 200 foot intervals. Certainly demonstrates why China is the leading textile producer in the world. The three major roads that we have been on have the same colorful banners displayed at the course that go forever. Immediately outside of the venue is a stretch of about a ½ mile with various flowers in pots and displayed in groups lined up. I decided on my run to give a shot at estimating the number of flowers and have come up with a reasonable guess at 100,000 little flower pots. I didn’t count the banners, but together the effect certainly beautifies the city. The flowers have been specially crossbred to withstand the heat and they have 4 million additional plants housed somewhere to replace these should something happen.

One of the highlights thus far has been going to the Great Wall. It is impressive. We drove the 45 minutes from the hotel to a gondola, which took us to the wall. The wall is built on many high ridges that go for miles and was meant to defend invaders from the north on horseback. Building on these ridges looks like an impossible task with steep canyons that appeared to provide adequate fortification. The wall itself is well maintained in the section we were at, but you could see a couple of ridges over there was an unrestored section that required attention.

As a tourist attraction, there are many vendors, including Tshirt sales, Coca Cola sales, Mao’s Red Book sales, silk pajamas, fans, magnets, chess sets, etc., all apparently for a dollar(until you stopped) from the estimated hundred of vendors on the path. Be prepared to negotiate. Also a live and very old camel which for about $1.50 you could sit on and take a picture was found at the base of the gondola.

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As the ESRI User Conference (UC) got under way I’ve been following the blog posts and twitter conversations, and have noticed a stark delineation being made at the UC between GIS “professionals” and “amatuers.” I’ve noticed the same trend in the ESRI literature including the latest ArcNews with an article by Jack Dangermond on “GIS and the GeoWeb.” The article sets Google and Microsoft’s GeoWeb applications as “consumer” and “simple mashups.” Further GeoWeb tools are, “not suited for the more complex work performed by GIS (data management, analysis, workflows, custom applications, etc.)”. The folks at Directions Magazine pointed out that at the UC, “Web mapping was not mentioned; Web GIS was, quite a bit. GeoWeb? Not that I recall.”

ESRI is not alone in drawing these distinctions with the GeoWeb. Mike Hickey, the President of MapInfo, stated , “the explosion of Neogeography is driving awareness [and] collaborative data consolidation [but it] isn’t GIS…there is no data creation and no spatial analysis”. In my mind the rhetoric of both companies comes down to defining their GIS users as professionals and GeoWeb users as amatuers. This has been a popular meme attacking Web 2.0 as a “cult of the amateur.”

I’d argue we’ve confused what a professional is. For a while in GIS there has been a push to define it as a profession. Are you a professional if have a university degree in or related to GIS, do you need certain number of “official” training classes, do you need a professional certification like GISP? While I do think these are potential ways to define a professional, I do not think those are the metrics being used by ESRI and MapInfo to define the market between professional and amateur and between GIS and GeoWeb.

The delineation I’d argue is simple. If I buy ESRI, MapInfo, Manifold, Intergraph etc., that makes me a professional. The distinction that is being drawn between competing software products is artificial in order to preserve market share. On one hand you have to define professional as broadly as possible to encourage people to buy your software, but on the other hand you have to differentiate it from the pesky GeoWeb by calling it simple and amateur. It is all arbitrary and the reality is the two are converging. The GIS companies are producing more consumer friendly products and the GeoWeb companies are producing more robust functionality for the exact things they are labeled as not doing (data management, analysis, workflow etc.).

I believe what makes some one a professional is expertise in a field, understanding both theory and practice, not knowing how to operate a piece of software. The future of software is removing operational skill so that there are as few barriers as possible between a users subject matter expertise and using the software tool. It is the “consumerization of software” trend that is becoming more pervasive across IT. It hearkens the end on an era where you are a professional because you know how to operate a piece of software.

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