00:01Well, thank you for the invitation to join you today.

00:03Like Tom Fisher, I come from the design side of the equation, rather than the GIS side of the equation, and so I look forward to meeting...

00:11...and talking with many of you over the next few days to learn more about what you do.

00:16In my previous role at the University of Florida, I had some opportunities to work with GIS in some capacities.

00:22And I want to single out Paul Zwick who has taught my design classes GIS, and Iris Patten with whom I worked on a project last spring...

00:31...which involved GIS mapping.

00:32So I am enough to be dan...I know enough to be dangerous, I think, maybe just enough.

00:37What I’m going to talk to you about today is a bit about how design use...how design can build on GIS information, and then...

00:47... the second portion of my talk will focus on the creation of a National Academy of Environmental Design, which as we described...

00:55...here includes and incorporates the important role of evidenced-based design research in addressing the problems that our...

01:04...our globe faces and that Tom spoke about so well earlier this morning.

01:11I want to remind you all that visualization is something that human beings have been doing for a very, very long time, and a fairly recently example...

01:19...of this from Leonardo, who in these cases was studying floods on the Po River and proposed flood-control methods, about 500 years ago.

01:28We...if we had historians with us, we would find many examples of historical evidence of visualization as being an important part of studying...

01:39...the problem that then became solved in various ways, and one might argue that the way we’ve been visualizing things in our cultures for the ...

01:47...last few hundred years has led to some of the challenges that we find today.

01:52So, at the end of my talk, when I talk about visualization and creating meaning through design-based representations, images, I would argue that...

02:01...that’s not sort of eye candy, but that’s a really central part of how we understand the world...

02:06...and that’s what many of you do for day-to-day living.

02:11I’m going to talk about two projects first, both done by colleagues who I’m working with at the University of Virginia, just to give you a sense...

02:19...of how a designer thinks about using GIS, and then talk about the National Academy.

02:24The first is the project, Albemarle. Albemarle is the county that the University of Virginia is situated in, and this is a project that’s...

02:32...intended to communicate the results of ongoing research to the public and to local stakeholders.

02:39It is a Web site that was created by my colleague Lucia Phinney, and as you can see at the bottom of this, she utilized a GIS platform...

02:49...to create a basis for this Web site.

02:52So, the Web site itself is not interactive, but the way it was created was interactive, and I’m just going to go quickly through a few of the pages in this Web site.

03:08So you can see in the Web site she has used the McHargian, some of the kind of general McHargian systems that...

03:16...can be highlighted to pull out critical features that members of the public would understand, such as the forest cover...

03:27...the soil setter in Albemarle County, and the urban coverage.

03:32So here you see Charlottesville and another small town, Crozier.

03:38She has identified the different subbasins as you can see here, and the quality of streams in those subbasins.

03:46How impaired they are and, I don’t know where she got this information, but presumably she was working between GIS...

03:53...and other resources that were available at the county level.

03:58She identified in a very diagrammatic way the way that the infrastructure works now, where water comes from, and where...where wastewater flows.

04:11And again, on the Web site, all of these are active sites, and the current water supply infrastructure, and the proposed 2055 infrastructure.

04:24She built this site so that members of the local community could understand how their water worked, where it came from...

04:30...where it was going, and how they could improve its quality.

04:33And, so one of the uses of GIS, and I...I personally I think it’s a very elegant and simple way to understand a local watershed...

04:43...that will be useful for members of the local community, as they make the deci...make the decisions that need to be made.

04:49So it doesn’t obviously have the complexity, nearly the complexity that GIS has, but it is something that we...we hope...

04:57...she hopes, will be user friendly.

05:00A second example is the Palisades project.

05:03This is creating beautiful evidence to facilitate research in cooperation...

05:08...with governmental agencies, foundations, other institutions, and organizations.

05:13The portion in italics is part of the mission statement of, as was the last case, for the National Academy of Environmental Design.

05:21And these projects obviously were not done under the umbrella of the National Academy of Environmental Design...

05:27...but I've selected them to indicate the kind of work that I hope that all of us can do together, to advocate for a more sustainable world.

05:36And I wanted to also give a...give re..., make reference to the man who created the term "beautiful evidence," who you may or may not be aware of...

05:47...Edward Tufte, who’s trained as a statistician and graphic designer; he worked at Yale for years and he's very good...

05:54...and has really made the later part of his career into the creation of evidence that is beautiful and also accurate.

06:03And I think that that's where this discipline that you all are co-creating must come together; it must do both.

06:10So the Palisades project was...is still ongoing.

06:16The key...the principals are Guy Nordenson and Catherine Seavitt, and Adam Yarinsky at Princeton University...

06:24...And Guy and Catherine are currently also at the University of Virginia for this year.

06:29Their project looks at the Palisades Bay, which includes Lower Manhattan, a portion of New Jersey, and a portion of the other side.

06:38Sorry, I'm from New Jersey, so whatever that other side...

06:43And, it was done initially with support from the American Institute of Architects.

06:50Several years ago, they won the Latrobe Prize, which is a $100,000 research prize, and so this project in its first phase, and I’ve grabbed...

07:00...about six or eight snapped pages from a 200-page booklet that they've produced, so I'm not by any means doing justice to this, but this...

07:09...has been disseminated through AIA channels.

07:11They're currently working with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and they just cosponsored a six-week charette...

07:18...invited charette in New York City, where teams were selected to work based on their research that they'd done.

07:24The project has been mentioned in the New York Times and in other places, as well.

07:28So, I selected this both because it's built on a GIS platform, or at least the analysis phase was, and because they have been very...

07:37...strategic about reaching out and building support through the AIA sponsorship with the Museum of Modern Art, which has a...

07:45...a constituency that is at...at a certain level, interested in sustainability, but this I think will drive the point much more deeply...

07:53...into the consciousness of their membership and others.

07:56And as you might be able to guess, it's about hurricanes and how they might hit New York City.

08:04I'm not going to go through this, but early on, well, relatively early on, they talk about using GIS to build the analysis model.

08:12I have...I happen to have this whole PDF on my jump drive, so if any of you would like it, I’d be happy to share it with you...

08:19...so you can evaluate the credibility of it, because you probably can do that much more thoroughly than I can.

08:27So, but some of these maps should look familiar; this...so this is land cover, this is Manhattan, this is New Jersey...

08:34...lots of the shipping areas. this is that other part of New York, somewhere over there.

08:41Land use, elevation data, and...and then its inverse, water.

08:49Looking at slush, so, in a hurricane, and...and I'm also from Florida - now you know everything about me.

08:55We care a lot about tidal surges when there are hurricanes, because even though they don't stay for very long, they can do huge damage.

09:02Of course, that’s part of the problem with Katrina; the other part was that the water didn't drain, of course.

09:09But, slush you might also imagine could be a problem that would be similar to sea level rise, except that it doesn't drain out again.

09:18So this is kind of the money shot.

09:20Here we have a one-foot inunda...inundation, and this is a close-up, so this is Lower Manhattan, two feet, four feet,...

09:30We go to a Category 2 hurricane, and then a Category 4 hurricane.

09:35And you can see how much of Lower Manhattan and New Jersey is inun...are inundated with a Category 4 hurricane.

09:43And, as you know, there’s...there are many arguments made that the hurricanes, as other kinds of storms, will become more...

09:50inten...intense with climate change.

09:52What this does, I think, is more powerful than lots and lots of verbal testimony to Congress.

09:59It helps you understand things like, even with a Cat. 2 hurricane, which is no big deal at all, that's, you know, you can look at...

10:07... the real estate value of that...that’s all...those are ports, so the lost income and revenues and things like that, not to mention...

10:16... real estate problems in this part of Manhattan.

10:20So, very simply, and with the tools you have, you could also make them go live and probably drag a mouse over something...

10:27...and figure out if this is out of service for four days, how much revenue is lost while the water’s draining out, or over two months...

10:35...while you're fixing things after a storm.

10:39So, that...that's sort of the analysis phase, and they went through a very thorough design process themselves, and this is just...

10:48...one snap where they look at you reutilizing the bay for local ferries, to a greater degree a local transportation, to...

10:56...a greater degree and incorporating these things that I think are intended to kind of kill the tidal surges, kind of artificial reefs.

11:05And then they looked at ecosystems, habitats, and the creation of elements in the bay, and of course you can...with Photoshop and things...

11:14...like that you can very easily present to members of Congress or others an important proposal that may not be so easily visualizable, otherwise.

11:25And Guy, I believe is a structural engineer; Catherine is a landscape architect, and architect by training...

11:32...and Adam is an architect by training.

11:36So, those are just some examples of the important work that we need to be doing that incorporates GIS as a foundation...

11:44...and the work of very good, committed designers, to improving the physical world and the way human beings inhabit it.

11:52I'm going to now switch gears and talk about the role of the National Academy of Environmental Design...

11:57...in advancing evidence-based design research.

12:01First of all, there’ll be, I'll briefly mention four things - who we are, what our mission and purpose is, our government...

12:08...structure and our research.

12:10I want to begin by, and I'm happy to talk about this in more detail over lunch or whatever, but we, many of us, began the development of...

12:19...a National Academy of Environmental Design several years ago, as a companion to the National Academy of Sciences...

12:25...Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, which are the key scientific academies that provide much of the scientific...

12:34...policy advice that governs the Congress of our country.

12:38When I began look at...looking at these things, as many of you have, you recognize that...

12:42...none of the disciplines that we're in are very well represented in these disciplines.

12:47In fact, when we met with the president of the National Academy of Engineering, we had a bit the same reaction as the...

12:54...NSF proposal, which is, what are you kidding?

12:57What do you...what do you all have to contribute here?

13:00And yet, as we all know, in between pure research and human behavior, is our disciplines.

13:07And so, it's very important that if we can't be involved through these disciplines, we have a way with enough...

13:14...enough impact to make our case heard as well.

13:18And that's why we've created the National Academy of Environmental Design.

13:23We started with the disciplines listed on the right, which are, the...including interdisciplinary groups, and we reached out...

13:33...to them, created a steering committee, so that rather than all of us individually going to Congress, which of course we can still do...

13:41...or going to the NSF, or, you know, going to our provosts, or things like that, we can work together because...

13:49...we believe that we can be more effective, and we need each other, as we can see, in these kind of interdisciplinary groups.

13:56We need the expertise that comes from the various people in this room.

14:00So, we have now collected the major architectural organizations, construction, communications design, interior design...

14:10...landscape architecture, planning, and related disciplines, and...and formed a steering committee, which has now led to an...

14:21...organization that's a not-for-profit in Washington, D.C.

14:25We have leadership from each of the disciplines on...on an executive council that includes Tom Fisher who spoke this morning and...

14:35...Fritz Steiner who will be speaking later today and the support of others of you in the room who I won't embarrass at this moment.

14:45Our mission is to serve the public by promoting the flourishing of individual communities, and the natural world through...

14:51...the sustainable design and stewardship of human and natural environments.

14:58And we have looked at four goals, two of which I identified earlier to facilitate research and cooperation with government...

15:07...agencies, foundations, and other institutions and organizations to communicate the results of ongoing research to the public...

15:14...and other stakeholders.

15:16If we're just keeping it to ourselves, or going to our professional associations, we're not making an impact in the larger world...

15:22...at least, not very quickly.

15:26And then also, and this is very important and what many of you were talking about this morning already...

15:30...to develop and maintain a multidisciplinary knowledge base on the complex interrelationship of individuals, communities...

15:37...and the planet.

15:38GIS certainly isn't the only tool that will do that, but it's a very important and very powerful tool.

15:45And then to foster scholarly cooperation and exchange, which is why I am so pleased to be have been...been invited today...

15:51...because certainly for me as an audience member, I'll be learning a lot from all of you.

15:57As I mentioned, we have a council which has representatives at this point from all of the major design...

16:03...environmental design disciplines.

16:06Officers, and that...that includes...as I mentioned, I serve as the president...

16:12...Tom Fisher, I hope some of these other names are representative as well.

16:22And a research committee, which has been...is just being formed, Jim Wescott of...Wescott of MIT...

16:31...is the chair of the committee, and he is beginning to put together an agenda.

16:35He is also a member of the National Research Council, which is the resource arm of the National Academies...

16:42...so we see him also as one of our sort of people in the room to remind folks in the...the academies, that what we're doing...

16:49...is important to what they're doing.

16:52And we have begun to create a research map, we...and we've identified, mostly based on Web sites which are notoriously inaccurate...

17:02...and out of date.

17:03But based on some of the organizations that are involved, various categories of work that we do in communities, human factors...

17:12...pedagogy, preservation materials, performance, construction, innovation, visualization, which as I said goes back to...

17:20...Leonardo, the economy, and the practice.

17:23And you can see that although these may be incomplete, for instance, this is the organization that I used to be president of...

17:29...and that Tom Fisher is now president of, that the ACSA, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture...

17:35...focuses in some of these areas but less in others.

17:41And then just sort of pulling apart, you know, taking the...the organizations out, I just would like to end with this slide to suggest that GIS,...

17:50...the tool that you all work with so well, and have such important ambitions for in the future, deals certainly with...

17:58...communities, with human factors, with the built environment, including preservation and contr...conservation...

18:05...perhaps with material science applications in certain ways, easily with risk and resilience, certainly with construction.

18:13It is about visualization and communication in the most fundamental way.

18:18Design economy, of course, is what it's often been used for in...in planning and real estate decision making...

18:24...and it is transforming the profession through its...through its very presence here with us.

18:30So with that I'll conclude. Thank you for your time.

18:39Yeah, I'm happy to answer questions if you have any.

18:44Any questions?

19:01[Audience question] Kim, I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about how trends in parametric design at the level...

19:08...not at the regional scale but perhaps...but at smaller scales, from individual buildings up through urban design street......

19:15...streetscapes, neighborhoods, and so on, how that...that trend toward parametric design within architecture is linked,

19:27I have a feeling you may be able to do that better than I can, or someone else in the room, but I'll start...

19:31...and then maybe ask others to join in.

19:34I think that as we develop tools that allow us to make decisions in real time and to make those interactive with other kinds...

19:44...of software, we should be able to nest these things.

19:47So what I could imagine is that something that's being done at the scale of an individual building might be locked in...

19:53...somehow to something that's done in a GIS circumstance, or multiplied times a hundred for a retirement community, or...

20:01...something like that, so that they might work together better than they do now, in order to make smart decisions.

20:09But, again, I suspect you...you have another answer in mind. Okay. Okay. I welcome...

20:14[Inaudible audience question]

20:17Yeah, yeah, well, and as I hope some of you know there are pretty powerful tools being developed at the scale of buildings...

20:25...that also contain information and so, when in fact the project that I worked on with Iris was looking at the Apalachiola basin,...

20:35...which starts north of Atlanta and drains into the Gulf of Mexico.

20:39And, one of the problems that we found is that deci...it was zillions of local decisions in Atlanta that were impacting water quality...

20:46...in the Gulf of Mexico, and if you could use smart software in designing buildings in Atlanta, you could then, I mean, at least...

20:54...in theory, figure out how to change the water flow in the Gulf of Mexico, and those tools do exist, they're just not...

21:01...so far as I understand, connected yet.

21:06Any other questions? Please raise your hand.

21:11[Audience question] Evan Girvetz from the Nature Conservancy in the University of Washington.

21:15I found it interesting that the National Academy of Environmental Design didn't have really any representation from colleges or the...

21:21...conservation community, environmental sciences.

21:24I'm wondering, if there was a reason for that, is it too much along the lines of the National Academy of Sciences...

21:30...or if you guys are thinking about going in that direction?

21:33This is a question, again, that Fritz and Tom could also answer, and we're happy to talk as much as you'd like during the course of...

21:39...the con...conference about this.

21:42We wanted to start by making sure that we were being equitable to all disciplines, first of all, and that we were equitable between...

21:52...the practice or the professions and the academy.

21:55And so we felt that by bringing in the major organizations, for instance, the AIA represents professionals...

22:02...the ACSA represents the academy and architecture.

22:05This was a way to get some kind of a balance.

22:07And...and on our council, for instance, the AIA, which has 68,000 members, has one seat, so does CELA...

22:14...the Council of Educators and Landscape Architecture, that has 40 member schools, something like that.

22:20So, we wanted to, at...at the beginning, give everybody equal space.

22:26We also felt that it was important that we begin with organizations because it gets peoples' attention initially, so that when we talk...

22:38...now when we talk to people in the NSF, and mention how many environmental design folks we represent, because it's so broad...

22:47...it makes more of an impression with them.

22:50We're in the beginning process of doing two things that address your question.

22:55One is, we're developing, right now we have only institutional members.

22:59We're developing a kind of a...a supporting membership, which mem...which universities, or individual practices...

23:08...or not-for-profit organizations could join at some level, and that I hope will be a way for us to connect each others' knowledge...

23:16...because that's...that’s one of the big problems that we have.

23:18So, that's very close to coming online; we're already doing it for universities - we haven't reached out to nonprofits.

23:25And the...the second thing is that the dean at Washington, Daniel Friedman, has brought to us, who's the incoming ACSA president...

23:34...has brought to us the idea of having a council of deans, because of course many of our universities are interdisciplinary...

23:42...and so that will provide another form of advice for the group as it moves forward.

23:47We're just going as quickly as we can of course and we’re getting there.