00:01Now I have the big privilege to actually introduce to...the next speaker, this morning, Michael Goodchild.

00:07He definitely doesn't need further introduction that his name, his name has been very, for a long time, related to GIS.

00:14And for the last few years he has been one of the big advocates in actually trying to merge design and GIS.

00:21He has organized and hosted a number of events back in Santa Barbara where he's a professor.

00:27In sessions, brainstorming sessions, in expert sessions dealing with issues like How can we integrate design and GIS?

00:34And what are the concepts that sustain such integration?

00:38So without further delay, I would like just to welcome Michael Goodchild; please welcome with applause.

00:50Thanks, Juan Carlos, and thank you for the invitation to do this...

00:53...and thanks to Jack and Esri for being willing to host this, this meeting.

00:59It's great to be on the summit; the view is tremendous.

01:04I was thinking of this coming in this morning, looking at Mt. San Bernardino and Mt. San Gorgonio...

01:10...and thinking how wonderful it would be to be up there, to be able to see so far.

01:14And I think that's one of the wonderful things about a meeting like this, that we can see so far and see the vision of what might exist.

01:24But one of the things I have to remark is that I think the vision is enormous.

01:29It's as big as the horizon that one can see from the top of Mt. San Bernardino.

01:34And coming to grips with that is going to inevitably require us...

01:37...to come down off the mountain and to descend to a more practical level.

01:42And I want to do that to some extent in this talk by talking about GIS and where GIS has come from...

01:50...and where it currently is and how it might serve the needs of design better.

01:56So this is perhaps the beginning of a discussion that will go on for the next two and a half days...

02:02...on exactly what we do to move this agenda forward.

02:06So I think this takes us in a different direction from the previous two talks...

02:10...which I think provided a wonderful, motivating context for this, for this meeting.

02:15And I'd like now to look at the GIS issues quite specifically.

02:20So let me start with my interpretation of the GeoDesign vision...

02:25...and this is pretty much consistent with all the material that's on the Web site...

02:29...and with some of the discussions that have led up to this meeting.

02:33And essentially it has two parts, and I think it's important to emphasize the, the relationship between these two parts.

02:40One part is about input and editing and recording, and the word sketch is used very often.

02:47The idea that the user might be able to input a sketch of an idea, to have that input into the system, to do this collaboratively involving...

02:59...and there's talk of millions of people being involved in this process.

03:02To do it from different kinds of devices, from very sophisticated devices and very primitive ones...

03:08...to transform those sketches into features, to add them to a geodatabase...

03:13...and this is very much what ArcSketch has been building towards...

03:18And it's also something related to, for example, Google SketchUp.

03:22There's technologies of this nature out there.

03:26But then, the other half, and to me, this is very much the other half...

03:30...and that's the half which allows those sketches and ideas to be evaluated, analyzed...

03:37...to use prediction to see what the consequences would be, to modify them, to improve them.

03:42To do this according to well-defined procedures.

03:46And this, of course, is something that GIS is tremendously powerful at doing.

03:51We have in GIS an abundance of the kinds of tools needed for that process.

03:57So in some ways I see that this meeting is trying to bring these two topics together.

04:03Bringing together the idea of interaction and sketch and, and idea creation with evaluation...

04:10...based on the knowledge that's been accumulated in many disciplines.

04:15Now if this sounds familiar, of course, it is, and it's very much taking us back to the world of Ian McHarg...

04:22...and his school at the University of Pennsylvania...

04:25...because much of what McHarg was trying to do in that period was along these lines.

04:30It was using knowledge of meteorology, geology, hydrology, plant ecology, animal ecology, limnology, and computation...

04:38...and remote sensing to build the kinds of tools that would be needed to achieve that vision.

04:46And so one of the things we might do, and this, in fact, is, is a slide from a presentation that Jack and, and Carl Steinitz, and I...

04:53...made at the National Science Foundation in 2003.

04:57One of the things we might do is to try to move forward that McHarg vision...

05:02...and move it into the context of 2010 and see what, in fact, what has happened to that vision.

05:07So let me just briefly focus on, on what has happened to that concept from the 1960s, the design with nature concept...

05:15...because McHarg talked, of course, about layers, and at the time, his primary mode of operation was transparent layers...

05:23...superimposed on a simple light table.

05:25And it's easy, of course, to see how that has led, over the years, to the layer concept that underlies GIS.

05:33So in many ways, what we're doing with GIS today is an implementation of that 1960s idea which, for, of course...

05:40...a variety of obvious reasons McHarg wasn't able to, to implement to the kind of, of level that we can today.

05:48And here's a quote from a wonderful book, and I don't know if any of you have had a chance to, to read it.

05:53It's McHarg's autobiography. It was published by Wiley in 1996; it's called A Quest for Life.

05:59And he says, "For the first time, a department of landscape architecture could recruit a faculty of distinguished natural scientists...

06:04...sharing the ecological view and determined to integrate their perceptions into a holistic discipline...

06:09...applied to the solution of contemporary problems."

06:12I think that still stands as very much what underpins why we're here.

06:18That same thinking, I think, is very much here today.

06:22What he was talking about was integrating science into action.

06:25Integrating the knowledge that we have in a variety of disciplines into intervention and action in the community.

06:32This has frequently been emulated, but very often that intervention component has been weakened.

06:38And Jack will remember, in 2003, when we made this presentation at National Science Foundation...

06:45...and suggested the National Science Foundation might foster this kind of thinking.

06:50The first response we got was from one of the audience who raised his hand and said...

06:55..."That's the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life."

06:58The idea that you would take science and try to use it in a practical context...

07:03...was something quite alien to the basic scientists of...of the National Science Foundation.

07:08Moreover, I think the social context of this is missing.

07:12And it's something that today we would have to take much more seriously.

07:15And finally, computation and remote sensing, very primitive in the days of the 1960s, today, of course, are much more powerful.

07:23So if I were to try to move this forward, and this, again, is a 2003 slide, it would suggest this...

07:29...that computation and remote sensing are now an inevitable part of all of this.

07:35David Simonet and Waldo Tobler, in fact, were advisors to Ian McHarg back in the 60s.

07:39Bruce McDougal was hired; he was an author of a very early text in geographic information systems.

07:45And technology became a source of data, an engine for computation, a means of visualization.

07:50And it provided a framework that was formal and replicable.

07:54Something that could be defended in court...

07:56...something that could be shared between people because we shared an understanding of what it was trying to do.

08:03So 35 years later, this is 2003, has the science of intervention evolved?

08:09Has this evolved into something that we would recognize as the science of intervention?

08:14I think the answer probably is no.

08:17We have not achieved perhaps what, what McHarg hoped we might achieve.

08:21Has intervention become more scientific?

08:23Again, a debatable question, something we might want to debate here.

08:27Has the role of technology advanced?

08:29Yes.

08:30What are the components of that technology?

08:31Well, GIS is a very clear and recognizable component.

08:36And how should we update the McHarg model?

08:39So let me just spend a couple of minutes on that.

08:42The McHarg team of 2003; this is in contrast then to the McHarg team of 1965, 66; it would contain these days information scientists.

08:51We might call them geographic information scientists; they'd be concerned with information integration, information management...

08:57...semantic interoperability, visualization of scenarios, spatial decision support systems, public participation GIS.

09:04All of these things would have been alien terms in the 1960s, but today would be an inevitable part of that McHarg vision.

09:11Moreover, we would involve the social sciences, I think, and provide a much richer social context to all of this.

09:17So we would involve decision scientists, concerned with uncertainty and risk.

09:22We'd involve cognitive scientists, concerned with the design of human-computer interaction, treating IT as an enabling technology...

09:29...not imposing itself on the process.

09:32We'd involve social psychologists, who'd be concerned with the process of group consensus.

09:37So the science today underlying that McHarg model is much richer than it was in the 1960s.

09:44And we would intervene at, I think, a different scale.

09:47We would involve environmental economists.

09:49We'd involve political scientists in the process.

09:52So that's taking that McHarg concept from design with nature in the 1960s and moving it forward.

09:59Now let's focus on GIS, because meanwhile, GIS has been developing.

10:03GIS, over the past four decades, has become a technology for automated cartography, a technology for measurement...

10:11...a technology for management of assets, and for scientific discovery.

10:16But besides those, McHarg's vision is still one of the roots of GIS.

10:22The idea that GIS is a technology for design is there very much in parallel with GIS as a technology for, for example, management of assets.

10:32But at the same time, I'd suggest that the McHarg vision has somehow got lost along the way.

10:37We have become busy in GIS doing things, other things, with GIS, things other than design.

10:45So that today, I'd suggest that seeing GIS as primarily a design technology is somewhat unusual.

10:53And instead, I'd, when I teach about GIS, I teach about things like managing assets...

10:59...managing the assets of a utility company, for example.

11:01Very different from the design context of McHarg.

11:05So perhaps one way of seeing the business we're at here is in redressing that balance...

11:12...bringing GIS back into a more design-oriented technology.

11:17So coming back to my two parts, I see GIS as, I see this GeoDesign context, then, as having two related parts.

11:26The first part is sketch and record, user interaction, sketching ideas...

11:31...and the second part is evaluate, analyze, predict, model, improve.

11:36I struggled to find a nice, convenient acronym for the right-hand side.

11:41I couldn't find something that was pronounceable; I tried dropping some of the letters and substituting others.

11:47I'd suggest we make that one of our tasks for this, the next three days.

11:53I, I thought of referring to this as the yin and yang of GeoDesign, the left side, the right side, the reds and the blues.

12:01Somewhere there is an elegant way of expressing this...

12:06...that there are two interrelated parts that we must consider in our discussions here in the next couple of days.

12:11So taking that right-hand side, taking the yang, if you like, what do we know about EAPMI?

12:17What do we know about the yang of GeoDesign?

12:19What we know, I think, is that ArcGIS already has many, many tools that do many of these things.

12:27But these tools typically are in isolation, and they're not integrated with the sketch and record side of the yin and yang.

12:36We have the world of spatial decision support, and I want to credit Naicong Li and her group, who've done, I think...

12:44...a tremendous job in building the Redlands Institute SDSS portal...

12:48...which is a wonderful resource for spatial decision support.

12:52But this is still a little short, I think, of what we're here to discuss, which is a much more engaged process that involves the community at large.

13:03SDSS still remains, I think, a technology of the expert.

13:08So let me just cite a few examples, because these are the tools that already exist in ArcGIS for design.

13:15And perhaps what they will do is illustrate what a broad canvas we're actually here to discuss.

13:21The horizon is tremendously broad.

13:24So vehicle routing and scheduling, for example, we have numerous tools in ArcLogistics for designing, bus routes, delivery routes.

13:31We have numerous tools for optimizing travel on networks, minimizing fuel used, minimizing time, et cetera.

13:39So just a couple of quick examples. Here's a ArcGIS application for the problems faced by Schindler Elevator.

13:48This is designing their daily workload in downtown Los Angeles.

13:52Optimization to minimize the amount of time spent traveling between, between sites, the sort of thing...

13:59...the sort of design task that GIS can already do very well.

14:03Here's Sears, another client of Esri that uses the same kind of technology.

14:10There's one area where design already is there in ArcGIS.

14:15Location and allocation, finding the best locations for facilities that serve dispersed populations.

14:21Optimizing store sales, minimizing distances traveled, minimizing construction costs.

14:27All of them very much design but very much focused on infrastructure, very much focused on business.

14:33Very different from the kinds of examples we talked about in the first session today.

14:37So here, for example, this is actually a competitor; this is GE Smallworld, being used to optimize the location...

14:43...design the locations of Tesco stores in part of Britain.

14:47Here is some work I did 30 years ago on school districting in London, Ontario, again, using GIS to optimize the design.

14:56And we have abundant technology for locating linear facilities, pipelines, highways, railroads.

15:03Optimizing environmental impacts, construction costs, operating costs.

15:07Wildlilfe corridors.

15:09Just a couple of examples; this is something I did recently...

15:11...in the context of Native American, pre-Colombian populations in Southern California.

15:17This is trafficability; this is the central point is roughly the location of the Santa Ana Airport, and what it illustrates, for example...

15:25...is how easy it would have been for Native Americans to have passed through the Santa Ana Gorge into the Inland Empire.

15:34We can do this kind of thing with existing tools.

15:37Here's a wonderful example of using GIS for optimum design.

15:42These are the wildlife bridges over the Trans Canada Highway in Banff National Park.

15:47Very successful as ways of allowing wildlife populations to cross the four-lane highway without accident.

15:55And we've done a lot of work using GIS for land-use modeling.

15:59So, for example, we have worked on predicting urban growth, predicting land-use transitions.

16:05We have models that users can use to control parameters, control in, in, initial conditions, but expert users, that is...

16:13...experts who understand the models and understand how they work.

16:16So here, for example, is the work of Keith Clark, my colleague at Santa Barbara...

16:20...forecasting the development of the Santa Barbara area under various growth scenarios.

16:26A simple model, it's actually a cellular [unintelligible] that is based on simple variables...

16:32...such as existing land use, elevation, slope, and access to transport.

16:39Here's a model from the, from British Columbia, from the lower Fraser Basin, the quest model.

16:45This is much more geared towards public participation because the public is able to modify the parameters...

16:51...through a simple interface and then see the consequences in terms of predicting growth in the, in the Fraser Basin.

16:58So these are things we can do.

17:00But to come back to my earlier point; these are not integrated with the other side of the yin and yang.

17:06They're not integrated with sketch and record.

17:08They don't allow the non-expert user to participate in the design process.

17:13What they do, however, is something that I think is very much a part of this discussion and something that, in many ways...

17:21...captures what I visualize as the future of this technology.

17:25What I would like is to be able to bring up a map such as this, to design by introducing sketched features...

17:34...and then to press a button and have that button evaluate or predict or improve on my design...

17:42...by bringing the strength of GIS and all the models that we have available...

17:46...and all the scientific knowledge that we have to assess, model, and analyze my suggested solution.

17:54That's something that I think is all too often missing.

17:56It's something that we can conceive of doing given the strength of GIS in the background.

18:02So that's why I think this yin and yang is a very appropriate way to frame this discussion and to think about it.

18:09Just a, a few other topics I should mention briefly.

18:12One is devices, because I think part of this vision is that these solutions would be interactive; this would be an interactive technology.

18:21It might use physical analogs, and I'm sure we will see over the next couple of days, physical analogs including that table.

18:30I know, for example, the work of Leo DeSilva's group, which has involved the concept of...

18:35...of moving clay in a virtual environment...

18:39...actually shifting clay around, shifting various kinds of physical analogs around in a virtual environment.

18:48We can think of this as high end and low end; we can think of the high end as being virtual cave environments or tables.

18:55We can think of the low end as being nothing more than cell phones and Wii terminals.

19:00So a huge variety of possible devices might be used to implement this kind of vision.

19:05So here's just one example; this is actually the work of Antonio Camara's group in the University of Lisbon...

19:11...and this involves a table, and virtual features are being moved on the table.

19:16To, to go back to my vision, what I would like to see in a table like this is a set of buttons that I can press to bring all of the tools...

19:25...and all of the power of GIS and scientific knowledge to bear on assessing, analyzing, and modeling my proposed solution.

19:34And then another element that I'd suggest is something we have to include in this discussion is the wisdom of the crowd.

19:40We have to think about this not just in then, in the sense of the top-down process involving experts...

19:46...but also a bottom-up process involving millions of potential stakeholders.

19:51And that's something that these days, we can achieve.

19:54We have the crowd sourcing technologies, we have Web 2.0, we have mobile phones.

20:01This is the world of neogeography, and if you haven't come across that term before, it's a wonderful term.

20:07It refers to the ability of the average citizen these days to do many of the things...

20:11...that geographers have traditionally regarded as their professional expertise.

20:16It makes me a paleogeographer, which is a wonderful thing to think about.

20:22I don't know if you've seen anything of the MIT, the, the winning...

20:27...the competition that DARPA ran a couple of weeks ago that MIT won...

20:32...which involved crowd sourcing to solve the problem of finding a series of red balloons located across the United States.

20:40And MIT's solution was simply to very rapidly recruit a network of people, a network observ...

20:46...of observers across the country and to use the crowd to solve the problem.

20:51It's a very elegant kind of solution.

20:53I'd suggest that's part of what we have to talk about here...

20:56...the possibility that today's technology can include a vast array of potential stakeholders.

21:03So to try to pull this together, let me, let me ask the question Where do we stand?

21:07And I'd suggest that we have currently some of the tools needed to achieve this vision.

21:14Some of them are integrated in GIS, but they're generally scattered.

21:19And generally they're not integrated with the other side of the equation, with sketch, with crowd sourcing.

21:25They're not integrated with the part, kinds of participation that we can now achieve through interactive devices.

21:32And what's more, the set is not complete; there is some major holes, major gaps in the set.

21:38So I think these are the kinds of questions we ought to be thinking about.

21:42We have some devices, but the interoperability between those devices is very limited.

21:48People who have worked with things like tables have typically developed their own software unique to that device...

21:54...and have not integrated across a variety of different devices.

21:57And we have very few studies of how users react to these kinds of technologies...

22:02...what kinds of design criteria they want to see implemented to make the interaction as, as easy as possible.

22:09So what needs to be done?

22:10Here's my suggested set of ideas for what we can talk about in more detail over the next couple of days.

22:17Number one, I think it's important that we try to map out all of the use cases.

22:22It's easy to become focused on some limited problems of design.

22:28And I think we need to keep our horizon very wide and try to think of all the different kinds of design problems that we will face...

22:37...particularly in the context of Tom Fischer's talk, which raised a host of design issues.

22:43And somehow I think we need to enumerate what those are.

22:47Number two, I think it would be impossible to approach this problem holistically.

22:53The set of possible problems is so large...

22:56...it will be very difficult to be wise enough to design something to respond to all of them.

23:01So I'd suggest the strategy we need to use is a strategy of rapid prototyping.

23:06We need to select a few problems and prototype what our vision means for those problems.

23:13We need also, I think, to integrate new kinds of user interaction; this means sketch, this means new kinds of devices...

23:19...and this means Web 2.0 kinds of concepts.

23:23We need to learn from those prototypes, and I'd suggest we need to learn from those prototypes...

23:27...particularly in the sense of the reactions of users.

23:31It's the ability of users to interact with these technologies...

23:35...which is going to determine ultimately whether they get adopted and whether they get used.

23:39So that has to be an important part of the agenda.

23:43And out of this, I'd suggest that we can hope that a comprehensive solution would emerge.

23:50I don't think a comprehensive solution should be designed top-down; I think it's too early to see the wood for the trees.

23:57So, thank you very much for your attention.