American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: A Guide to Housing Related Opportunities for Making Connections Communities

Outlines stimulus funding for housing-related programs and coordinated strategies to help low-income communities benefit. Suggests policies to promote, including advancing green and healthy housing and addressing the foreclosure crisis. Lists resources

City Open Data Policies

The capture and analysis of data is transforming the 21st Century. As society becomes more data driven, data has the ability to drive the bottom line for private companies and help the public sector to define where and how services can best be delivered. In City Open Data Policies: Learning by Doing, the National League of Cities identifies how cities can take advantage of the opportunities presented by open data initiatives.SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONSLeadership: Political support stands out as one of the key requirements to implementing a successful open data project.Appropriate Legislation: Enacting legislation or formal policies is a crucial step toward ensuring the growth and sustainability of open data portals. Funding: Open data initiatives do not require high levels of funding. It is, however, important that the programs have their own budget line items where resources are specifically allocated. Technical Approach: Leading U.S. cities rely on commercial platforms that facilitate the implementation of open data initiatives, provide technical expertise, and ensure 24/7 customer support, often at a lower cost than providing these services in-house. Stakeholder Involvement: Open data is a two-way process. It is, therefore, essential to encourage participation and engagement among multiple stakeholders including: community members; non-profits; universities; the press; businesses; city departments; and other levels of government. Many cities adopt a flexible, and usually informal, approach to interact with the stakeholders. Measuring Success: Developing evaluation tools should be an integral part of any future open data policies

Geo-questionnaire in urban planning – preliminary results of the experimental application in Poland

Changes in the attitude of local authorities towards the public participation in the decision making processes have prompted development of new methods of such involvement. As far as the urban planning is concerned, of particular potential is the so-called Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS). One of the tools used for the purpose is a geo-questionnaire, combining the benefits of a standard questionnaire and a map, which permits collecting information on particular sites and on the respondents’ ideas on localisation of new objects and functionalities.Within the project “Geoportal supporting public participation in urban planning”, in the years 2015–2016, a study was undertaken to explore the effectiveness and usefulness of the geo-questionnaire. Five pilot studies were performed in the Poznań and Łódź agglomerations. The geo-questionnaires concerned the local spatial management plan in Rokietnica (Poznań agglomeration), landscape protection in Łódź, conception of the transportation system development in Łódź, conception of urban design of the Łazarski Market in Poznań, and the Map of Local Needs in the city center of Poznań. The aim of the study was to present the preliminary results of the initial implementations of geo-questionnaire developed within the project Geoportal supporting public participation in urban planning. The applications of geo-questionnaire have been analysed taking into account the characteristics of implementation areas, characteristics of users, the effectiveness of recruitment methods and opinions about the tool from two points of view: the respondents and the recipients of results

Egyptian electronic government: The university enrolment case study

E-government projects have potential for greaterefficiency and effectiveness of government operations. For thisreason, many developing countries governments have investedheavily in this agenda and an increasing number of e- governmentprojects are being implemented. However, there is a lack of clearcase material, which describes the potentialities and consequenceexperienced by organizations trying to manage with this change. TheMinistry of State for Administrative Development (MSAD) is theorganization responsible for the e- Government program in Egyptsince early 2004. This paper presents a case study of the process ofadmission to public universities and institutions in Egypt which is ledby MSAD. Underlining the key benefits resulting from the initiative,explaining the strategies and the development steps used toimplement it, and highlighting the main obstacles encountered andhow they were overcome will help repeat the experience in otheruseful e-government projects.Keywords—Case studies, Egypt, Electro

Brochure

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Integrating big data into a sustainable mobility policy 2.0 planning support system

It is estimated that each of us, on a daily basis, produces a bit more than 1 GB of digital content through our mobile phone and social networks activities, bank card payments, location-based positioning information, online activities, etc. However, the implementation of these large data amounts in city assets planning systems still remains a rather abstract idea for several reasons, including the fact that practical examples are still very strongly services-oriented, and are a largely unexplored and interdisciplinary field; hence, missing the cross-cutting dimension. In this paper, we describe the Policy 2.0 concept and integrate user generated content into Policy 2.0 platform for sustainable mobility planning. By means of a real-life example, we demonstrate the applicability of such a big data integration approach to smart cities planning process. Observed benefits range from improved timeliness of the data and reduced duration of the planning cycle to more informed and agile decision making, on both the citizens and the city planners end. The integration of big data into the planning process, at this stage, does not have uniform impact across all levels of decision making and planning process, therefore it should be performed gradually and with full awareness of existing limitations

Web-based PPGIS application for participatory spatial planning in context of bikeability

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe spatial planning processes are complex and require public participation to get insights about important problems and development of the neighborhood from the communities during final decision-making. The traditional participatory methods offer limited two-way communication just inform the public rather than to obtain suggestions from them and few public can participate due to time & location restrictions. Due to low public empowerment, they do not know how their participation can influence the spatial planning and decision-making process. This study tries to design and develop the web-based Public Participation GIS application with the integration of the internet, public participation, and GIS technologies to increase public participation during spatial planning and decision-making to overcome the limitations of traditional participatory methods. The web-based PPGIS application development is based on open-source technologies and allows the participants to visualize spatial data layer, perform spatial analyses and contribute to increasing and improving the bikeability of the city. The user study experiment is conducted to evaluate the usability and usefulness of the application. The evaluation results show that the web-based PPGIS application is easy to use with a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 84.6 and an effective approach to increase public engagement and give suggestions on the spatial planning process and decision making

Gap Analysis Report

Julkaistu versi

Responding to Cross Border Child Trafficking in South Asia: An Analysis of the Feasibility of a Technologically Enabled Missing Child Alert System

This report examines the feasibility of a technologically enabled system to help respond to the phenomenon of cross-border child trafficking in South Asia, and makes recommendations on how to proceed with a pilot project in the selected areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The study was commissioned by the Missing Child Alert (MCA) programme which is an initiative led by Plan. MCA is an initiative to address cross-border child trafficking in South Asia, led by Plan. The aim of the programme is to link existing institutions, mechanisms and resources in order to tackle the phenomenon from a regional perspective. To achieve this, Plan propose to implement a technologically equipped, institutionalised system of alert that can assist in the rescue, rehabilitation, repatriation and reintegration of children who are at risk of, or are victims of, cross-border trafficking