This page serves as a summary page for news, updates, and publications related to the community mapping project entitled “mapmycity.org”.
Summary
Our project provides an easy-to-use web application that empowers local groups to effect positive community transformation by measuring and visualizing the health of a community. Our multi-faceted approach has led to the development of three websites: one for visualizing statistics (mapmycity.org), another for mobilizing volunteers (servemycity.org), and a third website for managing the allocation of resources (resourcemycity.org).
Mapmycity.org uses two different types of visualizations to display community statistics. Markers designate the spot location of positive resources as well as that of negative influences such as the location of abandoned houses. Our second visualization is the display of color-coded heat maps summarizing data for a particular region based on the aggregate value of the data for that region. We have matched our heat maps to the region boundaries used by the Census Bureau. Both of these types of visualizations are shown in Figure 1.
Servemycity.org connects community needs with volunteers willing to serve the community. We do this by collecting survey data for an organization that identifies specific skills of their volunteers. Then we match those skills with the service projects that have been entered into the website. The service projects are displayed on our visualizations available in mapmycity.org.
Resourcemycity.org will facilitate charitable donations and route the donations to areas of greatest need. Donations can be time/money or in-kind. This portion of the project is still under development.
Figure 1 – Marker and heat map visualizations of a community.
Publications and Presentations
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- March 2011 – 49th ACM Southeast Conference, Kennesaw, GA – paper | presentation
- November 2010 – ACM Mid-Southeast Fall Conference, Gatlinburg, TN – abstract | presentation
- October 2010 – Teagle Foundation mini-grant – summary report
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