Building an ecosystem services software solution for Dow and The Nature Conservancy

Two Unlikely Partners

Several months ago, we wrote about our involvement with a project that has brought together two seemingly unlikely allies: Dow Chemical and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). These two organizations, working with guidance from EcoMetrix Solutions Group (ESG), have spent the better part of the past four years developing a program called the Ecosystem Services Identification and Inventory (ESII) program. The collaborative effort seeks to quantify the value of environmental reforms. The ultimate goal is to provide tools to help companies track and consciously improve their environmental stewardship.

Our Role

An integrated software solution is the centerpiece of the ESII program. Our team was brought in to help shepherd the ESII Tool from vision to reality.  We have collaborated with TNC, Dow, and ESG to design and build a software system that allows users to define and track their natural resource assets and to score their individual and collective environmental benefits. The tool allows for the tracking and valuation of nature in a manner that is analogous to how companies have traditionally worked with capital assets in their business operations.  Users are provided with tools that help them develop and refine property management and enhancement strategies by exploring alternative management scenarios and their associated scorecards for ecosystem services and functions.

An Ecosystem Services Software Solution

Our team has built a software package that includes a front-end iOS application (targeting iPads), coupled with a web tool and that harnesses a connected series of ecological models. These models are used to take inputs from the iOS app and compute scores that are presented to users of the web tool. A process that used to take months can now happen in minutes!

We’ve been in the development and testing stages since the spring. Throughout the summer and fall, we have progressively released editions of the solution for review and field testing by team members. This agile approach to software development allowed us to test, fix, and refine the functionality in chunks, and to work out what would be the optimal approach to meeting functional requirements and to provide the ideal user experience. This process resulted in some major refactoring of some of elements of the software (the survey component, for instance, got a major overhaul based on tester feedback).

iPad app

The ESII tool iPad app is the main tool for field work. With it, users can go out into the field in order to define and characterize areas of a property in terms of observed ecosystem services and functions. The main part of the tool is a survey, where users indicate the types of habitat, vegetation, surface conditions, and other data that helps give an inventory of the properties current ecology. In addition to the survey, the iPad app allows users to draw new map boundaries around parcels, or edit existing maps. They can also take photos and add notes and other media.

Because so much field work is in areas without connectivity, we built the iPad app to allow the user to work even when they are not connected to the Internet. The app will download the maps and survey data into its cache for disconnected editing. Once the user gets back into network range, their work is synced with server resources (see “Web Tool” below) and their peers iPads. This is a key requirement for anyone doing remote work.

Web tool

The field data gathering starts with the web tool that we built - on the AngularJS platform. With it, users setup the data gathering projects (we call them Data Collection Efforts, or DCEs) and then, once the DCE is complete, run QA/QC on data gathered in the field. Once they’ve completed the QA/QC, they run the data through a series of ecological computation models.  Processed results are presented in reports that basically represent an environmental scorecard for the property.

Users may then use the “alternative analysis” functions of the web tool to create “what if” situations.

• What if we remove this parking lot and replace it with a grassy meadow?
• How does “scenario 2” compare with “scenario 3” in terms of carbon sequestration scores?

The web tool allows them to create such a scenario and then see how it impacts the scorecard. Using such a tool can inform changes in land management regimes and then allow companies to monitor the actual results and track progress according to defined metrics.

Models

Within the web tool there are complex models that take field-gathered inputs and use them to develop scores for properties in subsection and in total. Scores range across a variety of metrics related to a defined list of ecosystem services and functions.  In particular, we are looking at the “regulating services” which consist of:

• carbon sequestration and climate regulation
• waste decomposition and detoxification
• purification of water and air

The models themselves have been progressively developed and refined over years and through many field trials by experts at Ecometrix. In the past, using the models to produce scores was a tedious and largely manual task that involved a long sequence of data transformations and format conversions; it required great care, meticulous attention to detail, and great patience. Depending on the size and conditions of a field collection effort, the typical turnaround time, from data collection to viewing results, could range from weeks to months. By automating and deploying the models in private cloud infrastructure, we’ve turned that process into a single-day operation; go out in the field in the morning to collect data, and by the afternoon, have the results.  The models themselves can now process field inputs in a matter of seconds.

Version One!

There is now light at the end of the tunnel(!), as we prepare for a Version 1 release at the end of December. Our initial users will be Dow employees who will use the ESII tool (as it has come to be known) at Dow sites worldwide. Their use of the tool will start the process towards helping Dow realize the goal of the Ecosystem Services Identification and Inventory program; to help the company save money by enacting environmental reforms. Their use of the tool will also help us as we build Version 2, which is slated for adoption by other companies keen on realizing the benefits of making measured progress in tracking and enhancing their natural assets.

New PSU Campus Map

Headed to Portland State University in Portland, Oregon this fall, but don’t know your way around campus? Or, headed back to PSU and looking for a better way to find what you’re looking for on campus? Don’t worry. You’re covered!
The Gartrell Group recently finished work on, and released, Version 1 of the PSU Campus Map. It’s a responsively designed site, so it can be used on your mobile device as well as your laptop or desktop computer.

Everything you need

When you open the map, by default, every building on campus is highlightable. Click on the building to find out the name, see a picture and have the option to dig deeper.

The powerful search engine uses autocomplete to help you quickly find what you are looking for, from specific rooms to departments, or even administrative offices.

Themed Maps

In addition to the search function, there are theme maps that help you quickly find what you are looking for. Since transportation to and from school is pretty important, the Transit and Parking maps are at the
top. Included are all of the MAX (light rail), Streetcar and Bus stops. Click the icon on the map to see links to arrival times.

If you need to park on campus, there are two options within the Parking map; Hourly/Daily and Permit. When you turn either, or both (you can turn on every theme map, if you want, but the map may get a bit crowded!) parking maps on, the lots on the map are highlighted. Click on one to get more information about it.

Food is also a pretty important thing to a hard-working college student. The map has three food-related layers; restaurants, coffee shops, and food carts (because, Portland).

While most people on campus have a laptop these days, not everyone has a printer in their dorm room or apartment. The Computers layer of the map shows the location of all of the campus computer labs, where, probably of more importance than the actual computers, there are printers located for student use.

Also included are a variety of campus tours. The PSU Campus tour map highlights important features on campus, from the recreation center to the campus bookstore. The Art tour map is a guide to PSU’s large collection of sculptures, paintings and other art installations. From LEED buildings to bioswales, a cycle track to a field made from recycled sneakers, the Sustainability tour puts PSU’s leadership in urban sustainability on the map. Literally.

Share it!

What modern app would be complete without a share option? With the PSU Campus Map, the share option is always present. It’s easy to quickly grab the URL of the map view that you are looking at and email it, Facebook it, Twitter it, Yik Yak it – the list is long, the point is simple; you can share whatever you are looking at on the map with whomever you’d like, however you’d like.

Tech details

PSU needed a map that was easy to maintain and update and ideally did not require a specialized map server to deliver their map data. After analyzing PSU’s needs, The Gartrell Group designed the solution around an AngularJS-based web application using the Google Maps API. The colored campus overlay is stored in a geographic tile cache of images on an Apache Web Server while the data for the buildings, parking lots and transportation information are stored in geoJSON files on the server.

GeoJSON is a format for encoding geographic data within JSON formatted text files.  Because of the tile cache and geoJSON files, no specialized map server is required and any web server can be used for this solution. When PSU wants to update the map, they simply replace the tile cache or the geoJSON files. PSU generates the tile cache and geoJSON files using standard GIS tools.

Reduce Stress with this Analog Map of the Week

Squeeze to Zoom!  (If you squeeze hard enough, you can get to street view)  Check it out in the Web Urbanist.