Bringing Free Broadband Service to a Washington, DC Community with the Help of ArcGIS.com
Last month I attended Washington, DC’s “DC Community Broadband Summit” which discussed ways of improving broadband service coverage in the Washington, DC community. I was really struck on how much broadband service affects the lives of all types of people and their business in urban communities. Prior to this meeting I had some knowledge of what broadband service provided to communities but I had no idea the true effect it had on the community. I could write another post on that itself. As part of this effort to improve broadband service the District launched a free wifi pilot program in the neighborhood of Bloomingdale for residents and businesses. This pilot program was designed to provide area residents with free wifi and internet access on a limited scale to help improve business and lives of community residents. There is a great article describing the efforts here http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-neighborhoods/2010/10/bloomingdale-free-wi-fi-project-launches-3774.html.
After the launch of this broadband program in Bloomingdale, discussions began to arise to launch a similar program in the neighborhood of Anacostia around the intersection of Martin Luther King and Good Hope in Southwest DC. I was fortunate enough to be granted the opportunity to become part of this discussion to launch a wifi program in Anacostia. When I was approached about the project I began to think how we could integrate GIS into this project to help identify potential broadband broadcasting locations for the free service. As GIS became a key part in the planning process for this project I began think about what information we needed to map to provide the community with optimal information to roll the project out quickly and find the perfect infrastructure locations. Working closely with members of the Anacostia community and the District of Columbia we decided to developed an online map at ArcGIS.com that community members could populate with information about community resources such as schools, libraries, churches, community centers, commercial districts, building complexes, etc. to help identify an ideal location to broadcast the broadband service from. Engineers could also access the maps to look at LIDAR data the District had collected to identify building locations that had elevation levels desirable to broadcast service from that had optimal line of sights. ArcGIS.com is GIS data sharing site that allows you to share maps created in GIS with personnel who are unfamiliar with using GIS or don’t have the software. ArcGIS.com allows you to view the maps online (with an interface similar to google maps) and add points, notes and all information they wish to see added to the maps in a very user-friendly format. Utilizing ArcGIS.com was the quickest way we could execute this project as we were able to utilize all existing GIS data on the city that had been uploaded to ArcGIS.com. We found that all the information we needed already existed in the ArGIS.com database. Thus, there was no need for additional data collection.
Upon brainstorming techniques of how the public would populate the map in ArcGIS.com by using the Map Notes tool, we analysed the quirks of the program and looked at potential problems that we may encounter as people begin to populate the maps with comments. Ideally we wanted to create a user group where people could individually log in (as an individual user) and submit their comments. We ran into a problem when making comments as individual users using Map Notes. When creating notes by logging in as ourselves to ArcGIS.com the comments we made in the map would save locally to that particular user. This meaning that only I could see my notes that I made to the map for example, and people I shared the map with could not see my notes. Has anyone else encountered this before? As a result we decided to create a new (generic) user that everyone would have access to and be able to insert comments to the map. This way all the comments would appear on one map in one place.
Our goal here was to establish the best and easiest practice of sharing information about the community and get feedback from members of the community through interactive mapping. We hope that this process will set an example and motivate other communities in Washington, DC as well as around the country to develop free wireless and wifi broadband coverage programs in neighborhoods to strengthen economic growth for struggling businesses and improve the lives of individuals who are not fortunate enough to have internet services.
