Economic Summit addresses on key issues June 12, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Collaboration, Education, Events, Urban Growth.Tags: GPEC, KAET, Phoenix
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The Greater Phoenix Economic Council, held an economic summit at the Decision Theater, in response to the global financial crisis as it related to Arizona.
The event brought together business and civic leaders, members of the state legislature and educators in an open and informal dialogue to collaborate and map out the economic future for Arizona. The on-site panel of 25 thought leaders addressed questions from an online audience from 25 states and two countries, and the media.
It was very different kind of summit. Not just a pool of talking heads, but an interactive event, where the leaders looked at What-if scenarios, using the seven screens in the Drum as a digital dashboard.
- We had planned to boost the event in a few different ways.
- Using a streaming video service that renders the data on the seven screens in high definition.
The combination of both face-to-face and online exchanges proved extremely valuable; the online ‘attendees’ – more than 700 attendees from 27 states and three countries – also interacted with the on-site participants, submitting questions, and taking polls online.
- TV: For an idea of the economic issues raised, check out the TV coverage on Horizon, form the local PBS affiliate, KAET, Phoenix. Link here.
- Podcast: Listen to podcast on the event. Link here.
- Poster: Link here.
Carbon-neutral Phoenix March 13, 2009
Posted by Angelo in ASU: Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Collaboration, Energy & Climate, Urban Growth.Tags: carbon neutral, green neighborhoods, Phil Gordon, solar
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In yesterday’s Arizona Republic, the big story about the mayor’s strategy to position Phoenix as a carbon-neutral city, pointed to 17-point plan. While it has been described as ambitious and quite a reach, the groundwork has been laid here. Some areas resonate closely with the work that goes on here at the Decision Theater.
The 17 points of the plan are:
- Greener Neighborhoods
- Solar City
- Urban Mobility
- Green Homes & Green Businesses
- Desert Hydroscaping
- Making Public Buildings LEED Certified
- Greening Central City
- Discovery Triangle Smartscape
- Renewable Energy
- Energy Efficient City Lighting
- Hometown Agriculture
- Developing Canalscapes
- Beyond Sustainable Schools
- Phoenix Regional Desalination Plant
- Transportation & Information Communication Technology
- Urban Riparian Waterways Rehab
- Sustainable Phoenix
Stories we seldom tell January 29, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Alternative Futures, Collaboration, Education, Energy & Climate, Media, Urban Growth.add a comment
I spoke to a journalist recently and he asked me “why don’t you guys send us press releases?”
Not an unreasonable question –if you visit our center and look at the projects in the lobby or visualizations in the Drum– since there are many stories that we seldom hit up the media with. There’s a good reason we don’t do a lot of that. Much of the work is often proprietary; when it is completed, the client does the publicity. Sometimes that makes an even more powerful story.
Take the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway project, now a 3D visualization we feature. The East Mesa area has been getting great mileage from the work we did on the project. We worked with the Office of Economic Development, and helped them and other stakeholders understand sound contours (seen as rings in this image, left) that they could see on a Google Earth platform across seven screens. They could also hear it in surround sound! That helped them plan development compatible with aircraft flight paths. Mesa gets plenty of good press about the development.
Then there’s the ongoing work with the Arizona Board of Regents. Because it involves three state universities –and we happen to be in one of them — We maintain a neutrality on this since and the work we do doesn’t get the typical kind of PR.
Other ongoing work involves the National Science Foundation, helping them with energy policies, and work on Light Rail plans in the East Valley. So yes there are stories we don’t holler about, for good reason.
But you soon will. Starting this year, if you care to subscribe to this blog and our Twitter feed, you might get the inside scoop.
Should buildings “talk?” January 24, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Design, Energy & Climate, People, Urban Growth, Visualization.add a comment
Would buildings one day communicate with you?
When I ask my colleague Dr. Robert Pahle about the ability to connect a database to a visualization of a city, his answer is “they don’t now, but they should!” If he has his way, they soon will.
He is currently using the City of Tempe model (a very popular 3D model we use here) and embedding it with rich data. Soon anyone would be able to pull up real-time information about a building and look at its footprint, he says –the carbon it generates, the energy it consumes, the number of occupants, the parking spots available in the underground garage etc.
We could take it further, and make that data available online, so you could have that data sent to your Blackberry via a text message –if it is that critical that you have it in near real-time.
We are at an early stage of interacting with our environments. Notice how energy ‘calculators’ are catching on.
- The Global Institute of Sustainability has a great one as part of the Campus Metabolism project.
- The University of British Columbia web site shows the real-time consumption and savings at the Vancouver campus –in terms of copy paper used, greenhouse gases saved etc.
- There are simple ones like this, and carbon footprint calculators, and green building calculators.
Armed with this granular knowledge of our local environments, you could use it to make better decisions, whether it is what school to enroll your child in, which organization to do business with, or which city to set up your factory in.
Peering into 2009: Passive houses and Food Miles? January 8, 2009
Posted by Angelo in ASU: Global Institute of Sustainability, ASU: School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Design, Energy & Climate, Urban Growth, Water.add a comment
I field a lot of inquiries from cities and those looking at complex challenges. Five minutes into the call, I often get the feeling that the Decision Theater might be coming across as some Magic Kingdom, which holds a proprietary crystal ball.
Instead of the crystal ball consider the DT as the Rosetta Stone, that uncovers what ASU’s President Michael Crow once described as ‘the underlying algorithm.’
We do engage a systems-based mindset to look at the long view of disease management, education, urban planning, and national security. So in this first week of 2009, here’s my take on what’s beyond the river bend:
- Passive Houses — a way to build heat recovery, insulation and passive solar gain into the structure
- Energy harvesting – a way to grab interior light as store it in photovoltaic cells
- Corporate hybrid fleets –will become mandatory, instead of fashionable
- CleanTech –there will be a big push to innovate and “redesign our relationship with nature and energy,” as Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Group observed.
- “Food Miles” –the concept could make its way into labeling and marketing
- Water-Energy issues. Nine out of ten of the fastest states are in the West, where there is abundant sun. Future energy resources will need more water. Future water supplies will draw on more energy.
- Sustainable Cities – new cities will set these standards and pressurize those that are unsustainable to retrofit their ‘operating system’
- ZEB – remember these three letters. They stand for Zero Energy Buildings. Many growth decisions (for business and government) could be influenced by a new set of metrics and tools.
Predictive modeling for water, scary but necessary December 3, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Urban Growth, Water.Tags: Michael Campana, Oregon State University, WaterSim
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Michael Campana’s post about “thinking about the unthinkable” after his visit to the Decision Theater, is worth a read. Good summary of water rights in Arizona
Especially since Mr. Campana is Director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University.
Big picture thinking, why is it so hard? October 3, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Energy & Climate, Urban Growth, Water.Tags: Arizona, DCDC, Water
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I was at a meeting yesterday morning where the discussion soon turned to how easy it is to look at a report or a set of charts and come to a ’small picture’ conclusion.
We create models –the mathematical, 2D and 3D kind– here at the Decision Theater for clients that project out 20 or 30 years. But even as ‘big’ as this is in the big picture scheme of things, people easily run off with slices of this information just because it suits their agenda or world view. Water scarcity, a big picture scenario, doesn’t look so bad if you make certain small picture assumptions.
To come at this from a completely different angle, Al Ries put it bluntly saying “No computer is as smart as a human being with a holistic point of view.” Ries, a marketing expert, was talking about “holism” and applying the need for holistic marketing thinking.
He asks why mathematicians and scientists “who developed the art and science of risk management” built models that could “comb through complicated mortgage portfolios to analyze everything,” and still been so off the mark. (A number that involves 7 and 11 zeroes, to wit!)
The answer, of course, is that they looked at risk up close, but not from a holistic, interconnected perspective.
The same goes for water, transportation, education, health. I like to tell people when presenting big picture concepts in the Drum, that even though we put things into nice buckets, we need to pay attention to the connections. Education planning involves transportation and urban growth –where would teachers live, how far will students travel, how many buses need to be in the school system?
Yes we do zoom in, move slider bars, tweak demand and supply. But we make sure people don’t undervalue the need to zoom out.
Dell’s green road trip bristling with social media September 28, 2008
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Education, Energy & Climate, Urban Growth.Tags: Arizona State University, ASU: Global Institute of Sustainability, Decision Theater, dell, Grist, ReGeneration
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Dell is no newbie to new media. I have been tracking them for more than two years, especially Lionel Menchaca’s parlay into social media with the hugely popular DirectToDell, its attention to the blogosphere, its presence in Second Life, the new Digital Nomads effort, and even the use of Twitter for marketing Dell Outlet,
So when I heard Dell’s latest social media effort, a 15-day, 15-city sustainability road trip with non-profit group Grist was headed to ASU and stopping right here at the Decision Theater, it sounded like a program worth writing about myself. On Friday, Todd Dwyer, Dell’s Environmental blogger, came by with Sarah van Schagen, an editor for Grist.
The reason for the visit was to look at ASU’s role in sustainability, with the School of Sustainability, and our work with the Global Institute of Sustainability.
The ReGeneration blog has some interesting features, steeped in social media. There is the grafitti wall, exploiting web 2.0 to get visitors to contribute to contribute ideas to the site. Videos are posted to Quik, and there’s a graffiti art contest with entries like the one on the left.
They have two posts, and two videos worth checking out.
The rest of the road trip is worth following, too!
