In this episode of Data-Smart City Pod, Professor Steve Goldsmith interviews Christine Ma, the Urban Planning Practice Lead at Esri Professional Services. They talk about digital twins, the built environment, and cloud-based planning.
In this episode of the Data-Smart City Pod, Professor Steve Goldsmith interviews Christine Ma, the Urban Planning Practice Lead at Esri Professional Services. They discuss how cities can use digital, cloud-based copies of the built environment as a foundation for urban planning and community engagement, while addressing sustainability, resiliency, and equity. Christine also highlights lessons she's learned from supporting cities in their planning work, including the importance of change management and sharing best practices.
Music credit: Summer-Man by Ketsa
About Data-Smart City Solutions
Data-Smart City Solutions, housed at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School, is working to catalyze the adoption of data projects on the local government level by serving as a central resource for cities interested in this emerging field. We highlight best practices, top innovators, and promising case studies while also connecting leading industry, academic, and government officials. Our research focus is the intersection of government and data, ranging from open data and predictive analytics to civic engagement technology. We seek to promote the combination of integrated, cross-agency data with community data to better discover and preemptively address civic problems. To learn more visit us online and follow us on Twitter.
Betsy Gardner:
Hi, this is Betsy Gardner, senior editor at the Harvard Kennedy School and producer of The Data-Smart City Pod. Since we started this podcast, we've had great support from our listeners, and to make sure that you don't miss an episode, please find us under the new Data-Smart City Pod channel wherever you listen. Make sure to subscribe so you get each episode, and thanks for listening.
Steve Goldsmith:
Welcome back. This is Steve Goldsmith, professor of the practice at Harvard's Kennedy School with another one of our podcasts. This one today featuring Christine Ma, who's in charge of urban planning practice at Esri. Welcome, Christine.
Christine Ma:
Thank you, Steve. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's a real pleasure to be here today.
Steve Goldsmith:
Well we're glad to have you. The breadth of your experience relates directly to the interests of so many of our listeners. Let's start a little bit before we get to the cool things you're doing, how did you get to Esri? What are you doing there and what's your background?
Christine Ma:
My background is in urban planning and that's where my education experience and passion really intersects. I went to undergrad in China where I grew up and actually started my career there with several master planning projects during China's rapid urbanization period. I then moved to the US really because I wanted to learn from and experience a more bottom up and participatory approach to planning. I got my master in urban planning up at Cornell University and then joined Esri right after that. Today I lead the urban planning practice at Esri Professional Services. Our practice consists of a team of urban planners, designers, and GIS analysts who, like me, are all passionate about leveraging data and technology to modernize planning workflows. We work closely with county and city planning departments as well as architecture engineer and construction AEC firms to modernize their planning workflows and reach their sustainability goals.
Steven Goldsmith:
Most of our listeners are acquainted with the basics of mapping tools. They're either in the mapping or they visualized and seen the results of GIS. But just explain a little bit, what are some of the most advanced features of ArcGIS as applied to planning? How are you thinking about the use of data when visualize spatially to enhance planning? What's the forefront of that practice?
Christine Ma:
That's a good question. When talking about Esri's approach or solutions in planning, I think one of the solutions that we talk about at Esri is actually ArcGIS Urban, which is a web-based scenario planning application that focuses on evaluating planning policies like zoning and then use and simulating urban development that is scenario planning within the data driven environment. The tool was officially released back in summer 2019 and it's been adopted by local governments and planning firms around the world since then.
Urban, as we call it, essentially merges a digital copy of the built environment with 3D modeling tools designed to support key planning workflows like creating and evaluating zoning and development scenarios, streamlining project review and digitally engaging with planning stakeholders including the public. So when we think about different data sets that need it in the planning process, the tool really enables urban planners and designers to integrate on alternative scenarios for land use, zoning updates and urban developments, and report on key metrics like affordable housing, environmental impact, employment opportunities, and trip generation for example. They can really perform interactive spatial analysis as well to evaluate things like shadow and line of sight to analyze and visualize new development proposals in their context.
Steve Goldsmith:
So much there. Let me take apart that just for a second. That was 10 really interesting things. So when you talk about digital twinning, is that the same thing you just said or is that a part of it or is that a different thing? The scope of the visualization tools you mentioned, Would you call those digital twinning?
Christine Ma:
Definitely. I'm glad you're asking about digital twinning. We recognize that it's important to sync in the digital twin framework in order to address some of the complex and interconnected challenges like climate change or the pandemic that are facing our cities today. At Esri, actually one useful way for us to look at digital twin is thinking of it as a framework, breaking it down into different stages in terms of real reality capture, visualization, analysis, simulation to systems and IOT integration, and most importantly, how it's being consumed and utilized by different professional user groups as applications and solutions. I want to emphasize the last stage, which is very important and often overlooked. So when we talk about digital twin, data itself, like the 3D model of our cities or a laser scan of a facility, it's not a digital twin, it's a step in that direction.
The core purpose of a digital twin is to simulate and test experiences in the digital world to help us make better decisions in the physical world. The general approach we propose is to twin the individual sub domains by defining the workflow and modeling needs of different professional user groups for their desired outcome. Basically start with a problem that we like to solve with the digital twin. So that means we can create versions of the digital twins that manage and visualize the high level of complexity and also the interdependency in a tangible way, all based on the common and connected dating environment. I want to provide an example here. So we have sustainability advisors and environmental engineers who can analyze climate vulnerability in terms of sea level rise in the environmental twin. And that visualization and insight can flow into what we call planning twin to inform planners decision making in zoning and development policies, for example, to avoid building in those high risk areas.
Their performance-based planning scenarios will then inform architects and construction managers in a design and constructions twin between and all the way down to an operations twin to monitor and track operational metrics across multiple scale from city all the way down to building level. for example, the operations twin at the facility level will enable facility managers to view operational metrics across their portfolio on key KPIs like energy consumption, carbon footprint, and occupancy. This aggregated information can then feedback into the environmental twin and also the planning twin to further track if we're moving towards our sustainability goals at a larger scale.
What we're trying to illustrate is really we can use location as the common thread that connect each twin and build on the foundation of ArcGIS. And now you will look back and think about planning twins. Urban planners now have the benefit of integrating all of this relative data sets and to inform their decision making in the planning twin. So really the overall key for digital twin is that we want to deliver the right data to the right people through the right type of application or interface to help them make data and performance driven decisions based on the digital twin framework
Steve Goldsmith:
We're in Boston, and one of the references from recently has been looking at augmented reality and building shadows as part of the planning process as it relates to Boston Commons or whatever. So that augmented reality, moving the building around and seeing what the shadow lines will look like, would you consider that part of digital twinning for planning purposes? Would you consider that part of community engagement or is it all the above?
Christine Ma:
I think it was both, one of the way to consume analysis and the result coming from a digital twin. And it's also a really engaging way to inform the public on what more abstract planning terms mean in terms of shadow analysis or when we talk about density, what the 30 units per acre mean. I think those type of 3D visualization coming from the digital twin analysis done in the planning twin or the digital twin is a good way to engage our public.
Steve Goldsmith:
You would provide the platform and then work with the city to figure out what data.... Let's say you're dealing with curb and sidewalk for a second and the city is interested in pedestrian density on that carbon sidewalk. That's not something they would have, but they could purchase anonymous cell phone data that shows density. Whatever can be organized spatially could be connected to your spatial platform?
Christine Ma:
That's correct. We are talking about the digital twin framework is really built on the foundation of enterprise GIS systems, which continuously updated the data and also integrate with other systems to keep the twins current and accurate in terms of the sidewalk example. So as you mentioned, there might be third party data provider who is able to provide that data. It could be IOT sensor who is able to track the people's movement on the sidewalk and the data can feed into the operations twin to help city to really see how the citizens are utilizing our public space. And that data or information or analysis can be done through a heat map or through some kind of a hotspot analysis. And that information can be consumed by planners in the planning tool to help them make decisions about street skip design for example.
Steve Goldsmith:
Christine, you wrote an article. I loved the headline "Fire Destroyed in Oregon town. 3D Tools helped carve out a measure of hope." What do you mean measure of hope? How do you use 3D visualization to create hope?
Christine Ma:
That's a really inspiring story coming from the city of Talent, Oregon. Talent is a small city of around 6,000 people in southern Oregon and was significantly impacted by the Almeda wildfire in September of 2020. This proportionally impacted the lower income and immigrant communities in their city because agriculture and farming is a big industry in talent and naturally a lot of the migrant workers were undocumented and therefore were not eligible for FEMA funding to rebuild or reacquire their homes like other members of the community. So really with the goal of housing the immigrant workers as soon as possible, we worked with the Talent Urban Renewal Agency to set up ArcGIS Urban to really create and evaluate multiple development phases for a specific project called the Gateway Project.
What we are able to do is to visualize and communicate the short-term plan of installing 53 trailers on site and then also the longer-term phase or longer term plan to develop a mixed use community to connect the citizens or residents with affordable housing options to create more longer term affordable housing units on site. Right now, the trailers have been installed on site and people finally have a home again after two years without one. I would say this type of stories and also this type of impact that is really getting me up in the morning and motivates me and the rest of my team here to go a little further and to really push our technology and our people to the next level to make a positive difference in planning
Steve Goldsmith:
The stories like this are inspiring. ArcGIS allows one city's approach to be more easily replicated in another. Why don't we have more cloud based replications? Why don't we have more ArcGIS based replications than we do? What would help cities move over and apply what another city has done?
Christine Ma:
That's a great question, really. Based on the work I've done with local jurisdictions, I see one of the key challenges for this type of technology adoption in general is change management. For example, planners have been doing things a certain way for a very long time. What we've been doing from Esri professional services team, is conducting what we call geospatial strategy workshops with our clients to really illustrate their existing workflow along with all the pinpoints and gaps that exist in that workflow to help inform the vision for the future. And really we try to get the teams to recognize that the pain of change is much, much less than the pain of staying the same. And really in terms of how to go about driving adoptions of those cloud based tools and the digital twins approach, I've seen success with the three key approaches.
First, we need to get a champion within the department in both planning and ideally within IT and GIS as well. So having one or even a group of planners who see the value of the new approach and are able to demonstrate the value to the larger teams through a project is a key. A great example I have is the city of Boulder. A team of three, a planner, urban designer and a GIS analyst really saw the value of conducting center planning using ArcGIS Urban. They basically implemented it through one sub-community plan and now are establishing a documented process and workflow to follow the same approach to update other community plans coming up all using ArcGIS Urban. They created their own house for change internally and have built momentum that others in the departments are latching onto as well. And second, we see a lot of success if the department establishes the initial operating capability of this application or this new approach through one focus project or workflow update.
Either it's going to be a quarter plan, a housing element update, a zoning reform or updated proposal review process. The point here is that moving to the cloud can sound very intimidating. Where do I start? How are we going to go about doing it? But if we reframe this as solving a real issue or conducting a real project to drive efficiency in an existing project, then we can get buy in more quickly by achieving some really quick wins. And the third and final point is really essential and often overlooked. And that's that we really need to provide adequate training and learning opportunities to planners to support their learning and modern modernization.
They need access to fast practices and stories from other cities that are using technologies similarly, and really, they need to feel like they are not on the island out there. Not only are we here to support you, but there are others who were in your shoes not too long ago and you can learn from. Those three approaches have really helped, as I think about driving the adoption of new tools or new technology, finding a champion, deploying the app through a focus project with a clear objective or a winning goal, and supporting longer term staff enablement. And if we can hit on all of the three, then we have a pretty good chance at success, and more importantly, the planners will have the best opportunity to optimize their investment in the technology. Really, everybody wins here.
Steve Goldsmith:
Just in conclusion, Christine, if you look out three years, what areas of local government, what areas of neighborhood quality of life do you think could be most improved by the application of the work you do, the digital twinning, the urban labs and the library?
Christine Ma:
What I can think of is really still coming down to the foundation of the digital twin. We need data and accurate data across not only I'm talking about departments, but also between public and private sectors, to really enable this digital twins platform and to allow the visualization, the analysis, the insight to flow across different departments and across different entities to help us compact some of the really complex issues we're facing. That's where I see technology can make a difference here. How we are able to create that standard about data aggregation and data integration among technology providers, but also among stakeholders in the built environment in general to be able to figure out how we can share that data, how we are able to consume that data by different organizations to help us make decisions that will improve the quality of life of our built environment.
Steve Goldsmith:
This is Steve Goldsmith from Harvard's Kennedy School, thanking Christine Ma for her terrific insights and great work helping to apply the spatial analytics tools and digital twinning to the future of cities. Thank you, Christine, for your work and for your comments today.
Christine Ma:
Thank you, Steve. Great discussion with you.
Betsy Gardner:
If you like this podcast, please visit us at datasmartcities.org or follow us @DataSmartCities on Twitter. And remember to subscribe at the new Data-Smart City Pod channel on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. This podcast was produced by me, Betsy Gardner, and hosted by Professor Steve Goldsmith. We're proud to be the central resource for cities interested in the intersection of government, data, and innovation. Thanks for listening.