Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Henry Grabar

How Lasers Will Give the U.S. East Coast Precise New Post-Sandy Maps

Henry Grabar, CityLab — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 11:43:52 -0400

Ten months after Superstorm Sandy made landfall on the U.S. East Coast, causing over $65 billion in damage and bringing New York and New Jersey to a standstill, one consequence of the storm is just now coming into focus: its impact on the shape of the coastline, underwater and above.

The storm's devastating effect on human settlements—flooded subways, submerged houses, and hundreds of fatalities—has been well documented. But as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begin a post-Sandy survey from Myrtle Beach to Montauk, its geological footprint remains largely unknown.

Revealing it, with the help of the laser surveying technology lidar, will be the first step of a program that will ultimately overhaul American cartography. By 2023, the USGS aims to have have the entire contiguous United States mapped with a margin of error of just a few centimeters.

It begins with the coastline of the Mid-Atlantic, as fickle a landscape as there is. The sandy shorelines that make the beaches of New Jersey and Long Island so popular with sunbathers ensures that their shape is, from a geological perspective, remarkably dynamic. Before human settlement shored up the form of Fire Island, for example, the 26-mile barrier off the coast of Long Island moved west at a rate of 150 feet per year.

The physics of sand is not rocket science; it may be even harder. Albert Einstein supposedly warned his son against pursuing it professionally. Accordingly, Jeff Ferguson, chief of the NOAA Hydrographics Survey Division, was reluctant to speculate about what the new maps will show. Underwater sand deposits may have accumulated, or receded. Changes may be limited to shallow depths, or not.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

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Get Ready for More Nights Without Power

Henry Grabar, CityLab — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:58:39 -0400

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Northeast blackout of 2003, the largest power outage in North American history.

For a while, this colossal disaster was a shared reference point for millions. We salvaged a tub of ice cream on the roof, hitched a ride home with strangers, directed traffic at a darkened intersection, and so on. Everyone had a story.

But a decade later, it seems a faded memory. For those in the affected area, recollections have been supplanted by disaster stories of Superstorm Sandy, and then some. Despite regulations tightened in response to the 2003 blackout, power outages – particularly those caused by the weather – are more common than ever.

According to a new report released by the Department of Energy this month [ PDF ], there were 679 widespread (affecting at least 50,000 people) power outages due to severe weather between 2003 and 2012. The cost of these incidents has been calculated to be anywhere between $18 and $70 billion per year.

There are two explanations for this spike. First, the grid is getting older. Second, the weather is getting (or at least has gotten, in the last ten years) worse .

Streetview Hack of the Day: Animate Segments of the Road

Henry Grabar, CityLab — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:30:00 -0400

We've all double-clicked our way down a road or two in Google Streetview, trying to get a stitched-up sense of a neighborhood or a landscape.

I'm happy to say that tactic will soon seem as antiquated as visiting the place itself. The Labs division of Toronto-based UX team Teehan + Lax has designed a software that turns any stretch of Streetviewed road into a hyperlapse, a timelapse with a mobile camera (like this one).

On the hyperlapse website, users select a stretch of road and watch its Streetview images blend into a movie, as if you had stuck your head through the sunroof. (Caution: assembling these clips works best in Google Chrome, and requires some PC power.) If you're feeling frustrated with the low frame rate or high video speed, Teehan + Lax have made the source code available so you can modify or remix the core technology.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

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Imagine a Digital Library in Every Bus or Train

Henry Grabar, CityLab — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:58:57 -0400

There's never a wasted moment when you have a smartphone, for better or for worse. Even underground users can patronize the "virtual supermarket," billboards that helps you make a shopping list later delivered to your door.

A group of students at the Miami Ad School envision putting that technology to decidedly more pleasurable use. "Underground Library," designed by Max Pilwat, Keri Tan and Ferdi Rodriguez, proposes a series of advertisements for the New York Public Library where a quick swipe could send the first ten pages of a book right to your phone.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

(Image via Amy Johansson/Shutterstock.com)

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New York's Real-Time Snow Plow Map to Get its First Major Test This Weekend

Henry Grabar, CityLab — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:30:38 -0500

PlowNYC, the interactive map that allows New York City residents to watch their army of plow-nosed garbage trucks deploy through the city in real time, will have its first test this weekend. Unveiled during last year's mild winter, it has yet to receive the same publicity as a similar program in Chicago.

But with a foot of snow in New York City all but assured by Saturday morning, PlowNYC is about to hit the big time.

The color-coded map illustrates the city's priority plowing system, with streets marked in red, blue, and yellow showing which streets should get plowed before others. After the city's last big blizzard, in December 2010, some residents and politicians accused Mayor Bloomberg ofabandoning the city's outlying areas, so the map could theoretically allay concerns that any particular neighborhood is getting preferential treatment.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

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