“What gets measured, gets managed,” goes the business truism. The idea applies to the design of cities and infrastructure, too. And the emergence of big data—massive sets of raw information made possible by new collection and storage technologies—is making possible new measurements that can inform how state transportation agencies plan and manage their projects.

Consider the work being done by the State Smart Transportation Initiative. Founded in 2010 at the University of Wisconsin, SSTI uses new data troves to guide real-world land use and planning decisions. By combining and analyzing data on questions ranging from how people access transit stations to how easy it is for them to get to work or the grocery store, SSTI is shedding light on patterns that can inform future decision making.

In 2018, SSTI began operating in partnership with the nonprofit Smart Growth America (SGA), whose programs include serving as a resource for state departments of transportation. SGA had collaborated with SSTI on multiple editions of The Innovative DOT: A Handbook of Policy and Practice, a guide for “for DOTs committed to innovative excellence.” The partnership now works with more than a dozen transportation agencies, functioning as a kind of policy knowledge base and providing direct technical assistance.

One key to making the most of big data is finding the right framing. “Accessibility means looking at ‘how accessible is this place?’ as opposed to ‘how fast are the cars going on a certain part of road?,’” explains SSTI Director Eric Sundquist. This more holistic approach is not a new idea, but it’s one that’s gaining momentum, partly because of richer data and more sophisticated tools for sorting it. In recent research, SSTI defined accessibility as “the ease with which people may reach opportunities such as jobs, stores, parks, schools, and other destinations. ‘Ease’ is measured in terms of travel time, with some adjustments to account for how travelers use the system.”

Among other projects, SSTI has been working with the Virginia Department of Transportation, whose Smart Scale program draws on a range of big data to “score” transportation proposals submitted by counties and municipalities on their likely ability to improve accessibility to jobs. The most recent round also incorporates access to non-work destinations such as shopping and parks.

As an example, an SSTI planning exercise focused on improving non-work-destination access in Vienna, Virginia. One track of analysis explored how beefing up a walking network and bike path could better connect the town’s main street to other neighborhoods. But another track considered a scenario that involved a shift in land use: encouraging the commercial development of an underused area on the southern edge of town. The latter actually led to higher-scoring accessibility improvements than the hypothetical transportation projects.

This scoring scheme draws on population, employment, and land use data; auto data; transit service data that’s now largely reported in a consistent format thanks to Google Maps; and bike and pedestrian data. Depending on the project, more data can be added, like job categories and neighborhood income. This opens up broader thinking about how “accessibility” can be improved, measuring whether the best option is building new pedestrian infrastructure or working to place a grocery store in a food desert.

“We’ve made people aware of this in our community of practice,” Sundquist adds, so that other DOTs can build on the same ideas. And indeed, transportation officials from Hawaii recently worked with SSTI to try to take the scoring process “a step further,” he continues. “We scored all their projects on a weighted accessibility basis. So if a project provides more access by transit in relation to auto, it will suggest how modes might shift.” The state is evaluating SSTI’s results now.

Such data represent both improvements on existing information-gathering methods and measurements that are altogether new, observes Amy Cotter, associate director of Urban Programs at the Lincoln Institute.

For example, she says, planning decisions have often relied heavily on transit survey results, which are “expensive to collect and sometimes questionable.” So the emergent technologies SSTI is harnessing—including “trip-making data” culled from services that aggregate information from GPS-enabled vehicles, navigation devices, and even smartphone apps—are an enticing alternative. “These new data are providing better information at lower cost to prepare agencies, planners, and state DOTs to make better decisions,” Cotter says.

The Lincoln Institute partnered with SSTI in a 2017 project, “Connecting Sacramento,” along with a variety of public and private entities and stakeholders. The resulting study, which catalyzed much of SSTI’s more recent work, sought to assess how these new data sources, and new tools for understanding data, could help improve transportation policy.

The Sacramento research included a case study on walking trips to and from a particular transit station. SSTI worked with traffic analytics startup StreetLight Data, which has devised methods for assessing GPS signals with machine learning to distinguish walking and biking behaviors. Walking and biking have at times “gotten short shrift” in planning efforts, says Sundquist, precisely “because they’re so hard to measure.” So adding this new information to other transportation and land use data sets can lead to new discoveries. In this case, the data pointed out an unexpectedly high percentage of foot trips between the transit station and a particular cluster of office buildings. This was surprising, given that the buildings not only had ample parking, but also were accessible on foot only by way of a single route—across a freeway. The study argued that, in light of this finding, improved or additional access points would improve conditions for current commuters and encourage more to join in.

Such analysis, of course, can often be miles ahead of the realities facing a state department of transportation. But programs like Virginia’s Smart Scale rating system suggest what big data analysis might lead to. Continuing advances in data collection and analysis should mean we will be better able to evaluate the impact of any given project, and better able to compare that to what was predicted—and adjust for the future.

The “what gets measured gets managed” cliché is sometimes used, inappropriately, to argue that what isn’t (or can’t be) measured also can’t—or even needn’t—be managed. But as Sundquist argues, these new forms of transportation data and analysis can be considered as an opportunity. They can reveal practical, actionable information. And they can also help planners, transportation managers, and others think creatively about what they wish they could measure next.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. His book The Art of Noticing will be published in May 2019. 

Image: Mapping and data analysis by the State Smart Transportation Initiative can help transportation officials make more informed decisions. This map shows transit patterns in the Sacramento area. Credit: State Smart Transportation Initiative

For some people, Santa Monica conjures images of sunshine and surfing. But the southern California city should rightly be known for sustainability, too. The City Council adopted the Santa Monica Sustainable City Program in 1994; twenty-five years later, the city has made measurable progress on projects ranging from retrofitting buildings to embracing renewable energy. The council selects a new mayor every one to two years, ensuring fresh perspectives at the helm. Most recently, Gleam Davis was sworn in as mayor in December 2018, after serving on the City Council since 2009. Active in the community since moving there in 1986, she has been involved with the Santa Monica Planning Commission, Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, the Board of Directors of WISE Senior Services, and the Santa Monica Child Care and Early Education Task Force, among many other organizations. As corporate counsel for AT&T, she has worked with KIND (Kids in Need of Defense), which represents unaccompanied minors in immigration courts. Before joining AT&T, Davis prosecuted civil rights violations as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and was a partner at the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp. A native of California, she holds degrees from Harvard Law School and USC. Davis and her husband, John Prindle, have one son, Jackson. She spoke with Lincoln Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Flint about Santa Monica’s sustainability efforts, which have been heralded by OECD’s Champion Mayors, for this issue of Land Lines. 

Anthony Flint: Does Santa Monica’s system of having a mayor for two years present a challenge for sustainability efforts, which often are slow to get going—and to pay off? What are the projects that can have the greatest impact through your upcoming term?

Gleam Davis: I don’t think it creates much of an impediment to the sustainability agenda. The mayor and the mayor pro tem are members of the entire city council. The city council sets the policy, adopts the budget, and drives the city’s policies. Then it’s the city manager who does the implementation. Whatever policy direction is given to the city manager is from a vote of the full city council.

On the sustainability front, the big news is we are now part of a group called the Clean Power Alliance, where the default provision for customers is power that is 100 percent sourced from renewables. This is helping us take a big leap toward energy self-sufficiency. People can choose to shift into lower tiers, such as 50 percent renewable, or they can opt out entirely. There are also discount options for low-income families. So far the opt-out rate is very low.

Another continuing thread is providing mobility choices. We live in a compact city, less than nine square miles, and we have the ability to provide transport options to our residents. We have light rail with three stations, so you can take transit to downtown Santa Monica or downtown LA. For our Big Blue Bus, [which runs on natural gas and is moving toward an all-electric fleet by 2030], we have a policy of ‘any ride, any time,’ so students can get on a bus, show an ID card from any college—a lot of UCLA students ride those lines, and of course [students from] Santa Monica College—and it’s free.

AF: The city’s overall greening strategy has included a first-of-its-kind zero net energy ordinance for new single-family construction and a commitment that all municipal power needs be met by renewables. But the new $75 million municipal building project has been criticized as too expensive. How can being green be cost-effective?

GD: What’s important to know is, we’re leasing a fair amount of private property for government offices, at a cost of roughly $10 million a year. We needed to bring employees into a central location, which will save money on leases, and will encourage face-to-face and ‘accidental’ meetings that can be so important to communication. It just made business sense to have everybody under one roof. We’ll end up saving money over time, and ultimately the building will pay for itself just on that basis. There will be additional savings over time if the building is energy neutral and has reduced water intake—we won’t be consuming resources outside the building.

One of the things we’ve done is require developers to meet pretty stringent sustainability requirements. If we’re going to do that, we need to walk the walk. That’s one of the things this building shows—it’s possible to build an aggressively sustainable building that will ultimately bring savings. We’re trying to be a model, to show that with a little up-front investment, you can have a big impact over time.

AF: How does the Wellbeing Project, which won an award from Bloomberg Philanthropies for its ongoing assessment of constituents’ needs, connect to your sustainability efforts? What has it revealed?

GD: We declared ourselves a sustainable city of well-being. How are the people in the community faring—are they thriving, or are there issues? The Wellbeing Project began as an assessment of youth and how they were doing, and what can we as a city do, to try to help. It’s really about changing the relationship between local government and people. It’s not really a new concept—it goes back, not to be corny, to the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That doesn’t mean people going out and having a good time, but the ability of people to thrive. A sense of community can get frayed, whether due to technology or culture. One of the things we do is make sure children enter kindergarten ready to learn. For our older citizens, are they feeling isolated in their apartments? It’s a global movement we’re thrilled to be a part of.

In our Wellbeing Microgrant program, if people come up with something to build community, we will fund it, up to $500. One example was going out and writing down the histories and memories of Spanish-speaking residents in the many parts of the community where English is a second language. Another was a dinner to bring together our Ethiopian and Latino communities. One individual took a vacant lot and created a pop-up play area and space for art. It’s about community connectedness.

AF: Another innovative strategy is to impose charges on excess water use to fund energy-efficiency programs in low-income homes. In terms of water, what’s your long-term view on managing that resource in what looks to be perilous times ahead?

GD: The other thing we’ve done, which will percolate throughout my term and next, is to work on becoming water self-sufficient. We control a number of wells in the region, but we had contamination in the 1990s, and ultimately reached a multi-million-dollar settlement [with the oil companies responsible]. We had been getting 80 percent of our water from the Metropolitan Water District [after the contamination was discovered]—if you saw Chinatown, that’s [the system that] sucks water out of the Colorado River and brings it to LA—and now we’ve totally flipped that, and we’re getting 80 percent of our water from our own (restored) wells again. This makes us more resilient in case of an earthquake affecting the aqueducts or other disruptive events to water infrastructure, like broken water mains. Pumping water over mountains [from the Colorado River] also takes a lot of energy. We are making sure our water infrastructure is sound. We’re not trying to isolate ourselves. But by getting water from our own wells, we will have good clean water for the foreseeable future.

AF: What policies would you like to see that might limit the devastation so sadly seen in the recent wildfires in California?

GD: Luckily Santa Monica was not directly affected by the Woolsey Fire. Our neighbor Malibu was—their emergency operations center was right in the path of the fire, so they came and used ours, for fighting the fire, rescuing people, and cleaning up. We had Santa Monica firefighters on the ground throughout the state under mutual aid. We hosted meetings with FEMA on displacement and recovery. We have a chief resiliency officer, and she is a steady drumbeat, reminding people [that a major natural disaster] could happen here. We have promoted the Seven Days Plan—does everyone have seven days of water, food, and an emergency radio that doesn’t require electricity? We also passed aggressive earthquake requirements, evaluated properties that are most vulnerable, and are now moving to seismically retrofit them.

These things we do in Santa Monica may seem a little aggressive, and cost money, but it’s not just about winning awards or patting ourselves on the back for being environmentally progressive, it’s so that we’ll be able to weather things like fires. People say you’re spending money, raising water rates, and it costs more for energy. . . . We want to do it to address the impacts of climate change. But it also means that when there’s a natural disaster, we are more resilient.

AF: The city’s experience with electric scooters—I’m referring to the company that deployed a fleet without asking permission—seemed to show that the transition to a sharing economy coupled with technological innovation can be messy. Is it possible to welcome disruption and maintain order?

GD: We were sort of ground zero for scooters. It was disruptive at first, and we had to make a lot of adjustments. Their philosophy was that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. There was some panic, and some people were also using them in a horrible manner. Now we’re in a 16-month pilot program, where we selected four dockless mobility operators: Bird, Lime, Jump, which is part of Uber, and Lyft. We created a dynamic cap on the number of devices on the street, so they can’t put out as many as they want. We have some policies to address conflicts and safety, and we have issued tickets when necessary.

This is all part of giving our residents lots of mobility options. It’s all designed to give people the option to get out of their car, whether it’s going to downtown LA or walking two blocks to a neighborhood restaurant. We wanted to make sure our more economically diverse communities had access, so it’s not just downtown. If you can replace a car with alternative means that include scooters or electric bikes for that first or last mile, that’s a big cost savings. We had about 150,000 rides on shared mobility [in November 2018]. That’s pretty amazing for a place with 93,000 people. At the end of the pilot, we’ll evaluate everything and figure out where we go from there.

A number of neighboring cities banned scooters outright, but that’s not how Santa Monica deals with technology. We’re figuring out the best way to manage the disruptive technology. Disruption isn’t a four-letter word.

Photograph: Kristina Sado

Bruce Babbitt has been a leader on western land and water policy for nearly half a century. He served as Arizona attorney general from 1975 to 1978, Arizona governor from 1978 to 1987, and U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001. Secretary Babbitt, the namesake of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, also served on the board of directors for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from 2009 to 2017. Among his numerous accomplishments was the adoption of Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act during his tenure as governor. For the past two years, he served as an advisor to California Governor Jerry Brown on state water issues. He spoke with Dr. Jim Holway, director of the Babbitt Center, for this special issue of Land Lines.

Jim Holway: Bruce, from your perspective, what is the importance of the Colorado River?

Bruce Babbitt: Well, John Wesley Powell answered that question nearly 150 years ago. We live in a land of sparse rainfall, and not enough water flowing down to our rivers. Demand will always be running ahead of supply. And how we come to grips with that as a political culture is kind of the big reality of the Colorado River. Historically, water use was largely agricultural, but urban demand is constantly increasing due to population growth. Western growth and progress is going to require a lot of imagination and innovation in our use of this river.

JH: What is the role of the river in the economy and quality of life in the Southwest?

BB: Without the Colorado River, this would be a mighty empty land. That’s the reality. We have populated and settled this land on a “build it, and the water will come” basis. And you know, it’s a spectacular part of our history. It is kind of embedded in our view of the West as a land of infinite opportunity. But we are now discovering the limits. Agricultural and urban needs are coming into conflict. We also need to factor in environmental and ecological values that have been long neglected—and that add so much to the quality of life and the appeal of the American West.

JH: What is the state of the river today, and how has it changed since your tenure as Secretary of the Interior?

BB: When I went to Washington in 1993 to become Secretary of the Interior, Lake Powell and Lake Mead were full to overflowing, and the Colorado River didn’t seem to be of much immediate concern. Our perception was driven by the fact that this was a system overflowing with possibility. Today, scarcely 25 year later, Lake Mead is approaching dead pool, at which point it can no longer release water or generate power. This transition, which we did not anticipate or plan for, is a stark reminder of the need for long-range scenario planning for use of land and water.
 
JH: What do you view as the major Colorado River challenges we need to address?

BB: The first challenge is to recognize that we live in a desert with huge and rapid climatic fluctuations. Across the twentieth century, we built the great system of reservoirs to store water against these fluctuations. But our assumptions regarding climate change and population growth were way off. We are now drawing more than a million acre-feet out of reservoir storage each year in excess of average inflow. And obviously that cannot continue. We must now work toward establishing balance across the entire basin. To get to that equilibrium will require adjustments from every water user: agricultural, municipal, power generation, and environmental uses. And it obviously can’t be done on a piecemeal, ad hoc basis; we’ll have to invent new processes of public involvement and shared adjustments from every town and city and farm in the basin. 

JH: What policy and management structures do we need to move toward a more balanced approach?

BB: In the West, connecting and integrating land and water use is a relatively new idea. Water use, like land use and zoning, has traditionally been a local affair, with little coordination or direction at the state or interstate level. But water is a common resource; developing on a local, project by project basis without thinking about regional supply and demand constraints inevitably leads to the crises and environmental degradation that we are now experiencing. The question is how to change that.

JH: What do you see as the most difficult policy or political challenges?

BB: Moving toward more proactive planning will be a social and political challenge. It can’t be accomplished by issuing regulations from on high in Washington or Phoenix or Denver. We need to begin at the personal level and move up from the ground. Begin with a renewed personal conservation ethic, engage communities in efficiency and reuse programs, integrate water into local land use and zoning, and propagate local success stories into state policies and then into basin-wide policy.

JH: Are the states the key to this bigger, system-wide view, or is it a federal role?

BB: You know, one of the remarkable things about the Colorado River is that it’s the only river basin in the United States that is managed and operated under the direction of the federal government. In 1963, after nearly a century of warfare among the basin states, the Supreme Court stepped in, dictated a formula for sharing the water, and then appointed the Secretary of the Interior to manage the river and its reservoirs. At the time, many westerners felt that such a takeover would be a disaster. In fact, it has worked very well, mainly because successive secretaries have used their power judiciously, encouraging the states to cooperate among themselves, and stepping in only as a last resort when the states could not agree. That has provided both impetus and threat, setting the table for the states to come together.

JH: When you were Secretary of the Interior, you utilized this “speak softly, but carry a big stick” approach. Are you optimistic about the role the states are playing or do you feel they need more encouragement to step up?
 
BB: Although this federal-state management system has worked well to date, it needs improvement. An example is the current negotiation among the Interior Department and the states over the shortages occurring in Lake Mead. Those discussions have moved in fits and starts, with shortage projections constantly under revision. Remarkably, there is not even a standing interstate organization in existence to guide data gathering, research, and planning efforts. We’re going to have to find some way to be more proactive, not to wait until the eleventh hour. We’re going to have to move it up to the sixth or seventh hour and anticipate the possible scenarios we’re looking at in the next decade, the next two or three decades.

JH: Along the lines of rethinking old patterns, what are the most effective ways to bring local land and water planning and management together?

BB: We need to devise new means of planning within each of the basin states. We can learn a lot from traditional land use planning and zoning, which can now be connected with and integrated into planning for water use. Call it land-water use planning. We can begin with local examples of conservation and water use efficiency, which should then extend to broader planning efforts such as the “assured water supply” legislation in Arizona—a very basic but innovative law that simply said, before you put a spade in the ground, you’ve got to show us what’s going to run through the faucets for the next 100 years . . . Climbing up the staircase of water management and across the staircases of municipal, county, state, multi-state, and federal government, it is important to go out and look at good examples like that.

JH: As Governor of Arizona, you led efforts to adopt the 1980 Groundwater Management Act. Do you feel the conversation about rural water issues has changed since then?

BB: It has not changed. Arizona is an instructive example of the need to set up planning processes and then keep up the effort, year after year, to improve and expand their application. The Groundwater Management Act of 1980 revolutionized water management in the urban counties that include Phoenix and Tucson. However, in the 35 odd years since then, the Act has not been extended to the rural areas of the state, which are now encountering the same issues of rapid development and demand. Political leadership matters, and it has been in short supply in Arizona and across the West.

JH: You have served as both the Governor of Arizona and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. With the advantage of hindsight, are there key things you would have done differently?

BB: Well, look, where you stand often depends on where you sit. It would not be unfair to look across my time in public office and say, didn’t he used to be kind of a state’s rights guy, giving all those speeches about that evil bureaucracy in Washington, and then you pick up my speeches 20 years later, and I tended to frame it the other way. The fact is, it’s not one or the other; we must work together at all levels of government, from the very local up to the state capitols and on to Washington.

Looking back, I know I sometimes underestimated the importance of advocacy and direct voter engagement. In the past, there were times when I was impatient, when I wished I could take action instead of taking time to listen at town halls. I think if I could go back, I would spend more time on federal-state partnerships—and I’d also spend a lot more time thinking about those town halls.

JH: Where does the leadership need to come from to address the challenges you’ve identified?

BB: Americans have always been skeptical of government, and that’s really what the Constitution is about—appropriate limits on government. In the sweep of American history, we have tended to be pragmatic, optimistic, and open-minded about what needs to be done. We are perfectly capable of saying we don’t want the federal government, then in the same breath demanding federal help.

At present we are witness to a near collapse of the traditional federal-state partnership as the federal government declines into an idiosyncratic and unpredictable presence in the West. It’s really unfortunate. We’ve been through these periods in American history before. And we’ll get through this one.

This collapse at the national level is being counterbalanced by a renewal of interest and participation in local government. American history is instructing us once again that when the national government goes stale, there often comes a grassroots renewal across the land. And that is a great opportunity for all of us to reinvigorate planning from the grassroots upward.

JH: What led you to give your name to the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy?

BB: I was educated as a geologist and tend to approach problems in linear, formulaic terms. During my time as a Lincoln Institute board member, I came to a much deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of land and water use with economics, and the social and political aspects of land use. Lincoln has a long and impressive history of bringing together deep, data-driven research, multiple academic disciplines, and real-world practitioners to bring new insights to how we live and prosper on the land. If my presence and experience can add even a small amount to the Lincoln mission, I am eager to continue learning and contributing.

JH: Given your extensive international experience, what lessons from elsewhere do you think the Babbitt Center and others could bring back to the Colorado River Basin?

BB: Early on, David Lincoln and his family decided to extend the work of the Lincoln Institute to two places that have always been of special interest to me: China and Latin America. Both regions face complex water issues, heightened by the onset of global warming, from which we can learn and to which we can contribute from our own experience. Climate change is accelerating most at the poles and in the tropics and the near-tropics. So we kind of have an advanced projection, in a different context, of the kinds of things that we’re going to need to be dealing with in the Colorado River Basin.

JH: What are you doing now? What’s next for you?

BB: Well, at some point I’ll probably head back to Brazil and the Amazon Basin, where I have long been involved in conservation causes. But out here in the West, those of us who are obsessed with water are known as “water buffaloes.” And water buffaloes never stray far from the water hole, so you are likely to see me around the West, still learning and thinking about our future on this land.

Jim Holway is director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy.

Photograph credit: Gisele Grayson, NPR

The desert city of Tucson, Arizona, has an average annual rainfall of just 12 inches. But when the rain comes, it often comes in the form of torrential downpours, causing damaging floods across the city. This is a perhaps ironic challenge for Tucson and the broader Pima County area in which it is situated, given that it’s part of a much larger region working to ensure that there is—and will continue to be—enough water to go around in a time of unrelenting drought.

Both of these distinct water-management challenges—too dry and too wet—can be addressed by thoughtful land use and infrastructure decisions. Of course, when making such decisions, it helps to have precise mapping data on hand. That’s why Pima County officials are working with the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy and other key partners to pilot the use of some of the most cutting-edge mapping and data analysis tools on the market.

For the Babbitt Center—founded in 2017 with the mission of providing land-use research, education, and innovation to communities throughout the Colorado River Basin—the partnership represents one early step in exploring how such technology can be used to help integrate water and land use management across the region.

The technology itself originated across the country, at the Conservation Innovation Center (CIC) of Maryland’s Chesapeake Conservancy, a key player in cleaning up the notoriously pollution-addled Chesapeake Bay. To oversimplify a bit: CIC has designed image analysis algorithms that provide distinctly more granular image data of the earth’s surface. The technology has enabled a shift from a resolution that made it possible to observe and classify land in 30-meter-square chunks to a resolution that makes that possible at one square meter.

The details are of course a little more complicated, explains Jeffrey Allenby, the Conservancy’s director of conservation technology. Allenby says the new technology addresses an historic challenge: the compromise between resolution and cost of image collection. Until relatively recently, you could get 30-meter data collected via satellite every couple of weeks or even days. Or you could get more granular data collected via airplane—but at such a high cost that it was only worth doing every few years at most, which meant it was less timely.

What’s changing, says Allenby, is both the camera technology and the nature of the satellites used to deploy it. Instead of launching a super-expensive satellite built to last for decades, newer companies the CIC works with—Allenby mentions Planet Labs and DigitalGlobe—are using different approaches. “Smaller, replaceable” satellites, meant to last just a couple of years before they burn off in the atmosphere, can be equipped with the latest camera technology. Deployed in a kind of network, they offer coverage of most of the planet, producing new image data almost constantly.

Technology companies developed this business model to respond to commercial and investor demand for the most recent information available; tracking the number of cars in big-box store parking lots can, in theory, be a valuable economic indicator. Land use planners don’t need images quite that close to real time. But Allenby says the CIC began asking the tech companies, “What are you doing with the imagery that’s two weeks old?” It’s less expensive to acquire, but far better than what was previously available. The resulting images are interpreted by computers that classify them by type: irrigated land, bedrock, grassland, and so on. Doing that at a 30-square-meter level required a lot of compromise and imprecision; the one-meter-level is a different story.

The goal is to “model how water moves across a landscape,” as Allenby puts it, by combining the data with other resources, most notably LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) elevation data. Those are the “flour and eggs” of land use data projects, supplemented with other ingredients like reduction efficiencies or load rates from different land cover, depending on the project, Allenby says: “We’re building new recipes.” For Chesapeake Bay, those recipes are meant to help manage water quality. If you can determine where water is concentrating and, say, taking on nitrogen, you can deduce the most cost-effective spot to plant trees or place a riparian buffer to reduce that nitrogen load. (See “Precision Conservation,” October 2016 Land Lines.)

In the Colorado River Basin, the most urgent current water-management challenges are about quantity. Since water policy is largely hashed out at the local level despite the underlying land use issues having implications across multiple states, the Babbitt Center serves as a resource across a broad region. There’s currently a “heightened awareness” of water management among municipal and county policy makers, says Paula Randolph, the Babbitt Center’s associate director. “People are wanting to think about these issues and realizing they don’t have enough information.”

That brings us back to Pima County. Although it lies outside the basin, it boasts two features that make it a good place to evaluate how the uses of precision mapping data might be applied in the West: Basin-like geography and proactive municipal leaders. When the manager of technology for the Pima Association of Governments saw Allenby speak about the benefits of his work in the East, he contacted the CIC to discuss possibilities for the West. A year into the resulting project, several partners are on board, the group is mapping a 3,800-square-mile area, and the open-source data lives on the Pima Regional Flood Control District website, where others throughout the county are able to access and use it.

Broadly, this process has taken some effort, Randolph notes. Satellite data gathered in the West has different contours than the East Coast imagery that Chesapeake’s sophisticated software was used to, and that has required some adjustment—“teaching” the software the difference between a Southwestern rock roof and a front yard that both look (to the machine) like dirt. “We need human partners to fix that,” she says. “We strive for management-quality decision-making data.”

Even as such refinements continue, there are already some early results in Pima County. Clearer and more precise data about land cover is helping to identify areas that need flood mitigation. It has also been useful to identify “hot spots” where dangerous heat-island effects can occur, offering guidance for mitigation actions like adding shade trees. These maps provide a visual showcase about water flow and land use more efficiently than a field worker could.

Both Allenby and Randolph stress that this partnership is still in the early phases of exploring the potential uses and impacts of high-resolution map data. Randolph points out that while the Babbitt Center is working on this and another pilot project in the Denver area, the hope is that the results will contribute to a global conversation around water-management experimentation.

And Allenby suggests that the “recipes” being devised by technologists, policy makers, and planners will ideally lead to a shift in more accurately evaluating the efficiency and impact of various land use projects. This, he hopes, will lead to the most important outcome of all: “Making better decisions.” 

The Lincoln Institute has provided occasional financial support to the CIC for map- and data-related projects.

Rob Walker (robwalker.net) is a columnist for the Sunday Business section of The New York Times.

Image: High-resolution land cover data offers a closer look at Tucson, Arizona. Credit: Chesapeake Conservancy.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, middle neighborhoods sprang up to house middle-income families drawn to U.S. cities by the dramatic rise of industry. Today, middle neighborhoods in “magnet” cities like Seattle, Washington, or Washington, DC, have seen impressive revival or gentrification, but, in legacy cities like Baltimore, Maryland, or Cleveland, Ohio, they often face decline. Often overlooked, middle neighborhoods matter—both to the people who live in them and to their cities and regions—and solutions demand engagement not only from the neighborhood itself but also from the city, region, and state. Nothing less than the fate of millions of people and dozens of cities lies in the balance.