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[edit] The Global Planning Grid Initiative

Many interesting initiatives at the national level have begun to explore infrastructure to support global sharing of content and systems for research collaboration. In the United States many of these developments are taking place under the National Science Foundation (NSF’s) Cyberinfrastructure program. In Europe and Australia, these efforts appear under the theme of e-Science. Traditionally, scientific data collaborations have been driving the need for technology development—however, new communities in the humanities, the arts and social science are now appearing. So far, largely absent from these debates, have been Urban Planning (let alone Global Planning) groups. Much benefit can be gained from case studies focused on new grid-based cyberinfrastructure initiatives (e.g., efforts to enable distributed data/knowledge management, long-term preservation/access to cultural heritage, and integrated city-region planning in the context of global flows). The challenge is to leverage existing efforts –not just in the sciences, but in the arts, social sciences and humanities as well. ..

The University of California, San Diego--including the Regional Workbench Consortium (RWBC), Urban Studies and Planning Program, Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP), San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Environment and Sustainability Initiative (ESI), and Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies (IICAS)--are collaborating with the University of Manchester's­ Center for Urban and Regional Ecology (CURE), INTELCITIES and SU-REGEN; Worldwide Universities Network (WUN); Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG), Digital Mud Studio LLC; UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI); and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, International Division) to build a worldwide federation of Global Planning Grids.

The objective is to converge data management technologies into common infrastructure enabling the sharing, publication, and preservation of shared collections; and the emergence of rule-based data management systems that can be tuned to meet the needs of integrated and sustainable city-region planning (data management policies, access policies, and distribution policies).

The strategy is to facilitate the exchange of knowledge about successful initiatives, under appropriate management controls. For each successful project, the information that is shared may include descriptions of the social context controlling the initiative, the planning documents, and analyses of the impact of the planning decision.

The technology that faciitates the controlled sharing of data is called a data grid. The shared content may include documents, provenance metadata describing the context under which the documents were produced, images, pointers to web pages, and links to public databases.

[edit] Background

At a strategy session held at the World Planning Schools Congress, Mexico City in July 2006, the concepts behind a global planning grid were explored. Audio tapes and powerpoint slides presented at this strategy session are available at http://gpeig.org/wpsc06-report.htm. In the broadest terms, we aim to build capacity for sustainable city-region planning and development in the context of an increasingly globalized world system. We think such an effort can help globally-minded progressive organizations like GPEIG meet its mission to: (1) Work together as planning educators and students to create, integrate and share global perspectives in planning education and research; (2) Foster an understanding of the global perspectives in planning education and research; and (3) Foster an understanding of the global context of local and regional issues; an appreciation of and respect for cultural, economic, and political dimensions of planning; and the recognition of the rich array of planning processes that can be fully appreciated only by learning about what is being done in other countries.


[edit] TASKS

1. Create a set of high quality publications

Working paper GPG 01: A multidisciplinary, global team of co-authors are writing an article titled City-regions and planning research: New frontiers at the intersection of globalism, sustainability science and cyberinfrastructure.

2. Participate in global conferences, roundtables and workshops

Build on a series of round tables we've already done in Mexico City and most recently in Ft. Worth, Texas: http://gpeig.org/GRID-splash.htm

  • Present paper on City-regions and planning research: New frontiers at the intersection of globalism, sustainability science and cyberinfrastructure at the International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM), July 11-13, 2007, Iguassu Falls, Brazil. http://www.cupum.org/
  • Host a Global Planning Grid Roundtable as part of the International Development Planning Track at the 2007 Annual Conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), October 18-21, 2007, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. http://gpeig.org/conf_acsp.htm

3. Build a Global Planning Data Grid

We will build upon the Open Grid Forum Grid Interoperation Now working group, which created an international federation of 17 data grids: https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/projects/gin

The data grids were contributed by projects that promoted academic research collaborations, and were located in the US, the UK, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Shared collections were created that were distributed between the data grids located in each country.

[edit] Resources

  • SDSC's Data Grid Technologies: The Data Grids group develops technologies that enable more efficient science through powerful data management capabilities including the SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB).The SRB is multi-platform client-server middleware that provides a uniform interface for connecting to heterogeneous data resources over a network and accessing replicated data sets. http://daks.sdsc.edu/dg/index.html, http://www.sdsc.edu/srb
  • SDSC's integrated Rule-Oriented Data System, iRODS, automates the application of management policies on data grids. Assertions about the authenticity, integrity, and access of a shared collection are expressed as management policies that control desired access capabilities. The capabilities are decomposed into multiple micro-services that apply the desired operations at remote storage systems. The management policies are decomposed into rules that control the execution of the micro-services. The results are stored as persistent state information. Additional rules are defined that query the persistent state information to verify that the target assertions have been met. http://irods.sdsc.edu
  • The Second World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC2 2006) held in Mexico City (July 11-16, 2006) was attended by over 600 planning scholars representing 40 countries. A roundtable, panel and series of meetings at the WPSC focused on building a Global Planning Grid. These sessions are part of an ongoing effort to develop global cyberinfrastructure for city-region planning, pedagogy and research. We are leveraging our work with the NIEHS (including lessons learned from the ongoing grid-based cyberinfrastructure portal we're building for the Katrina Hurricane Disaster: http://www-apps.niehs.nih.gov/Katrina/ See related articles at:
  • Pezzoli K, Tukey R, Sarabia H, Zaslavsky I, Miranda ML, Suk WA, Lin A, Ellisman M. 2007. The NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Data Resource Portal: Placing Advanced Technologies in Service to Vulnerable Communities Environ Health Perspect: doi:10.1289/ehp.9817. [Online 22 January 2007] http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2007/9817/abstract.html
  • Report submitted to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), International Division. The Global Planning Grid Initiative: Building cyberinfrastructure for progressive regionalism. http://gpeig.org/wpsc06-report.htm
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