Refresh Philly

Please join us for the February installment of Refresh Philly hosted by local GIS software development firm Avencia. We’ll be meeting at Avencia’s offices located at 340 N 12th St Suite 402(at Callowhill) on Monday February 8th at 6:30pm.
http://avencia.com/Info/Directions.aspx

Aaron Ogle
Walkshed
http://walkshed.org/

While living in Seattle, Aaron became intrigued by Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute and his concept of a “walkshed” that would score a location based on the quantity and diversity of amenities within a one-mile radius. A year later, Walk Score, which drew heavily from Durning’s walkshed concept, became the first application to calculate walkability. Walk Score is a fantastic application with a clever methodology but it also has a number of acknowledged limitations.

Aaron wondered if improvements were possible. So as part of Avencia’s 10% research project program, he has developed Walkshed to demonstrate that it is possible to more accurately calculate and map walkability by accounting for actual walking distances and user preferences. Walkshed is available in Philadelphia and New York City, and is competing the NYC BigApps software competition.

Josh Marcus
CommonSpace: Sustainable Transit Visualization

Getting around without a car — by walking, biking, or public transit — adds another wrinkle to making plans with friends. Instead of just having to figure out what’s going on in the city, we need to figure out what’s going on that’s conveniently located to everyone. Could a web-based tool make this moment of planning and collaboration easier? And could it promote Philadelphia “local treasures”, sustainable businesses, and sustainable transit at the same time? That’s the question Avencia is exploring for NPower and the Sustainable Business Network, as part of an exciting initiative funded by the William Penn Foundation to implement innovative web-based tools focused on the environment and Philadelphia communities.

Josh will show an early mock-up of an imagined application that would allow real-time collaboration, integrate a variety of curated data feeds of destinations and events (sustainable business databases, online services, Philly blogs), provide biking and public transit directions, as well as allow users to dynamically visualize and search the areas that are available to them — and the “common space” where a group of friends could meet if they want to split the difference and meet in the area that’s convenient to everyone, based on how they’re each traveling.

Refresh Philly February
Monday February 8th
6:30 to 8pm
340 N 12th St Suite 402
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