June 2021 Summaries

The urban growth of metropolitan areas is influenced by various factors, and 55% of the world's population currently lives in urban areas, with the UN predicting an increase to 68% by 2050. Location Intelligence can help tackle societal and environmental challenges linked to urban growth, such as sustainability, gentrification, and healthcare. As cities recover from the pandemic, it is uncertain whether urban growth will continue, but historical trends of urban growth can provide insight into potential rebound. A visualization was created using CARTO's Spatial Analytics in BigQuery, depicting historical urban growth in New York City, by sourcing data on building footprints and construction dates from public sources. The visualization uses a vector tileset to effectively display the large amount of spatial data, allowing for styling based on columns such as construction year, with older buildings shown in red and newer constructions in blue.

The CARTO Data Observatory has been enhanced to allow users to access sample data online and visualize it on preconfigured maps, simplifying the data evaluation process. The platform now enables direct access to subscribed datasets on leading cloud platforms such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure, allowing for seamless integration with existing workflows and eliminating the need for complex ETLs. Users can now access their subscribed datasets directly from these platforms using tools like CARTO Builder and Python notebooks, and can also export datasets to BigQuery or cloud storage services like AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage.

Join CARTO at Mobile World Congress MWC21 Barcelona, where they will be attending the event with a team of experts to discuss location data in the telecoms industry. The theme of MWC21 is 'Connected Impact', focusing on how technology can shape business and transform the planet. CARTO has strategic partnerships with leading communications service providers and Google Cloud, enabling them to advance use cases such as data monetization and 5G connectivity. With a hybrid format featuring in-person and virtual sessions, attendees will have opportunities to meet with speakers, exhibitors, and other professionals to discuss innovative solutions.

This is an impressive geospatial application built on top of open source software, specifically CARTO, by the Mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation (OER) in NYC. SPEED 2.0 provides a user-friendly interface to help individuals identify environmental issues on and adjacent to specific properties in New York City. The application includes advanced search functions, such as filtering options and historical aerial photography, and is currently managed by OER in the Google Cloud platform. With over 50-55 datasets included, including OER datasets updated automatically through APIs, users can easily access metadata and share findings. The application continues to be a work in progress, with future plans to include functionalities for registered users and advanced analysis capabilities.

CARTO has been selected as a strategic partner by Google Cloud, leveraging its cloud-native geospatial platform on the edge network to enhance high-speed 5G connectivity for Communications Service Providers (CSPs). CARTO's platform will enable CSPs to accelerate their use of Location Intelligence and deliver more spatial insight to various business units. The partnership aims to help CSPs streamline operations, generate new revenue streams, and develop data-driven offerings for their customers. By integrating with Google BigQuery and its spatial extension, CSPs using Google Cloud can now access CARTO's capabilities significantly faster and more efficiently than before.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on Brazil, with over 17 million cases and close to 500,000 deaths, fueled by more transmissible variants of the virus and lack of coordinated national measures. In Brazil, access to clean water is a fundamental right but not yet guaranteed in many areas, including São Paulo, where low-income communities face significant challenges in accessing water due to housing and urbanization issues. A research project led by the Territorial Justice Laboratory of the Federal University of ABC aimed to understand and visualize water access issues, particularly during the pandemic, and found that residents adopt alternative solutions such as tank storage and borrowing from neighbors due to network intermittency or falls in pressure. The lack of access to water exacerbates financial difficulties, health risks, and social problems, including the need to buy water for drinking or cooking, and can lead to contamination and the spread of the virus.

The project aims to classify global urbanity levels using a spatial model that aggregates population density, nighttime light data, and road network infrastructure. The model is built at a quadkey grid level of 15, which has cells of approximately 1x1km at the equator. Six different urbanity classes are defined, ranging from remote areas with low population density to very high-density urban areas in metropolitan centers. The method involves transforming input datasets into the quadkey grid specification, pre-processing nighttime light data to remove outliers, and combining population density and light intensity data using Principal Component Analysis. Spatial dependence is included by calculating a Z-score for each cell based on neighboring cells' values. The resulting index is then used to cluster areas into urbanity classes. The model has been applied to 251 countries, with results showing that 42% of the global population resides in at least low-density urban areas, and that Asia and North America have higher percentages of remote areas due to large countries like Russia and Canada.

Angular is a popular framework for building web applications, offering powerful features and a large community of developers. CARTO's platform provides the necessary backend features for spatial applications, making it easy to focus on frontend development with Angular. The combination of Angular and CARTO has been successfully used by several customers and partners to build highly successful geospatial applications. An example and integration guide are available to demonstrate how to integrate Angular with CARTO for deck.gl, following best practices for designing scalable and maintainable geospatial apps. This approach uses well-supported open-source libraries, reduces coupling among components, and provides a natural fit for experienced Angular developers.