I had the pleasure of attending the International Economic Development Conference held last week in Reno, Nevada. The conference brought together roughly 1200 economic development professionals, all looking to better understand how to help local businesses grow and how to better stimulate business development in their regions. I was joined in the Microsoft booth by my colleague Kevin Adler, geospatial solutions specialist for the Bing Maps team, where we showed attendees how data visualization through Bing Maps can provide at-a-glance understanding of demographic and census data, and how the crisp and clear aerial views can help demonstrate regional quality of life to businesses in the site selection process.
Among the examples that we showed was the website from the Economic Development Counil of Tallahassee/Leon County. Readers of this blog may remember the Bing Maps for Economic Development webcast held on this solution back in May that included Microsoft partner ISC, provider of the MapDotNet platform that integrates GIS data with Bing Maps. This solution was also highlighted along with the parcel mapping solution that ISC developed for the City of Richmond in a brochure that we put together for the conference that can be found under the Resources section on the Bing Maps Public Sector web page.
We also showed the Demographics Visualizer demo from Microsoft partner IDV Solutions that allows you to set filters to visualize demographic information such as population density, income, ethnicity, etc., for regions, enabling organizations to pinpoint components of a region to determine where and how a business might be successful. IDV has a somewhat similar demo that uses Version 4 of their Visual Fusion platform and Microsoft Silverlight to visualize backend data thorugh a much more dynamic and fluid interface.
Naturally, we also spoke to the partnership bewteen ESRI and Microsoft, showing attendees how they can integrate ArcGIS products with SQL Server 2008 and Bing Maps to conduct spatial analysis such as dirve time analysis and then visualize on our maps for a better understanding of regional factors when making site analysis decsions. This and other examples of spatial analysis using ArcGIS and Bing maps--on the Microsoft Surface touch computing unit, no less--can be found in some great videos here.
Meanwhile, we became aware of a new partner offering while at the conference with a solution focused on economic development.The Siouxland Initiative's online sites database service from the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce (serving the cities of Sioux City and Seargeant Bluff, IA; South Soiux City and Dakota City, NB; and North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes, SD) and Microsoft partner Site Dynamics, allows users to search for avaialble properties, evaluate labor and demographic information on properties, and see what other companies are in their market. In the below example, I have searched on commercial buildings available for lease with a minimum of 100,000 sq ft. for all regions covered by the application. The results queried from an SQL Server 2008 database are mapped on Bing Maps and when I mouse over a pushpin for a site, I get a snippet of information with a link for details. Below the map, I also get additional details for the results in tabular format. Very nice! The folks in the Site Dynamics booth were kept very busy at the conference.
No sooner did I get back to Boulder from the conference than I learned of an implementation of Bing Maps for economic development by Arlington, Virgina. The below screenshot is captured from their Neighborhood Zoning application. The application allows you to search for buildings by property information, neighborhood or street, provides a legend of the building type (commercial, residential, government, etc.), and provides the abillity to overlay color-coded shape files on top of the buildings as seen in the Bing Maps basemap imagery. In typical fashion of a Bing Maps application and as already seen in the above examples in this blog entry, mousing over the property provides a snapshot of information with a link for more property details.
Bing Maps ... doing its part to help in the economic recovery!
-=Virtual Jerry