{"id":6771,"date":"2015-03-23T13:56:20","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T17:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?p=6771"},"modified":"2015-03-23T13:56:20","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T17:56:20","slug":"digital-tool-could-offer-stakeholders-treasure-trove-of-sustainability-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/2015\/03\/23\/digital-tool-could-offer-stakeholders-treasure-trove-of-sustainability-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Tool Could Offer Stakeholders Treasure Trove of Sustainability Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mcgill_brian\"<\/a>A new digital tool could offer a wide range of Mainers access to streamlined, interactive data on climate, population, land use and nature. The tool is not just a clearinghouse of information. The user will be able to chart trends and use previously incompatible data sets to examine things like housing or demographic changes in various areas over time.<\/p>\n

The tool, brainchild of researcher Brian McGill<\/a> and his research team, borrows a computer-based mainstay of the private sector and adapts it to the world of sustainability science.<\/p>\n

McGill, Associate Professor in the School of Biology and Ecology and a researcher at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, wanted to see if a Decision Support System (DSS), which combines the use of models and analytic techniques with traditional data access, could be brokered to provide important information to stakeholders in the state. It\u2019s a good fit, McGill emphasizes. DSS was designed with the average worker or user in mind.<\/p>\n

Called “Changing Maine”, the new DSS tool is both easy to use and somewhat seamless to the average eye. But, as McGill says, there\u2019s a tremendous amount of work \u201cunder the hood\u201d \u2013 especially in the functionality that allows users to chart and map trends.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get all this data on the Internet, but under the hood here is a lot of work: data consistency and putting everything into the same projections. Past data and future data is a big piece. Those almost never exist in the same system comparable enough that you can draw a trend line from past into future,\u201d McGill said.<\/p>\n

The tool, which is not yet available to the public, offers users a variety of ways to view information \u2013 as charts, as maps \u2013 and the ability to access and analyze complex data sets in seconds. Included are river networks, agriculture changes, urban growth, wildlife statistics, wildlife trends related to climate change. New information can be added and adapted at any time.<\/p>\n

McGill sees Changing Maine as a potentially valuable tool for government workers strapped for time and lacking support structure. Engaged citizens and non-governmental organizations are additional target audiences.<\/p>\n

An ideal user might be \u201can analyst for the State or for the Legislature,\u201d McGill said. \u201cOr somebody who\u2019s campaigning to save the wetland in their backyard and wants to see the trends in wetlands in surrounding towns. \u201d<\/p>\n

Though he probably won\u2019t be interacting face to face with stakeholders, McGill sees the project as a way to take science out of peer-reviewed journals and the data out of complex jumbles and put them to real world use.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not quite as direct as typical stakeholder engagement,\u201d McGill said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot of value in trying to make this data accessible\u2026 More than just accessible: informative.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new digital tool could offer a wide range of Mainers access to streamlined, interactive data on climate, population, land use and nature. The tool is not just a clearinghouse of information. The user will be able to chart trends and use previously incompatible data sets to examine things like housing or demographic changes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"mitchellcenter","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/mitchellcenter\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":613,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":613,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}