{"id":52942,"date":"2019-02-01T14:22:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&#038;p=52942"},"modified":"2023-08-04T16:30:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T23:30:22","slug":"in-a-city-so-big-no-detail-too-small","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/in-a-city-so-big-no-detail-too-small","title":{"rendered":"In a City So Big, No Detail Too Small"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10372],"tags":[160642,351],"arcnews_issues":[25212],"class_list":["post-52942","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gis-hero","tag-local-government","tag-planning","arcnews_issues-spring-2018","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"No piece of geography is too insignificant for Rudy Lopez. Nor is any person, project, problem, or city department, it seems.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<strong>GIS Hero<\/strong>\r\n\r\nNo piece of geography is too insignificant for Rudy Lopez. Nor is any person, project, problem, or city department, it seems.\r\n\r\nThe former director of geographic systems for the New York City Department of City Planning, who retired in December, didn\u2019t ever let a known error go unfixed and strove to let no detail go unnoticed. Which is no small feat in a city with 8.5 million residents and 6,000 miles of streets.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe cares about the geographic anomalies,\u201d said Michele McInnes, senior adviser of IT strategic planning and administration at City Planning.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have a lot of very difficult geography in New York City,\u201d said Thomas Costa, the manager of geographic research for City Planning. This includes a large number of duplicate and hyphenated addresses; stand-alone places, like the Empire State Building, that don\u2019t require an address number; complexes with multiple nonaddressed places inside\u2014such as Lincoln Center, which contains the Metropolitan Opera House; and an abundance of streets known by multiple names."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":52952,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cRudy\u2019s perspective is, I know it\u2019s only one street, but so what? It\u2019s just as important as every other street,\u201d added Costa.\r\n\r\nHere\u2019s why: If a man having a heart attack calls 911 from a new housing development and the dispatched emergency responders can\u2019t find him because they don\u2019t have that address, he could die. Or if that new supermarket\u2019s opening gets delayed because of a discrepancy in the building\u2019s address and it loses its funding, then the elderly woman down the street has to walk a dozen blocks instead of two to get her groceries.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was a big thing for me: the satisfaction that I was, in my own way, without any big fanfare, making a difference\u2014that I was helping people,\u201d said Lopez."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":52962,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Born and raised in New York, Lopez dropped out of high school at 17 years old and joined the United States Air Force, where he got his GED. After being stationed in Wyoming, Lopez returned to the Bronx to attend Lehman College on the GI Bill. He started off as a math major, but then he took a required geography class.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was geography of the New York metropolitan area,\u00a0<em>[\u2026]<\/em>\u00a0and I thought, this is really interesting, finding out why all these people live here and why New York became what it is,\u201d said Lopez.\r\n\r\nHe ended up taking another geography class, and before he knew it, he was halfway through the requirements to get a degree in geography. So he went for it, minoring in math instead.\r\n\r\nLopez figured he would teach\u2014maybe social studies in a junior high or high school environment.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut as I was ready to graduate, New York City was in a slight fiscal crisis, and they were not hiring any teachers. So what was I going to do with this degree?\u201d he recalled. \u201cOne of the up-and-coming fields was city planning. So I thought, maybe I could use my geography skills in this.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe ended up getting funded by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), a federal job training program that paid him minimum wage to work full time in public service for six months, to see what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-urban\/overview\">urban planning<\/a> was about.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey were able to place me at New York City Planning,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cThis was in 1980, just after the April 1980 Census, and the department had a population group that was in the process of reviewing the initial results of the census here in New York. They needed some geographers.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe department was trying to make sure that everyone in the city had been counted in the census, and in the correct location. Under the tutelage of more experienced colleagues, Lopez learned to analyze the census data\u2014all without using GIS.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere was no GIS in my department,\u201d he said. \u201cThe GIS was really us making hand-colored maps of all the different datasets.\u201d\r\n\r\nLopez reviewed the data on printouts and mapped it.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs we were mapping the data, we would see,\u00a0<em>This doesn\u2019t make sense. There\u2019s no way that this particular block can only have three people when the city just built 100 units of housing and they\u2019re occupied<\/em>,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was sort of like trying to put puzzle pieces in the right place. That\u2019s what really turned me on to this field.\u201d\r\n\r\nAlthough Lopez\u2019s federal funding dried up, City Planning kept him on. And he began working on geocoding.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe had some very crude geocoding tools that were developed in the 1970s,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe IT director said\u2026it would be good for the city if we could develop a geocoding tool that\u2019s maintained by one agency but used by other agencies in the city.\u201d\r\n\r\nLittle did Lopez know that this would become part of his legacy.\r\n\r\nHe was pulled into the project to look at the US Census Bureau\u2019s Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) files, correct the geometry, and ensure that data from other city agencies matched those files.\r\n\r\nShortly after the project started, the State of New York audited the New York City Department of Education over student transportation subsidies. The audit found that the subsidies, distributed by the state, weren\u2019t getting allocated fairly. Students who lived in the same building and went to the same school weren\u2019t receiving the same transportation reimbursements. Part of the problem was that the Department of Education was using paper maps and rulers to determine the allocations.\r\n\r\nThe department had to figure out how to distribute these subsidies fairly. Lopez and his team ended up using the DIME file to do routing and determine which addresses, in relation to certain schools, were eligible for transportation subsidies. It took a year, but City Planning figured out how to calculate the shortest distance between each address and school, and subsequent subsidy allocations were based on these measurements.\r\n\r\nOther city agencies soon got wind of this GIS thing and started requesting help. The Department of Transportation needed assistance geocoding its asset locations. The Department of Finance benefited from a 10-year project that Lopez led to digitize all one million tax lots in New York City. Under Lopez\u2019s direction, City Planning digitized the New York City Board of Elections\u2019 5,000 or so electoral districts.\r\n\r\n\u201cI went from doing maps in pen and ink to doing this digitizing thing,\u201d said Lopez. \u201cThe technology was interesting.\u00a0<em>[\u2026]<\/em>\u00a0I sort of got caught up in the field.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis first 5 years at City Planning turned into 7. Then 15. Then 20. Finally, he\u2019d had a full, 37-year career at the department.\r\n\r\nIn that time, Lopez extended his passion for GIS by bringing hundreds of geography and GIS students through his department as interns. Many of them got jobs at other city agencies or now run their own GIS shops.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of the things I really enjoyed was the interactions with young people,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was sort of like I was doing teaching again.\u201d\r\n\r\nLopez was also the driving force behind Geosupport, a highly customized geocoding system that allows users to process their inputs (addresses, intersections, tax lot identifiers, and more) and retrieve an array of related information from geographic files that City Planning maintains. And he was at the helm of modifying the city\u2019s centerline files so they represented roadbeds in both single and double lines. These centerline files were so well put together, in fact, that the city chose City Planning\u2019s map to be the primary map of New York City.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was a big win for City Planning in the GIS world of New York City,\u201d said Costa. \u201cRudy was responsible for making sure we got that win.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was also instrumental in getting the city\u2019s emergency services to use one system instead of maintaining their own maps.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt took a while, but we were able to convince the agencies that it was best to use one system that could feed all the dispatching systems,\u201d Lopez recalled.\r\n\r\nNow, Lopez\u2019s former department focuses more on maintaining the city\u2019s geographic datasets rather than mapping them, since city agencies, educational institutions, and even the public have become savvier with the technology.\r\n\r\nWhich means that Lopez has essentially united New York City\u2019s departments and agencies via GIS. That\u2019s no small feat.\r\n\r\nRead other articles in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/news-publications\/newsroom\/publications\/gis-heroes\">GIS Heroes<\/a>\u00a0series."}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In a City So Big, No Detail Too Small | Spring 2018 | ArcNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No piece of geography is too insignificant for Rudy Lopez. 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