Digital Tool Could Offer Stakeholders Treasure Trove of Sustainability Information

UMaine Alert

Posted: April 19, 2024 - 1:32 PM

At approximately 9:24 a.m. on Friday, April 19, a University of Maine graduate student was struck by a university vehicle on Long Road at the University of Maine campus in Orono. The student reports that they are at a local hospital with minor injuries.

Emergency services, including the Orono Fire Department, University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, University of Maine Police Department, Orono Police Department and Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene.

The university vehicle involved in the incident was a Chevrolet Express van. It was being operated by a university employee.

Counseling services and support are available for students, faculty or staff who may have been affected. The Counseling Center can be reached at 207-581-1392 and the Dean of Students Office can be reached at 207-581-1406.

The scene has been cleared and Long Road is now accessible. An investigation is being conducted by the University of Maine Police Department with assistance from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office Crash Reconstruction Unit. Any witnesses to the incident are encouraged to contact Lt. Noel Santiago at noel.santiago@maine.edu.

March 23, 2015 News

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.

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

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’s a good fit, McGill emphasizes. DSS was designed with the average worker or user in mind.

Called “Changing Maine”, the new DSS tool is both easy to use and somewhat seamless to the average eye. But, as McGill says, there’s a tremendous amount of work “under the hood” – especially in the functionality that allows users to chart and map trends.

“You 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,” McGill said.

The tool, which is not yet available to the public, offers users a variety of ways to view information – as charts, as maps – 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.

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.

An ideal user might be “an analyst for the State or for the Legislature,” McGill said. “Or somebody who’s campaigning to save the wetland in their backyard and wants to see the trends in wetlands in surrounding towns. ”

Though he probably won’t 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.

“It’s not quite as direct as typical stakeholder engagement,” McGill said. “But there’s a lot of value in trying to make this data accessible… More than just accessible: informative.”