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Port of Long Beach
Inspiration
I have a Masters in Urban Planning from USC Price School of Public Policy so I spent a lot of time studying transportation. I am now a Master of Science Candidate at USC Spatial Sciences Institute for Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence. I have always been fascinated with ports because they are both important economic drivers as well as having negative environmental impacts because of the amount of centralized pollution from vessels and vehicles. I think it is important that we all understand this balance that needs to be struck, especially given the jobs and the health impacts for local communities.
What it does
This Cesium Story with Google 3D Photorealistic Tiles takes you on a tour through the Port of Long Beach and gives it context related to the City of Long Beach and the greater Los Angeles area.
How we built it
It was built with Cesium Ion and the Cesium Stories builder integrating Google 3D Photorealistic Tiles. It is hosted on GitHub Pages, using Cloudflare as the CDN and for security, and SpeedyMice to purchase the domain. I also used the Google Air Quality API, ArcGIS Pro, and Jupyter Notebooks to process data.
Challenges we ran into
There were countless challenges. First I did not really know what the starting point was, and then I had trouble loading the 3D Tiles. I first built it in VSCode after downloading the CesiumJS folder. Then I moved over to Google Cloud Console and was hoping to host it there, only to realize there is a bit of a learning curve I need to invest in before I can get that to be where I host my project site. I spent hours trying to resolve these issues. Eventually, I had the 3D Tiles working in VSCode in Live Preview but just could not get the index.html to read the app.js file. Therefore, I decided that I would use the Cesium Stories feature and embed that in my custom app. I am still having spacing challenges with the iFrame which looks right in some browsers and not in others.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I became aware of Cesium over the summer and as a Google Women Techmakers Ambassador was really excited to see this announcement. Therefore, since I was already committed to learning Cesium, I wanted to take the opportunity to see what I could do with the knowledge I have, while also being willing to stretch myself into new tools. I am so happy that this gave me a reason to set up my Google Cloud Console account and that I learned about all of the API tools.
What we learned
I am very committed to becoming a Google Developer Expert related to Geospatial. However, this task showed me that I have quite a learning curve ahead of me when it comes to Google Cloud Console and I need to really spend the time going through all of the Cloud Skills training that I have begun. I am eager to become proficient in it and be able to share its amazing functionality, tools, and resources. I am also excited to do more with these 3D Tiling tools. I did explore Areo and think that's quite a good tool as well. Overall, I was introduced to quite a few options with AR/VR and 3D that can only help me in my geospatial learning journey.
What's next for Port of Long Beach: Sustainability Analysis
The next goal is to add more data layers to the project so that I can show a deeper analysis. I think it is important not to greenwash their sustainability efforts but to really see some of the detrimental health impacts on local communities. It is also important to see these communities in a larger context as many of them are minority communities that are traditionally underrepresented in terms of access to insurance, health education, and quality healthcare. I also want to create a visual tool that can help the Port of Long Beach get some of the $2B in funding it is seeking to continue to be a steward for the environment and its transition to greener technologies.
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