GIS Cafe Editor Susan Smith interviews Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI) about the GIS-based models his company is using to estimate the New Orleans population after Katrina.  Welch's models are of interest and also underscore the importance of "ground-proofing."  (When you reach the page below, scroll down to read the interview.)


Estimating Post-Katrina Populations with STI: PopStats
By Susan Smith

As we move into 2006, we are well aware that entire populations have regrouped or moved as a result of Hurricane Katrina and Rita. With the loss of homes, businesses and schools, not only an entire way of life, but an extraordinary amount of data was also lost.

In an interview with Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI) this week, I learned about the company's STI: PopStats product, which is the market research industry's only quarterly population estimating product. The first 2006 release of STI: PopStats will include population estimates for those areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

How is Synergos able to come out with population estimates every three months? “Our STI: PopStats product is radically different from every other population estimating product,” claimed Welch. “We're the only the only company that can do an estimate every three months.”

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Philip Meyer Award Winners
Read more about the 2005 Philip Meyer Award

The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism; the Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University; and IRE announce the winners of the Philip Meyer Journalism Award, a contest to recognize the best journalism done using social science research methods.

The awards will be presented March 10 at the Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in Newark, N.J. The first-place winner will receive $500; second and third will receive $300 and $200. The contest, for work published or broadcast between October 2004 and October 2005, attracted 28 entries from across the country in its inaugural year. The judges noted it was extremely difficult to pick winners because so many of the entries were very strong. Stories are available to IRE members through the IRE and NICAR Resource Center — just contact us at 573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org.

First Place

Steve Suo, The Oregonian, for "Unnecessary Epidemic"
This series of articles over the past year show how Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration could have stopped the growth of meth abuse by aggressively regulating the import of the chemicals necessary to make it. Lead reporter Steve Suo's work included sophisticated statistical analyses of data on hospital and treatment center admissions, arrests, meth prices and purity, and chemical imports. (Story #21638)

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Second Place

Chris Adams and Alison Young, Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, for "Discharged and Dishonored"
This yearlong series of stories revealed how disabled veterans were being harmed by the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Reporters Chris Adams and Alison Young analyzed survey data and the VA's own database of 3.4 million claims to discover that more than 13,700 veterans died while waiting for their claims to be resolved, and as many as 572,000 vets may be missing out on their rightful disability payments. (Story #22132)

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Third Place

Matthew Waite and Craig Pittman, St. Petersburg Times, for "Vanishing Wetlands"
This project demonstrated that 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands have been destroyed by development since 1990 when President George H. W. Bush declared a national policy of no net loss of wetlands. Waite and Pittman penetrated beyond the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' poorly-documented records of development permits by using before-and-after satellite imagery and geographical information systems software to accurately measure the loss. (Story #22127)

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