Knowlton's Drones: Leveraging High-Resolution Aerial Imagery for "Complete Street" Service Learning

Undergraduate students in the lecture-based course, CRPLAN4110: Transportation and Land Use Planning, completed a service learning project for the Complete Streets committee, a volunteer group of residents in Italian Village and adjacent neighborhoods. The instructor developed a series of field surveys for the students to complete and worked with a Knowlton School staff member to complete an aerial survey of the 5th Avenue corridor. The service goal was for the students to develop recommendations and information that the Complete Streets Committee can use to advocate for complete streets in their neighborhood. The learning objective was for the students to understand what is lost and what is gained when we rely on different strategies (both high-tech and low-tech) to map and understand spaces where we do not live, but must professionally observe and plan. With the innovative approach to data collection, we provided important information to community members and offered a unique learning opportunity for city and regional planning students.

The service learning project included an interactive event titled “iplanfor Complete Streets @KnowltonOSU” with seven community member attendees. To facilitate dialogue and learning between students and community members, the assessment included large visuals and data summaries prepared by Knowlton students, staff, and faculty. The visual information included a 90‐ft‐wide, high-resolution print of the 5th Ave corridor (from 315 to just past I‐71). Additionally, we had an interactive, digital 3‐D model of the corridor generated from drone/UAV aerial imaging. Finally, students shared summaries of their field work in Weinland Park, Italian Village, Milo‐Grogen, Harrison West, and the Short North. The project garnered media coverage from 10TV news (https://www.10tv.com/article/osu‐students‐use‐drone‐improve‐livability‐columbusneighborhoods), a short video from the Knowlton school (https://twitter.com/KnowltonOSU/status/981952300569780226), and there is a pending OSU COE news article.

Presenters:

Amber Woodburn

Assistant Professor

Knowlton School of Architecture

The Ohio State University

woodburn.26@osu.edu

AmberWoodburn

Amber Woodburn, Ph.D., joined The Ohio State University in Fall 2016 as an Assistant Professor in the City and Regional Planning section of the Knowlton School. She also holds a joint appointment with the Center for Aviation Studies. Broadly, her work encompasses topics in infrastructure planning, data analytics, environmental impacts of transportation, and aviation. Her education background includes a BS (UC Berkeley, 2009) and MS (UT Knoxville, 2013) in Civil Engineering and a PhD (University of Pennsylvania, 2016) in City and Regional Planning, all with an emphasis on transportation systems. Notably, Dr. Woodburn received a $100,000 Eisenhower fellowship from the US Department of Transportation, a $10,000 research award from the Airport Cooperative Research Program, and was selected as an Eno Transportation fellow while completing her graduate studies. Dr. Woodburn’s research activity includes spatial-statistical analysis of transportation systems as well as qualitative analysis of NEPA planning documents that disclose the environmental impacts of transportation projects. Specifically, she is interested in investigating social equity concerns for airport-adjacent communities and project evaluation methods for global aviation infrastructure planning.

Chris Strasbaugh

Digital Library Archivist and Curator

Knowlton School of Architecture

The Ohio State University

strasbaugh.2@osu.edu

Chris Strasbaugh is the Knowlton School's Digital Library Archivist and Curator. In this position, he manages the Digital Library’s processing of large-format scanning requests, video production and documenting of student work from the school's undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Chris is also in charge of the digitization and preservation efforts of the Knowlton School’s archives collection. This collection includes one of the only collections of student work of both architecture and landscape architecture in the nation going back to 1900. The other portion highlights the teaching and work of some of the most influential faculty members in the school's history.

Chris is active nationally in the field of visual resources and imaging. He has served as the Vice President of Conference Programming for the Visual Resources Association and is active in a number of taskforces and committees involving online learning, development and education. He has also presented at numerous conferences on topics ranging from the semantic web, makerspaces, imaging technologies, GIS and more. He has served as the staff photographer of the Greek-American Excavations at Kenchreai through Harvard University the last two years. Chris has a BA in Photography (2004) from Mount Vernon Nazarene University and a MA in Art History from University of Cincinnati (2007).

Knowlton's Drones: Leveraging High-Resolution Aerial Imagery for "Complete Street" Service Learning

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