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UCGIS Solicitation The HUD grant enabled the University Consortium for Geographic Information science (UCGIS) to issue a solicitation for proposals. The proposals were reviewed and five universities were selected. The winning universities were: · University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign · University of Iowa · Virginia Commonwealth University · West Virginia University · University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Each of the winning universities is collaborating with academic institutions and government agencies in emerging nations to develop web-based training and analysis programs on the application of geographic information systems for urban indicator modeling. The project complements the Urban Indicators Programme of the United Nation's Global Urban Observatory by using UCGIS member institutions to develop programs to train personnel in developing countries on the application of geographic information systems for disaggregating the macro-level Urban Indicators to the micro level. GIS technology is used to , disaggregate country and city indicator data to sub-areas within cities to help evaluate the spatial dynamics of urban quality within larger metropolitan areas. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team is headed by Drs Emily Talen, Farank Miraftab, Lewis Hopkins and Zorica-Nedovic-Budic. The University of Illinois is collaborating with the Kathmandu Mapping Project in Kathmandu, Nepal, the Department of Information Systems Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, and the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswanna. Dr. Gerard Rushton and Michael McNulty head the University of Iowa team. The National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, India and the Department of Geography at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria are collaborating with the University of Iowa. Drs Robert Rugg and Weiping Wu are heading the Virginia Commonwealth University team with Dr John Accordino. VCU is collaborating with the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and Faculty of Architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and the Open Research Laboratory of Remote Sensing at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. West Virginia University's team is headed by Dr. Calvin Masilela with Drs Gregory Elmes, Ge Lin and Daniel Weiner as co-principal investigators, and Dr. Brent McCuster as project administrator. The University of West Virginia is collaborating with the Universide de Catolica de Mocambique in Beira, Mozambique. Professor William Huxhold, Cheryl Ajirotutu, Jochen Albrecht and Dr. Laxmi Ramasubramanian are heading the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee team. The City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the City of Dakar, Senegal, the Ecole Superieure Polytechnique and the University of Cheikh Aanta Diop-Dakar are collaborators on the project. Dr. Kenneth Dueker is the overall project coordinator. His responsibilities include: providing oversight, intellectual support and peer review for the UCGIS participating universities, identifying possibilities and techniques for linking the micro-level data developed through the individual projects to the macro data, coordinating and producing the final report, and working with the Advisory Board. UCGIS private affiliate member Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) is supporting the effort through donation of ARC IMS and ARC SDE software to participating universities. In addition, ESRI has provided GIS software to cities in developing countries cooperating on this project with UCGIS and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT) and its Global Urban Observatory Urban Indicators Programme. |
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Context Urban indicators are designed to measure the quality of life and the nature of development of an urban area. They can also be used to make comparisons over time and space to form the basis for urban development policies. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Nations (Parnell and Poyser) both emphasize the usefulness of indicators in policy making. IDRC describes indicators as “ essentially pieces of information that reveal conditions and, over time, trends. These indicators can be used to make policy and planning decisions, to identify whether policy goals and targets are being met, and sometimes to predict change.” According to United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS), “indicators are models that simplify complex subjects into a few numbers which can be used to determine policy.”
In developing countries the lack of good data and indicators severely constrains the ability to develop and analyze effective urban policy. A sustained and systematic appraisal of urban problems is needed to provide the overall picture of the city and how it functions and an indication of the relationships between the performance of individual sectors and broader social and economic development results (Leitmann, 1999).
The Global Urban Observatory is the UNCHS Habitat’s facility for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the Habitat Agenda and Agenda 21. This body was born of a resolution by the 1996 UNCHS Habitat II Conference in Instabul, Turkey, that “All partners of the Habitat Agenda, including local authorities, the private sector, and communities should regularly MONITOR and EVALUATE their own performances in the implementation of the Habitat Agenda through comparable human settlement and shelter INDICATORS…” (Paragraph 240 of the Habitat Agenda). The Urban Indicators Program (UIP) and the Best Practice and Local Leadership (BLP) together make up the Global Urban Observatory. This Urban Indicators Program was born of the realization that many cities of the world (particularly the developing world) are faced with an information crisis, which seriously undermine their capacity to develop and analyze urban policy.
The meaning and role of indicators has thus been defined: “...a measure that summarizes information about a particular subject and may point to particular problems … (and) provides a reasonable response to specific needs and questions…” (UNDP, 2000). Regardless of the definition, literature has demonstrated that various indicators based on easily obtained data can offer useful intelligence for making strategic choices about directing and managing future growth. Furthermore, while indicators primarily show trends, prioritize and define targets, provide qualitative and quantitative information etc, (Barnejee, 1996; Leitmann, 1999), they can also be more than pieces of information if designed in response to well defined policy objectives (Global Outlook, 2000; Sawicki and Flynn, 1996). In a special issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association devoted to a discussion of indicators, Banerjee (1996:222) summarized the purposes of indictors as: To measure performance of policies and programs; to examine trends; to monitor the condition of a city or a region; to inform decision-makers; to raise awareness of the public; to define targets; to set planning objectives; to compare localities horizontally (across space) or longitudinally (over time); to raise flags in an early warning system; to guide strategic investment choices; to challenge conventional wisdom; and so forth.
Sawicki and Flynn (1996) and Leitmann (1999) argue that indicators must be capable of affecting citizen action and public policy making, and hence must be formulated through a broad-based partnership approach involving all levels of decision-making and all stakeholders. However, it has been argued that stakeholder participation in this process has always remained questionable as experts dominate the scene (Leitmann, 1999). Indicators
can be used to measure conditions at varying geographical levels. For
example, national indicators are used to measure and compare the level
of development of different countries. Within a country, there can be
indicators at the regional level or at the city level. Most indicators
in current use are at the national or the city level. However city-wide
indicators are not always a true reflection of the level of conditions
– especially in the case of cities in the developing world that
are characterized by stark socio-economic differences amongst inhabitants.
While the affluent enjoy a high quality of life and have access to quality
services, the poorer inhabitants of these cities live in miserable conditions,
often without basic services. These disparities are also reflected in
the spatial segregation of the urban population based on the level of
access to amenities and infrastructure (Portes and Johns, 1989). Availability of reliable and appropriate data at the intra-city scale is a problem. There is a need to build national and local capacity to collect globally comparable and useful information on urban conditions and trends, to convert the information to knowledge through appropriate techniques, and to apply this knowledge in formulating and modifying urban policies and programs (UNCHS, 1999). Addressing this need will help to resolve information and knowledge gaps that blur the vision of city leaders and the hopes and aspirations of urban citizenry.
The spatial nature of urban phenomena prescribes the use of geospatial technologies in urban management. GIS analysis is mainly used during the informed consultation phase to generate physical and social information, including key correlations, and for monitoring the implementation of plans in cities. Sawicki and Flynn (1996) engaged a thorough conceptual and theoretical examination of the literature where they identify urban environmental indicators as the precursors of neighborhood indicators in the United States. To illustrate the relevance of GIS, it is argued “With many records located in space, the GIS can then aggregate them to any level of geography: city blocks, neighborhoods, census block groups, tracts, municipalities and counties (Sawicki and Flynn, 1996:166). Furthermore, the analytical capabilities of GIS have made the technology more than just a communicative visual tool hence most applicable in the development of indicators for evaluating urban policy and the quality of our cities. This way, the use of the technology would fall within the five geographic information science (GIScience) potential areas for planning as identified by Nedovic-Budic (2000:82): database development, integration of geospatial technologies with urban models, building of planning support systems, facilitating discourse and participation, and evaluating planning practice and technological impact.
Applications of GIS have recently disseminated to developing nations. Despite the rapid adoption, the use of the technology has tended to reside in externally funded projects or state agencies and rarely is it owned and used by people at the grassroots. Similarly, there has not been a coordinated style of adoption and use in many countries. Although local authorities in different countries have engaged GIS at different levels, enormous gaps in information and citywide data have become commonplace. |
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First Symposium The
project principal investigators met in Washington DC February 6-7, 2001
for a Symposium on Urban Indicators. The agenda for this symposium included:
1) demonstrations of the capacity of UCGIS member institutions to perform
the analyses; and, 2) investigation of the availability of data in the
developing countries for incorporation into the developed analytical
models. The symposium consisted of invited presentations from UCGIS
member universities describing work currently being done on urban indicators
and on related GIS activities within developing countries, and presentations
by interested government and international agencies. Presentations were
also made by: UCGIS President, William Huxhold; UCGIS Executive Director,
Susan Jampoler; Alven Lam (HUD); John Gerherty (HUD/International);
David Chase (HUD/OPDR); Ann Johnson (ESRI); Richard Campbell (Cornerstone
Concepts); and representatives of the UN Habitat, HUD, and the World
Bank provided useful background on the general interest in Global Urban
Indicators and the use of these Indicators in UN, World Bank, and US
policy and planning contexts. These sessions provided a larger context
for the present UCGIS grant and placed the work of the five universities
in perspective. Each
of the participating universities made brief presentations at the Symposium,
outlining their proposed activities, providing an introduction to their
partner institutions, and current state of the project. Two or more
persons represented each university. Several of the foreign partner
institutions were also represented. The presentations highlighted the
considerable differences in interpreting and addressing the main purposes
of the UCGIS/HUD RFP. The discussions and small group session that followed
were helping in clarifying individual projects and further defined some
of the common, and divergent, approaches. Originally, the projects were to finish their work by September 30, 2001. However, it was decided at the Symposium that UCGIS would ask that this date be changed in view of the late start and the implementation plans of the projects. A time extension for the project has been approved with a new completion date of May 31, 2002. |
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UN
Habitat (UNCHS) Conference Susan
Jampoler, William Huxhold, and Gerard Rushton participated in the UN
Habitat (UNCHS) conference in New York, June 6-7, 2001 as a member of
the HUD/UCGIS team. They participated in three meetings involving Guenter
Karl, Coordinator of the Global Urban Observatory, Christine Auclair,
Indicator Specialist, and their Chief, Ms. Nefise Bazoglu, Urban Secretariat,
HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Shannon Sorzano and HUD Secretary Martinez. Other
sessions included “Implementation of the Habitat Agenda”,
chaired by Ms. Bazoglu with panelists Guenter Karl, Jay Moor and Alven
Lam of HUD. Participants are were involved in discussions on two major
Habitat projects: The State of the World's Cities and the Report of
Urban Settlements. These sessions were very useful in examining the relationship between current urban indicator research and training in the UNCHS, HUD, and the several universities participating in the UCGIS Urban Indicators project. |
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Second Symposium A
second Symposium on Global Urban Indicators was held in New York City,
January 8-11, 2002. The agenda for this symposium included: 1) presentations
from the five university teams on progress during the first year; 2)
assessment of progress and future directions by observers and participants;
3) recommendations by the international partners, functioning as an
advisory board, and 4) discussion of GIS and web-based training materials.
The symposium focused on presentation of research results and the description
of training materials developed by the five university teams on urban
indicators and on related GIS activities within developing countries.
Presentations were also made by: UCGIS Project Coordinator, Kenneth
Dueker; HUD Project Monitor, Alven Lam; UN Habitat observer Christine
Auclair; software representatives from ESRI, Ann Johnson, Mike Phoenix,
C.J. Cote, and Daniel Zimble; and Shlomo Angel from New York University.
They provided useful assessment of progress and advice on development
of GIS-based training materials and the use of these material and urban
indicators in UN, US AID, and US policy and planning contexts. Each project team presented a report on their activities that served to describe their focus and approach: · The University of Iowa described their focus on health-related indicators and analysis for use in policy analysis and the planning of health services and facilities. They are converting and adapting GIS-based analysis for use in medical geography classes in the U.S. for application in Nigeria and India. The Iowa team has well-established capacity-building connections in these two countries. · The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team collaborating with the Kathmandu Mapping Project in Kathmandu, Nepal, the Department of Information Systems Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, and the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswanna on the measurement of accessibility to urban services. This project uses GIS to visually explore and analyze disparities in access to housing, infrastructure, urban services and amenities. They are developing applications in ArcIMS and ArcView. The focus is on developing measures of accessibility that are applicable in several developing countries. The capacity-building connections with international partners are in the formative stage. · The Virginia Commonwealth University team is collaborating with and focusing on the data needs of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and Faculty of Architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and the Open Research Laboratory of Remote Sensing at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. They are developing data resources and training materials in Spanish and Chinese. The training modules are for digitizing, map projections, scale, data integration, aggregation/disaggregation, map design, and analysis. · University of West Virginia is collaborating with the Universide de Catolica de Mocambique in Beira, Mozambique. Jointly they are developing a database that uses infrastructure as the focus for support of planning and decision making at the local level. They are developing web-based training programs on the application of GIS for modeling of urban indicators in Beira. · The
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee team is collaborating with
the City of Dakar, Senegal, the Ecole Superieure Polytechnique and the
University of Cheikh Aanta Diop-Dakar on the project of participatory
action research and capacity building for Dakar. Participatory action
research employs a partnership approach to map and subsequently analyze
selected urban indicators using GIS. UWM has developed training
modules. Selected staff based in Senegal will develop their skills to
use GIS and analyze urban indicator data through participation in this
research project. The project team presentations and the ensuing discussion illustrated the difficulty in reconciling the need for uniform and consistent urban indicators from the top down or global perspective, while developing a bottoms-up perspective of developing useful data for local planning and policy analysis. With a high level of participation and influence by the international partners, the five project teams emphasized the bottoms-up perspective and developed data and training materials suited to local needs. Consequently, the objective to develop comparable indicators was compromised by this tailoring of activities to local needs. Discussion
of plans to continue the project addressed the need to generate comparable
data while at the same time being responsive to the needs of the international
partners, and their role in providing data and analysis on behalf of
local planers and policy analysts. The project teams accepted the need
for a common conceptual model of urban infrastructure and services with
measures of capacity, demand, and stress (disparity in capacity and
demand, in time and space, in relation to norms). The project teams
will exchange approaches and measures on these dimensions toward more
comparable indicators of conditions and trends. The amount of growth
and change that was detected heightens interest in and the importance
of the temporal dimension. More communication is needed between university
teams toward increasing uniformity in mapping temporal change and in
placing small-area indicators in a city, region, province and nation
context. The
discussion of GIS software tools for the development of applications
provided comparative information on what approaches were productive
and what proved problematic. Applications that relied on the proven
and stable technology of ArcView 3.2 were most successful although they
did not achieve the objective of being web based. Several teams experience
difficulty and limited success in working with ArcIMS. The difficulties
stemmed from limited experience with the software, too ambitious expectations
of it, and limitations of the early version of the software. A new version
of ArcIMS should help, although bandwidth and limitations of hardware
at the international client side may limit the application of web-based
GIS applications. In the longer term, ArcGIS may be a more robust way
of accessing data remotely for GIS analysis. The
contribution of GIS software by ESRI has been beneficial, particularly
to the international partners. The announcement that ESRI has expanded
its educational program by adding resources on the international side
will serve the project well. HUD’s
interest in the project continues to be strong. They see the strength
of the varied approach of the five university teams, of the capacity
building that is taking place, and the development of training materials.
HUD is looking for a compilation of results from the development of
GIS-based training materials, and development of indicators of urban
infrastructure and services capacity, demand, and stress that will be
of use by local governments in the U.S. and in developing countries. This project serves HUD’s agenda of working with the United Nations on monitoring progress in implementing the Habitat agenda. Implementing strategies of: 1) forming partnerships; 2) adopting enabling approaches; 3) activating participatory mechanisms; 4) building capacity; and 5) monitoring progress through networking and modern information technologies are addressed in this project. In addition to these contributions of capacity building toward comparative urban indicators, the project contributes to the capacity building for the building of environmental management information systems that focus on mapping and GIS analysis within urban areas. |
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Project Findings
Overall,
the project provides support for the importance of regular monitoring
of indicators for identifying emerging urban issues. Although, inter-city
comparisons are useful to assess comparative status and progress, intra-city
monitoring and indicators are crucial to good practices for managing
urban systems. The partnerships of UCGIS universities and their international
collaborators emphasize the strengthening of local capacity, wherein
issues are clarified and key stakeholders are involved to set priorities
through an informed consultative process. This process follows and confirms
the local environmental action planing process used for sustainable
planning (Leitmann, 1999). Within
the context of the mutual goals of HUD and UCGIS for the project, the
unique perspective and approach of each university results in a broader
set of findings than could be achieved by a single perspective and approach.
The following summarizes the important findings from each university
team. The
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team used GIS to explore
differences in accessibility to and quality of urban infrastructure
for residential locations in selectedt cities in different countries.
This effort demonstrates the importance of spatial analysis and GIS
to measure accessibility. Measuring accessibility at the neighborhood
level is an important issue in various countries. Further, this effort
illustrates the need for and use of web-based training tools for GIS
instruction and collaboration with partners. The
University of Iowa team effort demonstrates how a set of GIS
instruction modules designed for domestic analysis of health indices
and health care planning can be converted and adapted to web-based training
tools and applied by international partners. The University of Iowa
team is composed of persons who have worked together over a period of
years allowing them to quickly focus on the substantive issues to advance
the state-of-the-art of development of small-area indicators using socio-economic
and health data. The
Virginia Commonwealth University
team developed sub-city urban indicators in two quite different contexts
– Shanghai and Guatemala City. The size and issue differences
of the two regions reinforce the need for local collaborators and the
development of different types of indicators. One set of indicators
will not serve both regions. The mapping of indicators and the training
modules for mapping serves to illustrate the importance of collaborative
process of mapping for analysis of spatial patterns of urban indicators.
This work lays the foundation for monitoring trends in the two regions.
Monitoring change in the spatial patterns of urban indicators is of
great interest in both regions. West
Virginia University's team worked to gain knowledge on the state
of urban quality in a very challenging region – Beira Mozambique.
They employed GIS, and transferred the technology locally to establish
a quantitative baseline of spatial data to evaluate existing conditions
and monitor change. They worked with stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness
of policies and programs intended to improve socially and economically
distressed communities, increase home ownership, and reduce homelessness. The University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee team operated in the context of a broader, but still developing relationship between UWM and a university in Senegal. Participatory methods and techniques were used to increase awareness among key decision makers of the advantages in using urban indicators and GI technologies to make policy decisions and day-to-day management decisions. This participatory approach facilitated a robust discussion regarding the selection of appropriate indicators to be used in sub-city analysis. The UWM team has developed an analysis template that allows decision-makers to examine large data sets with many variables in order to investigate a specific problem. This analysis template allows a range of users to examine the same data set to provide relevant information to address different problems such as to solve day-to-day management decisions, strategic planning, emergency services delivery, and for developing policy options. |
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Conclusions
and Recommendations The
project was originally envisioned as a three-year effort, but only the
first year was funded. Consequently, the goals of the project have not
been fully achieved, but this report represents evidence of considerable
progress to serve as a basis for a decision for continuation funding. The
university teams and their international partners provided insights
into monitoring urban change and local capacity building. This work
illustrated the difficulty in reconciling the need for uniform and consistent
urban indicators from the top down or global perspective, while developing
a bottoms-up perspective of developing useful data for local planning
and policy analysis. With a high level of participation and influence
by the international partners, the five project teams emphasized the
bottoms-up perspective and developed data and training materials suited
to local needs. As
a result of differing local needs and interests, the university teams
worked independently and the resulting data, indicators, spatial analyses,
and training materials are not very consistent. Future research will
compare and evaluate these differences carefully to provide a basis
for a more concerted effort, while at the same time allowing for addressing
unique needs of local partners. The
instructional materials that have been developed by the five universities
vary in content and form. They are referred to as Exercises, Labs, Modules,
and Training Materials. Some are Internet-based exercises while others
are support classroom presentations. Each set of instructional materials
was developed from available resources at each institution and the local
needs of international partners. Consequently, GIS-based instructional
materials lack consistent “look and feel” and content. The
follow-on project will compare approaches and methods, and work toward
a common look and feel of training materials, while at the same time
allowing for unique features needed for different types of analyses
and differing local needs. Similarly, the Project web pages for each
of the universities have different content and formats. Follow-on research
will strive for a common look and feel of web pages for the five universities.
Both will have to be comparative and collaborative efforts to assess
strengths and weaknesses of current training materials and web pages. These differences are illustrated by the list of training materials developed by the five universities. |
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University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Exercise1 Container: No. of facilities contained within a given areal unit Exercise 2 Covering: No. of facilities within a given distance from a point of origin Exercise 3 Min. Distance: Distance between a point and nearest facility The University of Iowa Laboratory 1 Making a choropleth map in ArcView Laboratory 2 Geocoding by address using ArcView Laboratory 3 Spatial filtering using DMAP and ArcVIew Laboratory 4 Probability testing using DMAP and ArcView Laboratory 5 Data manipulation and spatial interpolation Laboratory 6 Spatial interpolation: Analysis of Iowa breast cancer patients Laboratory 7 Analysis of Iowa breast cancer patients: Distance to treatment facility Laboratory 8 GIS and health resources Virginia Commonwealth University Training materials Linking data sets with maps Digitizing Map projections Scale Data integration Aggregation/disaggregation of spatial data Map design Analysis West Virginia University Module 1 Data preparation Module 2 Digital mapping Module 3 Intro to GIS Module 4 Image analysis Module 5 Internet map server Module 6 Model building University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Laboratory 1 Introducing ArcView Laboratory 2 Digitizing Laboratory 3 Exploring different data sets Laboratory 4 Query/overlay/buffer Laboratory 5 Template Laboratory 5 Basic cartography |
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This project has provided experience with the transfer of expertise in evaluating urban indicators using spatial analytical techniques and geographic information systems from participating universities to paired organizations within the emerging nations. This transfer of knowledge utilized web-based training programs.
This project also enabled the building of local capacity to collect and use policy-related indicators. The relationship between the UCGIS member universities and their international partners increases the capacity within the developing countries to continue urban indicator analysis on a long-term basis.
Now
that the five university teams have experience with urban indicators
at the sub-area level and with GIS-based instructional materials, it
is timely to compare experience and results. The task would be to assess
strengths and weaknesses of various measures and approaches, and to
explore opportunities for increasing consistency. Much can be gained
by sharing experiences and approaches. |
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References Leitmann, J. 1999. Sustaining Cities: Environmental Planning and Management in Urban Design. New York: McGraw-Hill. Banerjee, T. 1996. Role of indicators in monitoring growing urban regions: The case of planning in India’s national capital. Journal of the American Planning Association 66 (2): 222-235. Nedovic-Budic, Z. 2000. Geographic Information Science implications for urban and regional planning. URISA Journal 12 (2): 81-93. Portes,
Alejandro and Michael Johns (1989). The polarization of class and space
in the contemporary Latin American city. In W. Canak (ed.), The Lost
Promises, Westview Press, Boulder. Sawicki.
D.S and P. Flynn. 1996. Neighborhood indicators: A review of the literature
and an assessment of conceptual and methodological issues. Journal of
the American Planning Association 66 (2): 165-183. UN Global Urban Observatory (http://www.urbanobservatory.org/indicators/)
The University of Iowa Virginia
Commonwealth University |
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