CC BY
31
УДК 528.48
Karl-Peter Traub
Department of Geomatics
HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]
METROPOLITAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS: THE APPLICATION OF GIS FOR FOUNDATION MANAGEMENT IN HAMBURG
Summary
This study firstly applies GIS technology to map out foundations (non-profit organizations) and their projects/beneficiaries in order to monitor their charity work. The City of Hamburg is an ideal study area, since this city avails of the highest density of foundations of all cities in Germany. The study - once completed - can be used to spatially analyze the impact of foundation work in order to improve their outreach and sustainability. The GIS database will soon be accessible on Internet and managed by the Department of Justice. First results are being presented here.
Key words: Foundation, GIS, Urban Information System, Hamburg
INTRODUCTION
Technology oriented tools, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), play nowadays a major role in metropolitan and urban areas as well as in geosciences and related fields. GIS can be successfully utilized for a variety of socio-economic applications in urban metropolitan areas, e.g. mapping, analysis and visualization of the spatial distribution of health facilities (TRAUB 2004a; TRAUB 2004b) or tourist infrastructure in the city, etc. With the application of GIS tools, geo-objects and their spatial inter-relationships can be coordinated in order to recognize certain spatial patterns, which might not be obvious from tabular data alone.
In this study, which began in 2007 and which is still ongoing, non-profit organizations (foundations) in Hamburg, Germany, and the spatial distribution of their project activities within the city limit were mapped out for the first time.
Within the framework of a joint project of the Department of Geomatics, HafenCity University Hamburg, and the “Initiative of Foundations in Hamburg”, initiated by the Alfred-Toepfer-Foundation, the spatial distribution of foundations (non-profit organizations) and their projects in Hamburg have been mapped out, stored in a digital database and visualized. The aim of the project is firstly to record spatial distribution of foundations, such as the locations of their headquarters and related themes within the city of Hamburg. Secondly, the study aims to map out the projects of the foundations within the city. A large GIS-database is currently being developed in order to support the efforts of the Department of Justice, which is responsible for the official registration of foundations in Hamburg . Since the project is still ongoing, only some of the preliminary results are being presented here.
FOUNDATIONS IN HAMBURG AND THEIR WORK
Foundations are non-profit organizations which often have charity purposes. They are often set up for either charitable or collective purposes. They may either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the sole source of funding
for their own charitable activities. Commercial activities are not the main purpose of the foundation but are allowed for serving the main purpose. There is no minimum start-up capital necessary to create a foundation. However, a base capital of at least € 60.000 is considered necessary. A foundation is supervised by the local authority of each federal state. In Hamburg this is the Department of Justice.
In the year 2007 the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, located in the northern part of Germany, had approximately 1.75 Million inhabitants, who lived on an area of 755 sqkm. The city is well known for its large international seaport, its vibrant tourist areas - and as the second largest city of Germany. But Hamburg is also one of the 16 Federal States of Germany, and - if one may say so - the “capital of foundations” in Germany. In early 2008, in Hamburg 1026 foundations were registered, which means that Hamburg has the highest density of foundations Germany-wide (>50 foundations/100 000 inhabitants). In Germany, there are currently over 14 000 registered foundations and the number is continuously growing.
The oldest foundation in Hamburg (Hospital of the Holy Spirit) dates back to the year 1227. The total cash assets of all foundations in Hamburg sums up to around 4 Billion €. The largest foundation in Hamburg is the ZEIT-Foundation Evelin and Gerd Bucerius with annual funds of 15 Mio €, the second largest is the Koerber Foundation with annual funds of 10 Mio € and the third largest the Rudolf-Lodders-Foundation with just over 6 Mio € annual funds. The activities of the ZEIT-Foundation are focusing on research and scholarship, art and culture as well as education and training. The flagship of the Foundation is the Bucerius Law School, founded in 2000 as the only private university for law studies in Germany, and already a strong innovative force in academe. The establishment of the Bucerius Art Forum in the heart of Hamburg underlines its importance in the arts. The Bucerius LERN -WER K in Hamburg is an educational initiative to promote reforms at selected secondary schools. The project, which started with just eight schools in Hamburg, now extends to schools in Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony.
The Koerber Foundation is an operating foundation that has brought some of its own awards into being, in order to foster creativity in science, art and social commitment. The main partner of this study, the Alfred-Toepfer Foundation, is also one of the largest foundations in Hamburg, in terms of annual funding (over 1,5 Mio €). The foundation is committed to promoting European unification and ensuring cultural diversity alongside understanding between the countries of Europe. As a private, nonprofit-making foundation it is active in the domains of European integration, international understanding, art and culture, science, nature conservation, and youth work. Further activities extend into the fields of agriculture and forestry, as well as the preservation of historical monuments. One of the smaller foundations, out of the 1026 in Hamburg, is the Foundation “Haus Bauhuette” which’s main purpose is to run and operate a student dormitory.
Figure 1: Location of Hamburg in the North of Germany (Map Source: ESRI)
As one can easily imagine, the tasks and fields of operation of foundations are as diverse as the aspects of society. According to the statistics, about one third of the foundations pursue social purposes, 20 % support education, 15 % art and culture, 10% science and research and 5% environmental protection.
The type of the foundations can be generally distinguished between those which run their own programs and projects and those which support individuals or other organizations financially. Both types do exist in Hamburg.
DEVELOPING THE SPATIAL DATABASE
The 1026 foundations (as of early 2008) in Hamburg are categorized into 26 different areas of operations, whereas many organizations are active in more than one field, e.g. medicine and handicapped or culture and sciences or art and international studies. This information is stored in a (non-spatial) database, managed by the Department of Justice in Hamburg and accessible for everybody through Internet.
Table 1: Categorization of Foundations in Hamburg
No Fields of operation
1 Science and Research
2 Sports, Leisure and Recreation
3 Animal Protection
4 Environment and Nature Protection
5 Art, Culture and Protection of Monuments
6 International Relations
7 Advancement of Medicine
8 Handicapped
9 Health
10 Hospitals
11 Church
12 Senior Citizens
13 Housing
14 Assistance for Scholars and Students
15 Youth Support
16 Children
17 Religion
18 Education
19 Economy and Employment
20 Politics
21 Consumer Protection
22 Old Age Home and Care
23 Social Work
24 Support of Institutions and Individuals
25 Family Members of the Founder
26 Provident funds
One of the major and time consuming activities of the study was the geocoding process for all foundations including some of their major projects and data collection procedures from the individual foundations. Some of the core attributes that were collected and processes are listed in Table 2.
Table 2: Attributes at the example of one large foundation (modified)
Name: Afred-Toepfer-Foundation FVS
Name of Founder Alfred Gustav Carl Toepfer
Year of Foundation 1932
Type of Foundation Public
Purpose To promote European unification and
ensuring cultural diversity
Area of Operation International
Tasks Culture, Art, Science, European Integration
etc.
Contact Person Birte Toepfer
Address Georgsplatz 10, Hamburg
Annual Budget 1.533.876,00 €
This tedious task was accomplished together with students from the Department of Geomatics of the HafenCity University Hamburg as a study project during the summer term 2007. Geocoding was done using the official digital map of Hamburg in which the addresses were located and stored in a database as point data. Thematically, the foundations were grouped into 26 categories of operations and stored in a different table (Tab. 1). The relational database was finally implemented using ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 (Fig. 3).
Figure 2: Parts of the GIS Database in ArcGIS
With the non-spatial data interlinked with geographic data and other GIS layers, such as administrative boundaries, typical queries can be run, such as number of foundations per district or location of the oldest foundation in the city etc. Tabular statistics are also possible, like the average annual budget of foundations created between the year 1700 and 1800 etc. This large database will soon be covering all 1026 foundations of the city.
As one can see from the map (Fig. 3), most foundations are located north of the Elbe river in the city center, only few in the south (Harburg and Bergedorf). This phenomenon is certainly no coincidence but due to the socio-economic structure of the city which manifests even spatially. This regional disparity can also be seen in other fields, such as the provision of health facilities (e.g. TRAUB 2004a and b) or income. The southern districts of Hamburg are in many cases less privileged than the North.
Figure 3: Location of sample foundations in Hamburg (613 out of 1026). One dot represents one foundation. Different hatchings represent the seven different
districts.
Another interesting observation is that 51% (515) of the analyzed foundations (1009) were founded between 1990 and 2008 and 33% (338) were founded within the last 8 years, since 2000! This coincides with the economic success of the city. This is also no real surprise, since Hamburg has the highest density of millionaires of all German cities.
Figure 4: Location of the oldest foundation in Hamburg. The map also shows the
boundaries of the 103 city’s quarters
This GIS database - once completed - will be implemented as WebGIS solution at the Department of Justice and could then be reached on Internet by any user.
THE PROJECTS AND THEIR BENEFICIARIES
The “Initiative of Foundations” came up with the idea to map out the locations of projects or beneficiaries, funded by the foundations. This part of the project is by far the interesting bit, since the location of the beneficiaries of the projects may provide some insights about spatial patterns of charity work and may deliver some ideas about the impact of the foundation’s efforts on sustainability and outreach.
Hence, a second relational GIS database was developed in a similar manner to store the spatially referenced data about the projects or beneficiaries of the foundations, together with their relevant attributes. Those relevant core attributes are listed in Table 3 below.
Table 3: List of Core Attributes for Projects and Beneficiaries
_______________Project Name__________________
_______________Project Address_______________
____________Cooperation Partners_____________
_______________Project Goal__________________
___________________Budget____________________
_______________Project Duration______________
_______________Contact Person________________
_________Status (ongoing/completed)__________
This second GIS database could then be related to the first database. The most challenging part was to gather detailed data from the foundations - some of the foundations do not like to publish such kind of data, for various reasons. This task is still ongoing and may be completed by the end of 2008. Also, it was impossible to contact all 1026 foundations, hence the project partners agreed to limit this exercise to the 200 most active foundations in Hamburg.
After geocoding the beneficiaries using the digital street map, the spatial distribution of e.g. “scientific and research” projects or “handicapped” could be displayed, including their respective attributes (see Fig. 5).
Figure 5: Location of selected projects for children, funded by different foundations. One asterisk represents one project.
Figure 6: Children's projects with some displayed attribute information, retrieved
from the database
Figure 7: Selected cultural projects. The “Foundation Elbphilahormie” is encircled
One of the largest projects in Hamburg that is being developed at the moment, is the new music hall (“Elbphilharmonie”). On top of an old port warehouse from 1875, a concert hall, a hotel and apartments will be constructed and ready for use
by 2011. The funding for this world-class music hall comes from over 5000 trustees who gave already over 60 Mio € to the newly created “Foundation Elbphilharmonie” in order to realize this landmark project The location is within the Harbor City area along the Elbe river (see Fig. 7 and 8).
Figure 8: Computer animation of Hamburg’s new musical hall (“Elbphilharmonie”;
www.stiftung-elbphilharmonie. de)
The examples above are only a few highlights of what can be done by using GIS for monitoring purposes, and may serve the foundations to keep the overview about their supported projects. The tool may also be used to promote activities and to create awareness about charity projects, which may motivate even more people “to do good” for their city.
OUTLOOK
The study shows that GIS can be well applied to various aspects of another interdisciplinary field: foundation management and monitoring of their work. Furthermore, the study and especially the methodology of systematically inventorying projects and beneficiaries are well applicable to other cities and countries, where the number of foundations are still limited. This GIS-based data will be used - once completed - to further study the impact of foundation work, since little is known about the sustainability of charity projects.
This comprehensive, GIS-based inventory and mapping exercise will be available as WebGIS solution on Internet in the future.
REFERENCES
1. Bundesverband Deutscher Stiftungen (ed.) (2007): Stiftungsreport 2007. www.stiftungen.org.
2. Goering, M. (2007): In Hamburg stiften gehen. Hamburg.
3. Initiativkreis Hamburger Stiftungen und Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg (ed.) (2003): Buerger und Gesellschaft. Stiftungen in Hamburg. Hamburg.
4. Justizbehoerde Hamburg (ed.) (2008): Stiftungsdatenbank Hamburg. www.hamburg.de.
5. Statistisches Amt fur Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein (ed.) (2008): Statistisches Jahrbuch Hamburg 2007. Hamburg.
6. Traub, K.-P. (2004b): GIS based Veterinarian Information System (VetIS) for Hamburg, Germany. In: Geoinformatics 6/2004, Emmeloord.
7. Traub, K.-P. (2004a): Study on the spatial distribution of health locations using GIS, the example of Hamburg. In: Geo-Information Systems in health. Introduction and practical applications. Heidelberg (in German).
Contact
Prof. Dr. Karl-Peter Traub Department of Geomatics HafenCity University Hamburg Hebebrandstrasse 1 D-22297 Hamburg Germany
Phone: +49 (40) 42827.5494
Fax: +49 (40) 42827.5359
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: http: //www. hcu-hamburg. de/geomatik/
© Karl-Peter Traub, 2008
