Conferences, geodemographics

GISRUK 2014 (Part 1)

I was at the Geographic Information Systems Research United Kingdom (GISRUK) 2014 conference last week. GISRUK is the key GIS conference for early-career academic researchers in the UK and Ireland, and is hosted by a different university in the British Isles each year. The audience are mainly UK academics, with young researchers and professors in roughly equal attendance, along with some academics from abroad, including Malaysia, Nigeria and Canada. They are definitely more geo and less tech, the conference being relatively quiet on Twitter, especially compared to conferences such as State of the Map or Wherecamp EU.

This year the conference was hosted up at Glasgow University. Being tucked into the Easter break might have meant a reduced attendance on previous years. However, there were many good talks in the two parallel streams that ran through the three days of the conference – some 50 talks altogether, plus plenaries – and some talks were very popular, with attendees just about squeezing in to the venue.

In this post (and in the second and third parts, to follow) I’ve highlighted the talks that I found the most interesting. Of course, with two streams, there were inevitably interesting sessions which overlapped, and so I may have missed some of the best of all – in a couple of cases I ended up changing room half-way though a session. I’ve paraphrased the talk titles here.

Streets vs landmarks for text-based directions for pedestrians

This talk, given by William Mackaness from Edinburgh, was on an interesting study monitoring how people get from A to B, given one of two kinds of text directions – landmark based “turn left at the Bank of Scotland branch coming up on the left” or street based “continue on George Street, turn left onto Frederick Street in 500m” and monitored, with GPS and movement sensors, how well they moved through the urban realm, with landmark based directions proving better. Of course, these are harder for automated systems as street names a more uniform and consistent storage type than landmarks.

Clustering landmark tags in urban images

This was probably my favourite talk of the whole conference. By the same team as the above, it was presented by Phil Bartie (St Andrews) and outlined algorithms used to detect buildings and other landmarks from photos, by looking at where people tag interesting features in set photographs, how they tag them, and then linking the tags and locations together to try and separate visually close (but distinct) features, and combine different elements of the same feature that are spatially far apart. The heatmap examples used in the talk were compelling.

IMG_5764

Using social media data to assess crime hotspots

Nick Malleson’s (Leeds) talk looked at tackling the “daytime population” problem – crime statistics tend to exaggerate city centres, as these have a large daytime population but a low residential (i.e. census/official) population, which areas are typically normalised by to produce a crime rate. By looking at georeferenced social media activity as a proxy for daytime population, the city centre hotspots disappear and move into the most deprived suburbs – although these need to be controlled also by a possible lower-than-average use of social media in such areas.

IMG_5765

Exploring links between coal-mining, deprivation and health

This known link was mapped out well by Paul Norman (Leeds), using some great maps of the relevant census data. The talk included a potted history of coal mines and their phased closures. The study was longitudinal – combining statistics over multiple censuses, with data on opening and closing of mines (mine opening dates often being hard to determine).

IMG_5771

At the end of the first day of the conference, therewas a reception at the opulent City Chambers in the centre of Glasgow, where I had the novelty of being served a glass of Irn Bru (Scotland’s other national drink, and tougher to find in London) by a waiter, in a room surrounded with marble and various paintings of former council leaders!

IMG_5769

Part two to follow tomorrow. Addy Pope at EDINA Go-Geo has also reviewed the conference.

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complexity, Connectivity, flows, Information, Interactions, networks

Flow, Conflux

mackaye1

“The city is not only a community, it is a conflux. ….The real city, as a center of industry, is a conflux of streams of traffic; as a center of culture, it is conflux of streams of thought.” So wrote Benton MacKaye in 1928 in his book The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning. When I sent a copy of my own recent book The New Science of Cities to my erstwhile colleague and old friend Lionel March, he quickly scowered it and said: “I see in your Preamble that you cite Castells’ ‘space of flows’ and that your approach makes much of flows and networks. I immediately turned to your bibliography to search for the name Benton MacKaye. It is not there! The author of The New Exploration (1928) is my hero of metropolitan/regional development. I’m sure you know of him”.

Indeed I do know of Benton Mackaye from my reading of Lewis Mumford and of the history of regional planning and in passing references from commentators on Patrick Geddes’ work. But this was mainly when I was a student in the 1960s and I don’t think I have heard much of him since. I had never read his work or even rooted out his book but when Lionel reacted to my book, I was working my way through Don Kruekeberg’s edited collection The American Planner and was about to start reading the chapter by Thomas on Mumford and Mackaye which I then did. Since then I have retrieved The New Exploration from the UCL Library stacks and devoured it.

Amazing that I did not pick up on his focus on flows as the key explanatory force in the evolution of urban society and metropolitan life. MacKaye’s book is a little quirky and the language is old-fashioned – how could it not be as he was three generations before my time – but the logic is unassailable. He talks of the development of urban society (in America) as first an outflow in the 19th century from the small pockets of colonial urbanity established in North America in the 17th and 18th century. Then he talks of the reflow that is a reinforcement of these patterns of migration with the coming of new technologies, largely steam and the railroad. And then comes the inflow when rural dwellers are attracted to the city as the cathedral of commerce and cities are overwhelmed by population and traffic. And then he defines the backflow as the reverse process of decentralization which we now know as sprawl.

Amidst all this he fashions a contained vision of a future urban world which is consistent but considerably more intelligible than the green-belt-garden-cities movement which was a key construct in urban planning during the time when he was writing. In a way, his view of ‘cities evolving’ is one of ‘flows evolving’ and indeed it is consistent with much of what I write in my own book. But it is more than this in that MacKaye’s ideas should be brought right up to date with new technologies of information which are now dominating the city. In fact globalization is another set of flows – outflows which have operated during the last 50 years and in away MacKaye’s vision of many kinds of flow have been widely elaborated and intensified since he wrote his prescient work. The idea of flow being the balance or the fulcrum, indeed a tension, between the indigenous natural world and the new artifactual world of the metropolis is key to his vision of planning. In a way he does in his book what I do not do in mine which is link this kind of science to planning in a rather natural way.

As a last note on his important and oft forgotten (at least by me) contributions, he also suggested that we should ‘visualize’ when we plan – in fact throughout his book he uses the world visualize and visualization in the way we use it today in the digital world but it is more than this because he suggests that planning is a synoptic activity in which the visualization of flows is key to our understanding, and that understanding is the prerequisite to molding the future. Worth reading and when I write again on flows, his work will be uppermost in my mind.

Uncategorized

Programmable Maps

GeoGL_Tube

I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with the tools available to visualise the tube, bus and train data I’ve been collecting, so I’ve ended up creating my own. If you’re wondering why some of the lines don’t have any tubes in the above diagram, it’s because I’ve got the speed set very high and I’m not picking the new route correctly when there is a choice.

The image above is an OpenGL visualisation in C++, but based on my experience with the AgentScript (2D) and Three.js (3D) browser based visualisations. Essentially, I wanted something that would allow me to create the animations that I’ve been using 3DS Max for, but in a much simpler way. The following is a bus animation that I built for a recent presentation:

This was created using 3DS Max, with some custom MaxScript code to load the bus positions and create the animation key frames. The main problem with this is the scale of the data, which is why I had to limit it to between 09:00 and 12:00. Art tools generally don’t like to handle this quantity of data and I’ve also had issues with packages like Unity and Lumion.

Increasingly, I’ve been moving towards the idea of “Programmable Maps” where the visualisation is built through a series of stages which load the data, apply behaviours to elements of the scene that move and produce an impressive 2D or 3D visualisation with advanced lighting or tilt shift in the same way as ViziCities. The use of APIs and 3rd party libraries to obtain the real-time data, along with the temporal aspect, makes it very difficult to fit this type of visualisation into a conventional GIS framework.

The example above is built around a C++ and OpenGL graphics engine, but one that is linked with geospatial libraries so it’s more than just a game engine rendering 3D assets as artwork. The experience with the XBox tubes demo (C#, XNA) and Chrome Three.js example showed that it’s a nightmare to get the geometry in the correct place and orientation unless it’s properly georeferenced. Working with the live tube data, where the API can only be queried every 3 minutes, leads to a real-time visualisation where positions are effectively being forecast between data updates. Putting all this together results in a requirement for a geospatially aware graphics engine linked with an agent based modelling package that allows us to code behaviours for the elements that are moving.

The programmable maps part doesn’t really come into play until you increase the level of sophistication and start to layer additional levels of processing. For example, bus positions are calculated based on arrival times at the next stop. This is a graph technique where you interpolate the time between nodes, but, in order to visualise the positions correctly, this position along the link needs to be applied to a road network to find the real position on the ground. Otherwise you get buses driving through the river and not using the bridges.

What I’m describing is a workflow for geospatial data to go from the raw data through to visualisation using library building blocks and web services where appropriate. There is one final trick to this approach though, as we could use it to make a visualisation directly from a NetLogo agent based model. A while ago I showed how to run the NetLogo program inside a Java program and capture the positions of the agents which can then be loaded into 3DS Max. Exactly the same thing could be applied here, with a NetLogo simulation driving the 3D engine.

 

 

complexity, Connectivity, Economies of scale, emergence, Hierarchy, power laws, Scaling

The Social Face of Complexity Science

Peter-Allen

Subtitled “A Festschrift for Professor Peter M. Allen“ You may say ‘I don’t read Festschrifts, stuffy old things for a bygone age. Wrong ! Always wrong and you must read this one! Because here is someone who has had a massive impact on the way we think about our world of cities and the nature of complexity, and there are many gems to be had here. I first met Peter Allen in 1978 or was it 1979 when he came to Reading on a mission from his mentor the Nobel Prize-winner Ilya Prigogine, the populariser if not the architect of irreversible thermodynamics. This mission was to make contact with urban modellers. But I say all this in one of the memos in this book where we celebrate Peter’s work on the occasion of his 70th and you can read this by clicking on the download.

I also have a chapter in the book called Scaling in City Systems but there is much food for thought in all the contributions here. This is a good book for anyone to read who wishes to see where complexity has come from and where it is destined to go as a movement. You can get the book from the main sources such as Amazon but if you go the publishers web site you can download an extract from the book with its contents that will wet your appetite. I hope the book is seen as more than most Festschrifts which are often left to gather dust but Mark Strathern and James McGlade have done a great job collecting and editing a really nice set of papers. Read on and download the contents and accolades to Peter by clicking here.

AAG, GeoSocial, networks, Social network analysis

AAG and Twitter

After spending a rather enjoyable few days at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting in Tampa where there were some great talks on agent-based modeling, GIS and many other topics which I find interesting, along with catching up with some old friends and meeting new ones, its now time to head back up North. 

However, before jumping on the plane, I thought it would be intersing to look at the twitter traffic of the event (especially how there so many talks on using social media for geographical research). That being said, before showing the Twitter networks associated with the conference, one issue that was common among the conversion outside of the sessions was the lack of wifi access at the conference which accounts for small numbers of tweets durring the events but also one could argue people were more interested in the talks than that of tweeting. With that being said, within this analysis we show below we collected data using the #aag2014 and the @theAAG to explore the Twitter conversation.

The image below shows the # hashtag network from the conference with the biggest cluster being #aag2014 and associated words (click here to see a high solution image)


In the next image we removed the #aag2014 to only show the details of the network within this cluster. After removing the #aag2014 we re-ran the clustering on this network. The graph below shows the biggest clusters (with 3 or more nodes) within the #aag2014 group. Nicely outlined are the discussion topics (e.g. gender, sexuality, intimacy, climate, geoweb). Click here to see a higher resolution image.


Moving away from the hashtags and looking at the retweet network we were surprised to see that the AAG's account wasn't more active (click here to see a higher resolution image).


Also we are currently working on a spatial-temporal slider to look at the conversion over time. Below is a sneak peak from one moment in time. This will be soon coming to the Geosocial Gauge website. 



High Buildings, london, New London Architecture, planning, policy, urban form

London’s High Rise Debate

Last week New London Architecture, centre for built-environment debate and communication, launched a new exhibition on London high rises and high buildings policy. As well as including many spectacular models of present and future buildings, the exhibition presents results from NLA research into London’s current generation of high building proposals.  The most eye-catching finding is that there are over 230 towers of 20 storeys or more proposed or under construction in London, potentially resulting in a dramatic change in London’s urban environment. A high profile campaign has been launched by the Guardian and Architects’ Journal calling for for more discussion and a ‘Skyline Commission’ to assess the impacts of these many developments. The NLA exhibition itself takes a more neutral tone in the debate, and highlights are summarised below.

NLA_Exhibition_Leadenhall

NLA “London’s Growing Up” Exhibition, with Leadenhall Building Model

It’s clear from the NLA map below that the majority of proposals are strongly clustered spatially, with many adjacent to existing high rise districts of Canary Wharf and in the City around Bishopsgate and Liverpool Street. There are however many new clusters set to be created, principally Vauxhall-Nine Elms; Waterloo; Blackfriars Bridge; City Road (Islington); Aldgate; Stratford and North Greenwich. Demand for high rises is a result of acute pressures for more housing, and the prioritising of development at public transport nodes, such as Canary Wharf, Vauxhall and Blackfriars. In heritage terms a number of these clusters are controversial, particularly those along the South Bank that affect London’s river views, and those proposals in the vicinity of the world heritage sites of Westminster and the Tower of London.

SkyscraperLocationMap

NLA Insight Study map of current high building proposals

The main critique from campaigners is that there is a lack of vision from planners regarding high buildings policy, and that current developments are being driven by schemes for luxury residential flats along the river that maximise developer profits. The map above lends support to this view, particularly along the South Bank and at Vauxhall. There are already many medium rise luxury flat developments along the Thames of often limited design quality, and its debatable whether the current batch of taller developments will be any better. Policy restrictions in London are strongly geared towards protecting views of St Pauls Cathedral, effectively preventing new schemes in West Central London. Protection elsewhere is more limited and dependent on borough level interpretations of policy. Westminster has prioritised conservation and prevented new high rises (except at the Paddington Station development) while neighbouring boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark are more inclined to accept proposals, and use the much needed revenue for further housing development.

As well as covering the current planning debate, the exhibition includes many beautiful architectural models of existing and future high building proposals. There are some really unique designs, such as the fountain pen-shaped ‘Pinnacle’ that is back under development in the main City of London cluster.

Overall the exhibition is well worth a visit, and whether you are a fan or a critic of high buildings in London, there is clearly a need for greater awareness and discussion of current changes and what they will mean for the urban environment. There is also a need for more public access to open models and visualisations of how new buildings will appear and change London’s physical structure. Andy Hudson-Smith (@digitalurban) argued for this a few years back in CASA’s Virtual London project, and it appears that trends are currently moving in this direction.

SkyscraperMinatures

LargeModel_CityCentre

 

 

 


Uncategorized

Future of Navigation

Some snapshots from last Tuesday’s Future of Navigation event, organised by the Future Cities Catapult in London.

Below is our interactive installation on the experience of the city through the ‘lens’ of partially sighted conditions. On the left a video project simulates what it means to walk with a variety of partial sight conditions; on the right, users could see their emotional responses to the projection (and well, the whole event hard to focus only on one thing in such an occasion) visualised in real-time, from the Emotiv EPOC data feed. Those who were interested, and there were plenty, had a change to try the Emotiv EEG and get a feel of how we use these methods and sensors for our study.

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The event hosted various installations by the other research done as part of the ‘Family Day Out programme’ in collaboration with the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. 

Below, on the background is the blue sensory room from the Guide Dogs, where one enters blindfolded in an entirely dark inflattable room. The surfaces are all selected to provide a rich tactile experience and it’s very exciting; it also makes you realise how radically different is the experience of the environment without vision…

WP_20140408_006

This project by Ross Atkin and the Helen Hamlyn Institute of Royal College of Art (RCA), suggests the renew of the urban works infrastructure. As you can see below, the orange barriers now have two different sides indicated by the intentionally very high contrast bands white-red rectangles and yellow-black triangles. These are made to indicate which side of the barrier is safe to walk, which can be very helpful when the pedestrian is not familiar with the environment. Ross’ extensive prior research with partially sighted and blind people, makes him very aware of the difficulty of negotiating unexpected change and deviating from the learned path, so this redesign of such a common building site product, aims to reduce the stress such temporary disruptions cause to many pedestrians.

WP_20140408_009

There were also posters and very interesting insights from the research done by the Superflux studio, Arup and the other research partners of the project, but I am afraid I didn’t get any snasphots of those.

See you at the next event!

 

ABM, Disease, GeoMason, GIS, MASON, Slums

An Agent-based Model for the Spread and Containment of Tuberculosis

Over the last few months we have been working on developing a agent-based model which explores the spread and containment of tuberculosis. Today is the first time that we show the model to a academic audience at the AAG Annual meeting. To give a sense of our research, below is the abstract:
Tuberculosis (TB) is a global problem and especially in developing countries. After human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) it is the most common form of death from an infectious disease. However, it is still unknown exactly how it spreads within a population. A geographic explicit agent-based model, with humans as agents, was created and applied to study the TB problem. Specifically the model was developed to see what epidemiological dynamics may occur, and what could be learned about the spreading of the disease. The model was developed in MASON and utilizes the GeoMason GIS extension. A Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) submodel was created to model TB progression and linked to daily human activities. The slum of Kibera, Kenya (the largest urban slum in Africa, and an area where TB and HIV is particularly rampant) was chosen as a test-case. Detailed geospatial and demographic information from Kibera was used for the instantiation of the models spatial environment and demographic properties of the agents. Preliminary results obtained from standard model runs show that TB epidemics progress in staircase patterns of emergence and stabilization. Furthermore, it was found that TB was creating hotspots, or pockets of dense disease concentration, from where it was spreading. The results and lessons gleaned from the model can be easily incorporated into current health policies to mitigate TB's negative impact. Furthermore, the research shows the potential of ABMs in investigating infectious diseases.
Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) submodel


To give a sense of what the model looks like below we show the full model running with 250,000 agents on the slum of Kibera, Kenya.


In the next movie we show the model running with only 50,000 agents but with a zoomed in section of the Kibera Slum. In this movie, you can see the agents going about their daily activities and how some become infected with TB.


This work would not of been possible without the work of my co-author Parth Chopra and the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Mentorship Program.

Agent Based Models, Cellular Automata, Planning Support, power laws, Scaling

Urban Complexity and Planning

Shih-Kung An interesting new book by Shi-Kung Lai and Haoying Han which weaves together their various papers which range from strict cellular automata models of urban processes to models of organisational structures such as Cohen’s decision-making model applied to planning (The so-called Garbage Can Model). This book is still pretty theoretical but it gets a lot closer to theories of planning than some of my own books (see the side panel). Nicely presented and well worth a look. There are two forewords to the book, one by myself and one by Lew Hopkins – click here and on the image for details.

bazalgette, iron, Rambles, sewage, steam, urban rambles, Victoriana

Steaming Crossness

IMG_1503After my wander up the Greenway last year, it was exciting to finally see Crossness pumping station in action this weekend. Bazalgette’s sewers were/are gravity-fed, so by the time south London’s sewage reaches the Thames at distant Crossness, it’s some thirty feet underground, and needed to be pumped up to surface level before it could be discharged into the Thames. Fear not, those plucky Victorians waited until the tide was going out; in the meantime, it was stored in a giant sewage reservoir onsite.

While the lake of sewage has been replaced by a field of solar panels*, much of the original building and mechanisms remain, restored by volunteers over a number of years. And yesterday was steaming day, so we got to see one of four giant and colourful beam engines in action.

The building itself is home to some beautiful Victorian ironwork. From April next year, they will be open much more regularly, but until then, there is a list of open days on their website.

Click to view slideshow.

*I’ll leave you to insert your preferred glib comparison, or more nuanced insight about bountiful resources and centralised infrastructure, here


GeoSocial, GIS, SNA, social media, twitter

Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence

Recently the USGIF published a book entitled "Human Geography: Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Global Security" in which we have a chapter called "Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence". This book has been some  time in the making. We blogged about our contribution in  2012. But its finally its out! Below is the abstract for our chapter:

The emergence of social media has provided the public with an effective and irrepressible real-time mechanism to broadcast information. The great popularity of platforms such as twitter and YouTube, and the substantial amount of content that is communicated through them are making social media an essential component of open-source intelligence. The information communicated through such feeds conveys the interests and opinions of individuals, and reveals links and the complex structure of social networks. However, this information is only partially exploited if one does not consider its geographical aspect. Indeed, social media feeds more often than not have some sort of geographic content, as they may communicate the location from where a particular report is contributed, the geolocation of an image, or they may refer to a specific sociocultural hotspot. By harvesting this geographic content from social media feeds we can transfer the extracted knowledge from the amorphous cyberspace to the geographic space, and gain a unique understanding of the human lansdscape, its structure and organization, and its evolution over time. This newfound opportunity signals the emergence of open-source geospatial intelligence, whereby social media contributions can be analyzed and mined to gain unparalleled situational awareness. In this paper we showcase a number of sample applications that highlight the capabilities of harvesting geospatial intelligence from social media feeds, focusing particularly on twitter as a representative data source. 

Geolocated pairs of tweeters and retweeters in Tokyo at the time immediately following the Sendai earthquake

Full Reference: 
Stefanidis, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J., Croitoru, A. and Rice, M. (2014), Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence, in Murdock, D.G., Tomes, R. and Tucker, C. (eds.), Human Geography: Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Global Security, US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), Herndon, VA, pp. 109-123. (pdf)
GeoSocial, GIS, SNA, social media, twitter

Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence

Recently the USGIF published a book entitled "Human Geography: Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Global Security" in which we have a chapter called "Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence". This book has been some  time in the making. We blogged about our contribution in  2012. But its finally its out! Below is the abstract for our chapter:

The emergence of social media has provided the public with an effective and irrepressible real-time mechanism to broadcast information. The great popularity of platforms such as twitter and YouTube, and the substantial amount of content that is communicated through them are making social media an essential component of open-source intelligence. The information communicated through such feeds conveys the interests and opinions of individuals, and reveals links and the complex structure of social networks. However, this information is only partially exploited if one does not consider its geographical aspect. Indeed, social media feeds more often than not have some sort of geographic content, as they may communicate the location from where a particular report is contributed, the geolocation of an image, or they may refer to a specific sociocultural hotspot. By harvesting this geographic content from social media feeds we can transfer the extracted knowledge from the amorphous cyberspace to the geographic space, and gain a unique understanding of the human lansdscape, its structure and organization, and its evolution over time. This newfound opportunity signals the emergence of open-source geospatial intelligence, whereby social media contributions can be analyzed and mined to gain unparalleled situational awareness. In this paper we showcase a number of sample applications that highlight the capabilities of harvesting geospatial intelligence from social media feeds, focusing particularly on twitter as a representative data source. 

Geolocated pairs of tweeters and retweeters in Tokyo at the time immediately following the Sendai earthquake

Full Reference: 
Stefanidis, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J., Croitoru, A. and Rice, M. (2014), Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence, in Murdock, D.G., Tomes, R. and Tucker, C. (eds.), Human Geography: Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Global Security, US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), Herndon, VA, pp. 109-123. (pdf)
ABM, complexity, GIS, Multi-agent Systems

Multi-Agent Systems for Urban Planning

Recently we contributed a chapter to "Technologies for Urban and Spatial Planning: Virtual Cities and Territories" which aims to quote from the preference:  
"(i) to contribute to the dissemination of the recent research and development of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in urban and spatial planning, trying to demonstrate their usability in planning processes through the presentation of relevant case studies, framed by their underlying theory; (ii) to give additional evidence to the fact that ICT are the privileged means to produce virtual cities and territories; and (iii) to make available, from a pedagogical standpoint, a group of illustrative reviews of the scientific production made by both academics and practitioners in the field."
The book has 11 chapters which are grouped in several themes:
"first group focuses on the discussion over the use of ICT in spatial planning; the second group of contributions deals with urban modelling and simulation; the third group focuses on the use of different sensors to acquire information and model spatial processes; the fourth group focuses on the use of data to create more capable visualization tools; and the fifth group is about the use of virtual models to simulate real environments and plan and manage other aspects of the built environment such as energy."
Our chapter is entitled "Multi-agent Systems for Urban Planning" fits into the second group with respect to urban modeling and simulation. We present a detailed overview about the theory and the development of multi-agent systems (MAS) in spatial planning, focusing on how MAS can lead to insights into urban problems and aid urban planning fostering a bottom up approach to spatial planning. The abstract is as follows:
Cities provide homes for over half of the world's population, and this proportion is expected to increase throughout the next century. The growth of cities raises many questions and challenges for urban planning including which cities and regions are most likely to grow, what the pattern of urban growth will be, and how the existing infrastructure will cope with such growth. One way to explore these types of questions is through the use of multi-agent systems (MAS) that are capable of modeling how individuals interact and how structures emerge through such interactions, in terms of both the social and physical environment of cities. Within this chapter, the authors focus on how MAS can lead to insights into urban problems and aid urban planning from the bottom up. They review MAS models that explore the growth of cities and regions, models that explore land-use patterns resulting from such growth along with the rise of slums. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how MAS models can be used to model transportation and the changing demographics of cities. Through these examples the authors also demonstrate how this style of modeling can give insights into such issues that cannot be gleamed from other modeling methodologies. The chapter concludes with challenges and future research directions of MAS models with respect to capturing the dynamics of human behavior in urban planning.

Full Reference:
Crooks, A.T., Patel, A. and Wise, S. (2014), Multi-agent Systems for Urban Planning, in Pinto, N.N., Tenedório, J. Antunes A. P. and Roca, J. (eds.), Technologies for Urban and Spatial Planning: Virtual Cities and Territories, IGI Global, Hershey, PA, pp. 29-56. (pdf)

ABM, complexity, GIS, Multi-agent Systems

Multi-Agent Systems for Urban Planning

Recently we contributed a chapter to "Technologies for Urban and Spatial Planning: Virtual Cities and Territories" which aims to quote from the preference:  
"(i) to contribute to the dissemination of the recent research and development of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in urban and spatial planning, trying to demonstrate their usability in planning processes through the presentation of relevant case studies, framed by their underlying theory; (ii) to give additional evidence to the fact that ICT are the privileged means to produce virtual cities and territories; and (iii) to make available, from a pedagogical standpoint, a group of illustrative reviews of the scientific production made by both academics and practitioners in the field."
The book has 11 chapters which are grouped in several themes:
"first group focuses on the discussion over the use of ICT in spatial planning; the second group of contributions deals with urban modelling and simulation; the third group focuses on the use of different sensors to acquire information and model spatial processes; the fourth group focuses on the use of data to create more capable visualization tools; and the fifth group is about the use of virtual models to simulate real environments and plan and manage other aspects of the built environment such as energy."
Our chapter is entitled "Multi-agent Systems for Urban Planning" fits into the second group with respect to urban modeling and simulation. We present a detailed overview about the theory and the development of multi-agent systems (MAS) in spatial planning, focusing on how MAS can lead to insights into urban problems and aid urban planning fostering a bottom up approach to spatial planning. The abstract is as follows:
Cities provide homes for over half of the world's population, and this proportion is expected to increase throughout the next century. The growth of cities raises many questions and challenges for urban planning including which cities and regions are most likely to grow, what the pattern of urban growth will be, and how the existing infrastructure will cope with such growth. One way to explore these types of questions is through the use of multi-agent systems (MAS) that are capable of modeling how individuals interact and how structures emerge through such interactions, in terms of both the social and physical environment of cities. Within this chapter, the authors focus on how MAS can lead to insights into urban problems and aid urban planning from the bottom up. They review MAS models that explore the growth of cities and regions, models that explore land-use patterns resulting from such growth along with the rise of slums. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how MAS models can be used to model transportation and the changing demographics of cities. Through these examples the authors also demonstrate how this style of modeling can give insights into such issues that cannot be gleamed from other modeling methodologies. The chapter concludes with challenges and future research directions of MAS models with respect to capturing the dynamics of human behavior in urban planning.

Full Reference:
Crooks, A.T., Patel, A. and Wise, S. (2014), Multi-agent Systems for Urban Planning, in Pinto, N.N., Tenedório, J. Antunes A. P. and Roca, J. (eds.), Technologies for Urban and Spatial Planning: Virtual Cities and Territories, IGI Global, Hershey, PA, pp. 29-56. (pdf)

Bike Share

5.5 Million Journeys at NYC Bike Share

nycbikeshare_journeys

[Updated - timeperiod-split maps added] Following on from my London bikeshare journeys graphic, here is the same technique applied with the data released by NYC Bike Share (aka Citi Bike) earlier this week.

If you look carefully at the full size map you can see a thin line heading north-eastwards, initially well out of the bikeshare “zone”, representing journeys between Williamsburg and Central Park, via the Queensboro Bridge cycle path. We see a similar phenomenon for journeys between Tower Bridge and Island Gardens in London. Whether any of the riders actually take this route, of course, is open to question – they might take a longer – but more familiar – route, that stays more within the area of the bikeshare.

Below is a version of the graphic with the data split into four timeperiods – weekday rush-hour peaks (7-10am and 4-7pm starts), weekday interpeak (10am-4pm), weekday nights (7pm-7am) and finally weekends. The data is scaled so that the same thicknesses of lines across the four maps represent the same number of journeys along each street segment – but bear in mind that there are fewer weekends than weekdays. While, as would be expected, the rush-hour peaks see the most number of journeys, there is less spatial variation across the city, between the four timeperiods, than I expected. Click on the graphic for a larger version.

timesplits

The graphics were produced by creating idealised routes (near-shortest path, but weighted towards dedicated cycle routes and quieter roads) between every pair of the ~330 docking stations in the system, using Routino and OpenStreetMap data (extracted using the Overpass API). Edge weights were then built up using a Python script, a WKT file was created and then mapped in QGIS, with data-based stroke widths applied from the weights.

The routes are only as good as the OpenStreetMap data – I think the underlying data is pretty good for NYC, thanks to great community work on the ground, but there is still a possibility that it has missed obvious routes, or proposed wacky ones. It also doesn’t account for journeys starting or ending at the same place, or journeys where the prime purpose is an exploration by bike – with the user unlikely therefore to take an “obvious” A-B route.

Even with that caveat, it’s still a revealing glimpse into the major route “vectors” of bikeshare in New York City.

Uncategorized

Fully-funded PhD studentship – Northern Ireland in Transition 1991-2011

Background
A fully-funded PhD studentship has been offered by QUB as part of the successful application to the ESRC to fund the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study Research Support Unit (NILS-RSU) from 2012 to 2017. It is focused around the general theme of ‘Northern Ireland in Transition 1991-2011′. This was a key part of the research and dissemination agenda described in the application. It is hoped to that the studentship will commence in Autumn 2014 to take advantage of the full linkage of the 1991 Census data to the NILS.

The Data
The NILS is a large-scale longitudinal data linkage study. It covers 28% of the Northern Ireland population (based on a sample of 104/365 birthdates drawn from health cards) and has approximately 500,000 members. It is a powerful resource for health, social, demographic and labour market research through time and can be used for finely-grained spatial analysis given its sample size. The linkage of 2011 Census data to the NILS was completed in Autumn 2013 and the linkage of the 1991 Census data will be finalised by Autumn 2014. Full details of the resource, its uses to date, and the routes to accessing it are available from the following website (http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/NILSResearchSupportUnit/).

The Application Process
The studentship is planned to complement a wider programme of research on change in Northern Ireland 1991-2011. Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates with strong quantitative backgrounds from any social science discipline (for example, Human Geography, Sociology, Politics, and Public Health/Epidemiology). Applicants are encouraged to develop their own topic under the general rubric of ‘Northern Ireland in Transition’. 

Applications should demonstrate an awareness of the research potential of longitudinal data, an understanding of suitable analytical approaches and statistical methods, and an awareness of how the NILS can be used to address the proposed research topic. In more detail, applications should contain the following elements:

1. A CV detailing qualifications and experience.
2. A 1000-word (maximum) statement that sets out the research question(s) and places it in its context, demonstrating an understanding of relevant literature.
3. A section on how data from the NILS can be used to deal with the research question(s).
4. A section outlining the likely methods to be used for analysis.
5. An outline of the expected timetable (including outputs) for the project.

The closing date for applications is June 1st, 2014 with interviews to take place within a month of this date. Dr Ian Shuttleworth (i.shuttleworth@qub.ac.uk), who will be the main supervisor, is available to answer informal queries. His research interests include residential segregation, labour market change, political demography, and migration at various spatial scales.

Suggested possible research topics include:

• The demographic bases of national identity (for example, what was the background of those in 2001 who declared themselves to be Northern Irish in the 2011 Census?);
• Young people and social disadvantage (for example, how did those young people aged 18-24 in 2001 with no qualifications fare by 2011?);
• Population dynamics and changing residential segregation (for example, how far was migration important in shaping the demographic profile of small areas in comparison with differentials in births and deaths);
• Occupational and labour market transitions between 2001 and 2011

This topic list is by no means exhaustive and applicants are therefore encouraged to develop their own ideas in consultation with Dr Shuttleworth and the staff of the NILS-RSU (nils-rsu@qub.ac.uk). Suitable second supervisors will be selected from relevant academic staff in QUB according to the research topics identified by the successful candidates.

Uncategorized

Researcher as software engineer

When you go into a career in research, you imagine that you’ll spend all your time thinking, reading and coming to know. In fact, whenever anyone talks to you about your job, it’s clear that that’s exactly what they think you do all day: think, learn, gain wisdom.

My experience of my PhD so far has been pretty different to that imagined paradise of dressing-gown-sporting chin scratching. In actual fact, the general pattern has been something like this:

Step 1

Have a meeting with a colleague for an hour about how your super-interesting model should work. Bash through the details, make the regrettable but inevitable simplifications, write down some maths.

Step 2

Spend 22 months configuring UNIX servers; building web interfaces; learning to code in Python, R, Latex and Javascript; setting up a Postgres database and sweating over the various command line tools that come with it; configuring Latex installations; picking integrated development environments, network visualisation software and text editors; learning the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of Web frameworks, Latex packages, Python packages, frameworks for testing, tools for documentation and even blogging sites (you know who you are, wordpress.org), all in a desparate bid to get the results of step 1 working, interactive and documented.

Step 3

Write down the maths you discussed 22 months ago, once in Python, and once again in Latex. This is a five-minute job, depending on how thoroughly you completed step 2.

Step 4

Realise that despite the fact that step 2 is where for all practical purposes all the chin scratching and coming-to-know has taken place, there’s to be no credit given for it whatsoever. The PhD is earned (or otherwise) by the one hour of step 1 you did, and you did that so long ago, that you can’t remember what any of it means anyway.

No, there is nothing gained from those 22 months of toil but the skills you learned in the process.

This is not quite what people have in mind when they talk about learning for its own sake. They’re presumably talking about coming to know a subject for the pure joy, or adding to the sum of human knowledge because that’s a noble aim in itself.

What’s happened to me feels much more like a self-study tutorial in becoming a whizz coder, engineer and software developer. Which is great in itself. But it’s not quite what I signed up for somehow.

Uncategorized

Fractal Benchmarks

I blame whoever printed out the Sierpinski triangle wikipedia page on Friday, but I’ve always been interested geometry, so I had to have a go at building one. The title of this post is a reference to the fact that this type of procedural geometry is often used in benchmarking 3D graphics systems as it quickly becomes computationally explosive. I’ve been writing geometry classes to create physical networks from graph topologies anyway, so this was easy by comparison.

Sierpinski_5

The movies of depth 4 and 5 pyramids are on YouTube at the following links:

As a sneak preview of what else I’ve been working on, you can see a 3D GIS engine to visualise all the real-time London data that we’ve been collecting. If you look very closely, you can just see the tube network inside the pyramid. The general idea is to make it easy to generate some of the 3D tube and bus movies that I’ve previously used 3DS Max for. What was missing was a geospatial data aware 3D system, which was lacking in 3DS Max or Three.js. I’ve taken the Javascript Three.js visualisations about as far as they will go, so a higher end visualisation system in native C++ using OpenGL was a natural progression.

Data Graphics, london

A Census for Open Data in Cities

okfn_census

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) have produced a census for government open data availability for countries around the world, known as the Open Data Index. Each country is assigned scores for 10 attributes on openness and accessibility for each of 10 types of data (such as election results and pollution information). Currently the United Kingdom is at the top of the table.

More recently, OKFN expanded the concept to look at open data for cities within each country, in other words data that is managed at the City Hall level. For example, there is a project page for individual cities within the UK. This time, 15 types of data are examined, again each gaining up to 10 points for openness. The project is still in its information gathering stage so, at the time of writing, only 6 cities have their data partially, or fully, entered. The census for Italian cities, for example, is looking more complete.

Such a census is of great interest when building an application like CityDashboard, which is currently available for eight cities around the UK. Although CityDashboard doesn’t only use open data sources, those which do have documented APIs, open data licences and machine readable formats greatly aid building and expanding a website such as CityDashboard. CityDashboard takes in social media and sensor data, as well as “official” data of the sort that is being categorised by the OKFN project, but some data, such as live running information for metro services, will quite likely always best come from the official sources.

As such, I will keep a close eye on this project. Cambridge and Sheffield look like two promising cities for which the necessary official data is both available and open, which would make implementing them in CityDashboard relatively straightforward.

The census is user-driven and reviewed, so it’s up to you to get information on the availability (or lack) of data for your local city catalogued in the census.

Uncategorized

TEDx: “The Mathematics of Love” – Binghamton University Pipe Dream


Binghamton University Pipe Dream
TEDx: “The Mathematics of Love”
Binghamton University Pipe Dream
Hannah Fry, a mathematician and complexity scientist at the University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, discussed 'the mathematics of love' during her TEDx talk at Binghamton University. “I think we can all agree that ...

citizen science, Conference, Motivation, OpenStreetMap, Research projects, TCV, The Conservation Volunteers, VGI, Volunteering

The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) volunteering impact report

Thursday marked the launch of The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) report on volunteering impact where they summarised a three year project that explored motivations, changes in pro-environmental behaviour, wellbeing and community resilience. The report is worth a read as it goes beyond the direct impact on the local environment of TCV activities, and demonstrates how involvement in environmental volunteering can have multiple benefits. In a way, it is adding ingredients to a more holistic understanding of ‘green volunteering’.
TCVmotivations One of the interesting aspects of the report is in the longitudinal analysis of volunteers motivation (copied here from the report).  The comparison is from 784 baseline surveys, 202 Second surveys and 73 third surveys, which were done with volunteers while they were involved with the TCV. The second survey was taken after 4 volunteering sessions, and the third after 10 sessions.

The results of the surveys are interesting in the context of online activities (e.g. citizen science or VGI) because they provide an example for an activity that happen off line – in green spaces such as local parks, community gardens and the such. Moreover, the people that are participating in them come from all walks of life, as previous analysis of TCV data demonstrated that they are recruiting volunteers across the socio-economic spectrum. So here is an activity that can be compared to online volunteering. This is valuable, as if the pattern of TCV information are similar, then we can understand online volunteering as part of general volunteering and not assume that technology changes everything.

So the graph above attracted my attention because of the similarities to Nama Budhathoki work on the motivation of OpenStreetMap volunteers. First, there is a difference between the reasons that are influencing the people that join just one session and those that are involved for the longer time. Secondly, social and personal development aspects are becoming more important over time.

There is clear need to continue and explore the data – especially because the numbers that are being surveyed at each period are different, but this is an interesting finding, and there is surly more to explore. Some of it will be explored by Valentine Seymour in ExCiteS who is working with TCV as part of her PhD.

It is also worth listening to the qualitative observations by volunteers, as expressed in the video that open the event, which is provided below.

TCV Volunteer Impacts from The Conservation Volunteers on Vimeo.


Data Graphics, london

A Changing City – OS Open Data Reveals a Dynamic London

changingcity_detail

Since launching the data store in early 2010, the Ordnance Survey have been releasing a number of updates to an interesting dataset – VectorMap District – which is a generalisation and simplification of their MasterMap “gold standard” dataset for Great Britain. The updates have been appearing roughly every 6-12 months, and by comparing them in a GIS, you can start to see how places change – at least in the eyes of the Ordnance Survey surveyors tasked to keep the map current. Roads occasionally get built, but building footprints evolve more rapidly – as office blocks and housing developments get taken down and rebuilt with higher capacities or more glass windows.

I’ve taken three of the VectorMap District dataset releases – April 2012, September 2013 and March 2014 – combined the data together and used QGIS’s layer compositing operations to show the geographical differences.

The colours tell of the age of the building – bearing in mind that there is a lag of a few months or years between buildings appearing/disappearing in real life, and on the map. For example, the Olympic Stadium, the turquoise oval above, appears in the 2013 dataset but not the 2012 one, even though of course it was finished in 2011, for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

White Building has existed throughout the three years.
Red Building existed in 2012 only (see note below about extra detail).
Purple Building existed in 2012-2013, but has now gone.
Blue Building was new for 2013, but has now gone.
Turquoise Building was new for 2013, still present (see note below about extra detail).
Green Building is new for 2014, still present.
Yellow Building was around in 2012, disappeared in 2013, but has appeared again now.
Black No building existed in any of the three years.

Above, much of the Olympic Park can be seen – the permanent new buildings (turquoise), temporary buildings for the Games only (blue) and demolished for the games and associated planned development (red). Below, the map covering a wider part of London, zones of activity can be seen. For example, demolition associated with the Nine Elms and Deptford Creek developments (red), and major new blocks such as near the Arsenel stadium (yellow).

Important Note

Between the 2012 and 2013 datasets, the Ordnance Survey changed they way they applied the generalisation on the data, so some of the 2012-2013 changes (shown as red on the maps here for reductions, and turquoise for additions) are as a result of this. For example, narrow gaps between buildings, that always existed, are shown for the first time in 2013 in red (building reductions).

As such, my map slightly overemphasises changes between 2012 and 2013. For example, the pitch at Arsenal and the Great Court at the British Museum appear as changes, but they were always there. As a rough rule of thumb, the smaller red/turquoise patches are due to the generalisation changes, the larger areas of colour show genuine change. With this important caveat, the map remains an interesting insight into London changes, and the larger coloured regions give a good indication of parts of London which are undergoing intensive building redevelopment.

The Bigger Picture

Here is the map for central London – click on it to see a full-size version.

changingcity_overall

Uncategorized

This rush-hour visualisation might state the obvious, but it’s still pretty – Time Out London


This rush-hour visualisation might state the obvious, but it's still pretty
Time Out London
It's a visualisation of 48.9 million Oyster Card journeys from the morning rush hour, created by Dr Ed Manley for University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Its revelation that south Londoners are most likely to travel into ...

Uncategorized

Mapping the Imbalances of New York’s Popular, Troubled Bike-Share – The Atlantic Cities


The Atlantic Cities
Mapping the Imbalances of New York's Popular, Troubled Bike-Share
The Atlantic Cities
Then Rademaekers stumbled upon the maps created by Oliver O'Brien at the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis in the United Kingdom. These wonderful visualizations use open data to track bike-share systems around the world. Now, every day ...

and more »
Borgmann, citizen cyberscience, citizen science, Concepts, Cultural Information, Extreme Citizen Science, Focal Things and Practices, GIS, Natural Information, OpenStreetMap, Philosophy of Technology, PPGIS, Technological Information, The Device Paradigm, VGI

Albert Borgmann’s Philosophy of Technology, VGI & Citizen Science

Some ideas take long time to mature into a form that you are finally happy to share them. This is an example for such thing.

I got interested in the area of Philosophy of Technology during my PhD studies, and continue to explore it since. During this journey, I found a lot of inspiration and links to Andrew Feenberg’s work, for example, in my paper about neogeography and the delusion of democratisation. The links are mostly due to Feenberg’s attention to ‘hacking’ or appropriating technical systems to functions and activities that they are outside what the designers or producers of them thought.

In addition to Feenberg, I became interested in the work of Albert Borgmann and because he explicitly analysed GIS, dedicating a whole chapter to it in Holding on to Reality. In particular, I was intrigues by his formulation to The Device Paradigm and the notion of Focal Things and Practices which are linked to information systems in Holding on to Reality where three forms of information are presented – Natural Information, Cultural Information and Technological Information. It took me some time to see that these 5 concepts are linked, with technological information being a demonstration of the trouble with the device paradigm, while natural and cultural information being part of focal things and practices (more on these concepts below).

I first used Borgmann’s analysis as part of ‘Conversations Across the Divide‘ session in 2005, which focused on Complexity and Emergence. In a joint contribution with David O’Sullivan about ‘complexity science and Geography: understanding the limits of narratives’, I’ve used Borgmann’s classification of information. Later on, we’ve tried to turn it into a paper, but in the end David wrote a much better analysis of complexity and geography, while the attempt to focus mostly on the information concepts was not fruitful.

The next opportunity to revisit Borgmann came in 2011, for an AAG pre-conference workshop on VGI where I explored the links between The Device Paradigm, Focal Practices and VGI. By 2013, when I was invited to the ‘Thinking and Doing Digital Mapping‘ workshop that was organise by ‘Charting the Digital‘ project. I was able to articulate the link between all the five elements of Borgmann’s approach in my position paper. This week, I was able to come back to the topic in a seminar in the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester. Finally, I feel that I can link them in a coherent way.

So what is it all about?

Within the areas of VGI and Citizen Science, there is a tension between the different goals or the projects and identification of practices in terms of what they mean for the participants – are we using people as ‘platform for sensors’ or are we dealing with fuller engagement? The use of Borgmann’s ideas can help in understanding the difference. He argues that modern technologies tend to adopt the myopic ‘Device Paradigm’ in which specific interpretation of efficiency, productivity and a reductionist view of human actions are taking precedence over ‘Focal Things and Practices’ that bring people together in a way meaningful to human life. In Holding On to Reality (1999), he differentiates three types of information: natural, cultural and technological.  Natural information is defined as information about reality: for example, scientific information on the movement of the earth or the functioning of a cell.  This is information that was created in order to understand the functioning of reality.  Cultural information is information that is being used to shape reality, such as engineering design plans.  Technological information is information as reality and leads to decreased human engagement with fundamental aspects of reality.  Significantly, these categories do not relate to the common usage of the words ‘natural’, ‘cultural and ‘technological’ rather to describe the changing relationship between information and reality at different stages of socio-technical development.

When we explore general geographical information, we can see that some of it is technological information, for example SatNav and the way that communicate to the people who us them, or virtual globes that try to claim to be a representation of reality with ‘current clouds’ and all. The paper map, on the other hand, provide a conduit to the experience of hiking and walking through the landscape, and is part of cultural information.

Things are especially interesting with VGI and Citizen Science. In them, information and practices need to be analysed in a more nuanced way. In some cases, the practices can become focal to the participants – for example in iSpot where the experience of identifying a species in the field is also link to the experiences of the amateurs and experts who discuss the classification. It’s an activity that brings people together. On the other hand, in crowdsourcing projects that grab information from SatNav devices, there is a demonstration of The Device Paradigm, with the potential of reducing of meaningful holiday journey to ‘getting from A to B at the shortest time’. The slides below go through the ideas and then explore the implications on GIS, VGI and Citizen Science.

Now for the next stage – turning this into a paper…


AAG, ABM, Geosimulation, GIS

AAG 2014: Geosimulation Models Sessions

If you going to this years AAG, you might be interested in our Geosimulation Models sessions which will take place on Wednesday the 9th of April from 10am.

Session Description: Since the publication of Geosimulation in 2004, the use of Agent-based Modeling (ABM) and Cellular Automata (CA) under the umbrella of Geosimulation models within geographical systems have started to mature as methodologies to explore a wide range of geographical and more broadly social sciences problems facing society. The aim of these sessions is to bring together researchers utilizing geosimulation techniques (and associated methodologies) to discuss topics relating to: theory, technical issues and applications domains of ABM and CA within geographical systems.



10:00 AM to 11:40,  Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor , Chair: Suzana Dragicevic



12.40PM to 2.20PM, Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor, Chair: Paul Torrens



2:40 PM to 4:20 PM in Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor, Chair: Paul Torrens

Siyu Fan and Yichun Xie

We would also like to thank the following AAG specialty groups for sponsoring our sessions: Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group,  Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group and the Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group  


AAG, ABM, Geosimulation, GIS

AAG 2014: Geosimulation Models Sessions

If you going to this years AAG, you might be interested in our Geosimulation Models sessions which will take place on Wednesday the 9th of April from 10am.

Session Description: Since the publication of Geosimulation in 2004, the use of Agent-based Modeling (ABM) and Cellular Automata (CA) under the umbrella of Geosimulation models within geographical systems have started to mature as methodologies to explore a wide range of geographical and more broadly social sciences problems facing society. The aim of these sessions is to bring together researchers utilizing geosimulation techniques (and associated methodologies) to discuss topics relating to: theory, technical issues and applications domains of ABM and CA within geographical systems.



10:00 AM to 11:40,  Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor , Chair: Suzana Dragicevic



12.40PM to 2.20PM, Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor, Chair: Paul Torrens



2:40 PM to 4:20 PM in Room 39, TCC, Fourth Floor, Chair: Paul Torrens

Siyu Fan and Yichun Xie

We would also like to thank the following AAG specialty groups for sponsoring our sessions: Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group,  Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group and the Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group  


Uncategorized

Data Visualisation for Public Engagement at #scicomm14

UCL sustainability research around energy (credit: Martin Zaltz Austwick and Charlotte Johnson 2014)

UCL sustainability research around energy (credit: Martin Zaltz Austwick and Charlotte Johnson 2014)

I’m excited to be chairing a session on Data Visualisation for Public Engagement at the British Science Association’s annual Science Communication conference, which is in sunny Guildford this year. It’s not until May, but when you keen scicommers, academics, science journalists, students, museums people and scicurious freelancers sign up, you’ll need to tell the nice people that you want to come to our session and not one of the equally awesome other ones, so I thought I’d get in ahead of time.

Data visualisation (aka “datavis”) is in the news constantly. The British Library are currently running an exhibition of scientific visualisation, books about visualisation and infographics sell by the truckload, and broadsheets and tabloids alike are running data journalism and visualisation blogs. What does this mean for public engagement with research, and science in particular? I’ve put together this session because I want to understand these issues. I’m a lecturer in spatial analysis and visualisation – which means I teach students (mainly from an architecture or geography background) techniques for visualising “human” data (like demographics, transport, twitter data, research funding data) and models (networks, agent-based, cellular automata, neural nets). I think datavis is already having a massive impact in social sciences, but I’m a physicist at heart, and I am really curious about how this all works in the natural sciences.

To this end, I’ve put together what I think is a really exciting panel. Damien George is the most focussed on communicating research outputs from natural science – not only that, but his efforts to map the research landscape in physics articulates what research is for both publics and practitioners. Andrew Steele has done great work visualising government science spending with his Scienceogram, and continues to find ways to communicate and challenge science policy via datavis. Artemis Skarlartidou has worked with communities in mapping potential sites for nuclear waste disposal, and has particular expertise around building trust through visualisation. Together, I want to explore what I think are key questions about datavis – what can it articulate that other ways of communicating cannot? How can it be used for meaningful engagement? Who can use these tools? What opportunities are we missing? And what are the limits of these techniques?

But of course, it won’t just be the panel doing all the talking. Each panellist will discuss datavis in general, and visualisations they’ve worked on, for about ten minutes each, leaving a generous 45 minutes for a decent discussion – technical, ethical, practical, or otherwise. Because datavis is fairly current, I’m expecting a lot of interesting views in the room – but we don’t require attendees to be experts, so even if you don’t know the right end of a visualisation from the wrong one, come along to question, debate and see what the fuss is about.

The session runs from 3.30 on Thursday May 1st - I hope to see you there.

—If you’re a newcomer, I recently wrote a post recommending some introductory books, as well as one which has my thoughts about which languages you might consider using if you want to get into the nitty-gritty programming side of things.


Uncategorized

Un mapa con datos de casi 50 millones de desplazamientos muestra los … – El Ibérico Gratuito


Un mapa con datos de casi 50 millones de desplazamientos muestra los ...
El Ibérico Gratuito
Un investigador asociado al University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis ha creado un mapa que muestra las estaciones más utilizadas por los viajeros de Londres para ayudar a comprender las relaciones entre donde viven y donde ...

Uncategorized

A fireworks display? No, this stunning map reveals the 50 million journeys … – Daily Mail


Daily Mail
A fireworks display? No, this stunning map reveals the 50 million journeys ...
Daily Mail
Dr Ed Manley, a research associate at University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Casa) created the map based on data collected at the busiest times on weekday mornings – between 7am and 10am. 'Looking at morning peak, as we ...
Mapped: London's Most Popular Destinations Using Oyster DataLondonist
Map using data from nearly 50 million journeys shows London's most popular ...Evening Standard

all 4 news articles »
Uncategorized

A fireworks display? No, this stunning map reveals the 50 million journeys … – Daily Mail


Daily Mail
A fireworks display? No, this stunning map reveals the 50 million journeys ...
Daily Mail
Dr Ed Manley, a research associate at University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Casa) created the map based on data collected at the busiest times on weekday mornings – between 7am and 10am. 'Looking at morning peak, as we ...

Uncategorized

Un mapa con datos de casi 50 millones de desplazamientos muestra los … – El Ibérico Gratuito


Un mapa con datos de casi 50 millones de desplazamientos muestra los ...
El Ibérico Gratuito
Un investigador asociado al University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis ha creado un mapa que muestra las estaciones más utilizadas por los viajeros de Londres para ayudar a comprender las relaciones entre donde viven y donde ...

The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at UCL CASA