The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
In the current issue of Environment and Planning B, we (Boyu Wang, Na Jiang and myself) have a new editorial entitled “Generative AI and Urban Modeling”. The premise of this editorial is that Generative AI (GenAI) is impacting all aspects of …
Continue reading »I have just gotten back from attending the 19th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) in London and thought I would share the two papers we presented at the conference. The first paper was…
Continue reading »This is a slightly different post to normal, in the sense its not really about papers but my take on agent-based modeling, urban analytics and the growth of Artificial Intelligence impacting both. First up, while I was in Santa Fe last October for…
Continue reading »Notes from a seminar that was held on June 5, World Environment Day. It is part of the Circle U. Climate Day 2025. It was organised as a hybrid event. Caroline Michellier, Université catholique de Louvain led the organisation of the seminar, and it was integrated into a series of transdisciplinary seminars. It explored how citizen science can enrich … Continue reading Circle-U. UCLouvain – Citizen science: rethinking research with and for society
Continue reading »CAPS 2025, like the previous conferences of the Association for Advancing Participatory Science (AAPS, formerly the Citizen Science Association), was an opportunity to learn about the state of citizen science in the USA. The conference took place in Portland, Oregon, where 13 years ago the first conference of what will become the CSA took place. … Continue reading CAPS 2025 – uncertain or resiliant future for USA participatory science?
Continue reading »CAPS 2025, like the previous conferences of the Association for Advancing Participatory Science (AAPS, formerly the Citizen Science Association), was an opportunity to learn about the state of citizen science in the USA. The conference took place in Portland, Oregon, where 13 years ago the first conference of what will become the CSA took place. … Continue reading CAPS 2025 – uncertain or resiliant future for USA participatory science?
Continue reading »Convener: Liz Dowthwaite, University of Nottingham and Responsible AI UK Speakers: Lucy Fortson, University of Minnesota and Zooniverse; Sarah Huebner, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; Luigi Ceccaroni, Earthwatch Europe; Andrea Grover, University of Nebraska at Omaha AI is a lot of things – machine learning, NLP, computer vision, genAI and LLM but it is getting capabilities and impact. The … Continue reading CAPS25 – Responsible, ethical, and trustworthy use of AI in participatory sciences
Continue reading »Examples of partnerships – the issue of supporting fire that is done by bringing cultural fire and considering how to do a controlled burn, but it is also done in understanding the landscape and learning about the fire. In contrast, cultural burn was an intergenerational element and some of the safety aspects are blocking learning. … Continue reading CAPS25 – respectful and reciprocal callaboration with indigenous communities
Continue reading »This week it’s the Association for Advancing Participatory Science conference (27-30 May 2025). The opening keynote was given by iNaturalist Scott Loarie, the executive director of iNaturalist. Scott covered 5 lessons from iNat. It started as an MSc project, and has been going in for 17 years. It’s growing over time, about 8m observation. Seasonality … Continue reading CAPS25 conference – iNatuarlist keynote
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Continue reading »In the past we have explored how social media can be used to delineate earthquakes, study human-wildlife interactions, understand urban morphology, urban smells or locating wildfires among many other things. Keeping with …
Continue reading »Readers might of noticed that recently we have been exploring the use of street view images to explore cities or how we can utilize geosocial media to understand the form of function of cities, but one thing we have not explored is the role o…
Continue reading »Easter is approaching and its time for some eggs to find – 120 two-foot high ones are in London right now thanks to the Elephant
Continue reading »As the AAG has just wrapped up I thought I would write brief (well actually quite long) post on the talks that I was involved with at the conference. These talks would not have been possible without the many great students and colleagues who I have bee…
Continue reading »Last year we put out a call for abstracts for presentations for our sessions Geosimulations for Addressing Societal Challenges. The session description is as follows: There is an urgent need for research that promotes sustainab…
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Continue reading »In the past I have blogged about disasters, but mainly from a social media or agent-based modeling perspective. However, after the devastating wildfires that impacted parts of Los Angeles County earlier this year led me to wonder how resilient are citi…
Continue reading »It’s a frosty start to March, but green shoots are finally appearing in the ground. So it’s a great time to introduce a new book,
Continue reading »We are delighted to announce a special track on “Integrating Large-Language Models and Geospatial Foundation Models to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in ABMs” as part of the Social Simulation Conference 2025, 25th to 29th August 2025 at Delft University of …
Continue reading »MediaCity, SalfordRelocating big firms and scientific infrastructure can lead to large spillover effects on local economies, especially over the long run. Can shifting public sector activity also generate halo effects?Public relocation programmes are m…
Continue reading »In previous posts we have noted how one can explore urban issues through newspapers, while at the same time we have used social media to explore trends in vaccinations. In a recently published paper in PLOS Digital Health entitled “From print to p…
Continue reading »In previous posts, we have written how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can be used in various urban analytical applications. We have kept exploring this potential especially with respect to citizen science applications. To this end we have…
Continue reading »This past week we attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington DC. At the AGU we presented two abstracts. The first follows on our work with respect to using synthetic populations within agent-based models. This work wa…
Continue reading »In numerous posts, we have been discussing synthetic populations and their use in agent-based modeling. But there are many modeling styles that also utilize synthetic populations. In our own work we often spend significant amounts of time creating…
Continue reading »While in the past we have written about how we can use agent-based models to capture basic patterns of life, and even developed a simulations, but until now we have never really demonstrated how we go about this. However, at the SIGSPATIAL 2024 c…
Continue reading »In the past we have written about the use of synthetic populations and their use in agent-based models. We are finding such synthetic populations to be extremely useful in the creation or initialization of agent-based models. To give you a sense of how…
Continue reading »Just a quick post, In recently released Encyclopedia of Human Geography edited by Barney Warf we were asked to write a short chapter entitled “Agent-based Models and Geography” In the chapter we discuss how over the last several decades, age…
Continue reading »In the past we have explored how agent-based modeling can be used to study vaccine uptake and what is the mechanism underlying the diffusion of different vaccine opinions in hybrid spaces (e.g., physical, relational and cyber) can affect individua…
Continue reading »The effects of educational attainment on individuals and society have been the subject of much research. However, there is still a need to study what factors matter the most, and what is worth investing more time and resources into, and how new methods…
Continue reading »Urban economists vs. economic geographers, and economic geographers vs. themselvesLast month Neil Lee, Helen Simpson and I recorded a Centre for Cities podcast on the state of urban economic research, expertly helmed by CFC boss Andrew Carter.Two big t…
Continue reading »Following on from its crossing of the Grand Union Canal this spring, the huge viaduct is finally built. The giant red “launching girder” which spent a couple of years crawling across the Colne Valley building the viaduct below itself, lies in pieces at the end of its journey, being packed up into shipping containers ready […]
Continue reading »The Map House, a wonderful gallery in Knightsbridge in central London which is itself over 100 years old, has just launched a month-long exhibition specifically
Continue reading »Building upon last year’s successful sessions related to geosimulation, were various topics and issues from across the urban, social and environmental fields and the resulting application areas. More excitingly, we are witnessing the emergence of the …
Continue reading »King’s Cross Central, the area behind King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, has launched a monster trail, which is running up to and including Hallowe’en
Continue reading »https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeVlsRubPWYAcademic news! I’m now — officially — Professor of Economic Geography at UCL.Like most universities, UCL announces these in the summer; but in true academic style, new titles only go live today.I’m delighted t…
Continue reading »Lineage distribution of SARS-CoV-2 across geographic regions of Ontario, Canada, Western New York, and New York City over timeIn the past we have posted on using agent-based models for explore the spread of diseases. We have been keeping up with this w…
Continue reading »Last week I had the honor to give a keynote talk entitled “Exploring the World from the Bottom Up with GIS and Agent-based Models: Past, Present and Future” at the 19th annual Social Simulation Conference which is the European Social Simulation Associa…
Continue reading »Effective Date: [19th March 2025] Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how MQTTFrame (“we,” “our,” or “us”) handles your information. Information We Collect MQTTFrame does not collect,…
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Continue reading »I have a new City Talks podcast with Helen Simpson (University of Bristol), Neil Lee (LSE) and Centre for Cities CEO Andrew Carter.We take on a big question: what is the state of research about urban economies? We talk about the huge growth of urban ec…
Continue reading »In the past we have wrote about using simulation to build synthetic datasets for trajectory analysis due to the limited availability of real world comprehensive datasets. In relation to this work we (Andreas Züfle, Dieter Pfoser, Carola…
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