The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
Brian Arthur introduced a new and important idea in his book The nature of technology: that of ‘combinatorial evolution’. The argument, put perhaps overly briefly, is essentially this: a ‘technology’, an aeroplane say, can be thought of as a system, … Continue reading →
Continue reading »
The London Thames Path is a brand new book by author/il […]
Continue reading »Talk given at AAG, Chicago 2015
Continue reading »Talk given at AAG, Chicago 2015
Continue reading »Our new paper reports research on the definition of cities led by A. Paolo Masucci with Elsa Arcaute, Jiaqiu Wang, Erez Hatna, Kiril Stanilov and Michael Batty. Its in the arXiv and you can get it here from this link. Here is the abstract: Urban morphology has presented significant … Continue reading →
Continue reading »Seminar given at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; 28/4/2015 (While very jet lagged!)
Continue reading »Seminar given at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; 28/4/2015
Continue reading »
The week before last I was at GISRUK, the long-running annual conference for early (and not-so-early) career researchers in GI Science in the UK, Ireland and further afield. This year’s conference was in Leeds and attracted a record number of 200+ delegates. I presented a poster at a meeting the day before the main conference, … Continue reading GISRUK 2015 →
Continue reading »The last day of AAG 2015 is about citizen science and OpenStreetMap studies. The session Beyond motivation? Understanding enthusiasm in citizen science and volunteered geographic information was organised together with Hilary Geoghegan. We were interest to ‘explore and debate current research and practice moving beyond motivation, to consider the associated enthusiasm, materials and meanings of participating in citizen … Continue reading AAG 2015 – day 4 notes – Citizen Science & OpenStreetMap Studies
The London Railway Atlas is probably the most detailed […]
Continue reading »Systems thinking (see earlier entry) drives us to interdisciplinarity: we need to know everything about a system of interest and that means anything and everything that any relevant discipline can contribute. For almost any social science system of interest, there … Continue reading →
Continue reading »The sessions today covered Civic technology, citizen science, and the new directions in mapping – Open Source/Crowdsourcing/Big Data First, Civic technology: governance, equity and inclusion considerations, with Pamela Robinson – Ryerson University (Chair) and Peter A. Johnson – University of Waterloo, Teresa Scassa – University of Ottawa and Jon Corbett – University of British Columbia-Okanagan. The Discussant is Betsy Donald – … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 3 – Civic Technology, Citizen Science, Crowdsourcing and mapping
The second day was dedicated to reflections on Public Participation GIS or Participatory GIS. The day was organised by Rina Ghose and Bandana Karr with some comments from Renee Sieber and me at some stage. It turned out to be an excellent symposium. The following are my notes from the different talks during the day. Jon … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 2 – Public Participation GIS symposium
This week I am attending the AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago. While here, we organized 3 sessions entitled “Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?” in which I presented a paper, co-authored with Sarah Wise: “Leveraging Crowdsource…
Continue reading »This week I am attending the AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago. While here, we organized 3 sessions entitled “Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?” in which I presented a paper, co-authored with Sarah Wise: “Leveraging Crowdsource…
Continue reading »Little AtomsThe Wellcome Book Prize 2015: Authors in ConversationLittle AtomsTickets: This event is free but ticketed. Visit http://www.wellcomecollection.org/events or call 020 7611 2222 to reserve your space. Celebrating the best new books that engag…
Continue reading »Little AtomsThe Wellcome Book Prize 2015: Authors in ConversationLittle AtomsTickets: This event is free but ticketed. Visit http://www.wellcomecollection.org/events or call 020 7611 2222 to reserve your space. Celebrating the best new books that engag…
Continue reading »CityMetric |
There was a “mind-boggling” ten tonne fatberg lurking under Chelsea
CityMetric When I visited his office at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) the first thing he did was get out a black cap laced with wires and small plastic rings, and make me try it on. Image: author’s own. His PhD project, he says, began … |
At 8:00 I’ve attended the Digital Connectivity, Inclusion, and Inequality at the World’s Economic Peripheries session asking ‘what difference people expect better connectivity to make at the world’s economic peripheries’. I took notes from the presentations of Nancy Ettlinger, Dorothea Kleine and Lisa Poggiali. Nancy Ettlinger analysed crwodsourcing from governance perspective – using Foucauldian analysis. She looks at … Continue reading AAG 2015 notes – day 1
CityMetric |
How measuring brainwaves could improve cities
CityMetric Until now, the tools we use to measure the way people move about have been purely quantitative – in effect, limited to counting footsteps. That’s led to an unquestioned assumption among those who make maps that the quickest route to our destination is … |
CityMetric |
Japan’s maglev train has broken its own world speed record twice in a week
CityMetric Earlier today, a super-fast maglev train in Japan set a new record for train speeds. According to its operator, Central Japan Railways, it travelled at 602 km/h for almost a whole 11 seconds during a test run. The seven-carriage train beat the 590 km/h … |
CityMetric |
Sorry, but this rotating apartment block isn’t the solution to segregated cities
CityMetric When space is at a premium, it becomes a premium product. You can see this effect at work in cities like London, where residential space is short, and flats and houses are treated like blocks of gold (except that they make a much better investment … |
CityMetric |
Why London should bid to be the next City of Culture
CityMetric London should bid to be Britain’s next European City of Culture. It would help to promote the capital’s creative and cultural sectors and create new jobs in these areas; it could revitalise the arts and cultural offer outside of Zone One reeling from … |
How measuring brainwaves could improve cities CityMetricHere’s a deceptively difficult question to answer: “Why do we go where we go?” Until now, the tools we use to measure the way people move about have been …
Continue reading »Tweet This is to let you know about two PhD opportunities. They are dual PhDs and will be awarded by the University of Liverpool (UK) and National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan). The successful applicant will spend at least one year (of a maximum total four years) in each institution. The funding for this programme […]
Continue reading »GIS software is used by many professionals to process spatial information, but the results are often poorly presented and the resulting map can be unattractive. GIS packages, such as QGIS, are increasingly including a broad range of cartographic styling and map design options, to present synthesised spatial data attractively, but it remains all too easy … Continue reading Book Review: GIS Cartography (2nd Ed) →
Continue reading »CityMetric |
Ankara’s mayor is being sued for building a giant robot
CityMetric When I visited his office at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) the first thing he did was get out a black cap laced with wires and small plastic rings, and make me try it on. Image: author’s own. His PhD project, he says, began … |
CityMetric |
Slum tourism, Johnny Marr on modernism, and the never-ending bridge paintjob
CityMetric When I visited his office at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) the first thing he did was get out a black cap laced with wires and small plastic rings, and make me try it on. Image: author’s own. His PhD project, he says, began … |
CityMetric |
General Election 2015: What do the manifestos promise for London?
CityMetric With less than a month to go until the general election on 7 May, England’s political parties have released their manifestos for us to dissect. But what do their manifestos say they’re going to do for Londoners? Let’s take a look at where party pledges … |
CityMetric |
What exactly is self-cleaning concrete, and how does it work?
CityMetric In recent months, a new building material that claims to both clean itself and filter pollutants out of the air around has been popping up on new buildings and infrastructure. It’s one of those advances in construction technology that does actually … |
Much research follows the current fashion. This leads me to develop an argument around two questions. How does ‘fashion’ come about? How should we respond to it? I begin by reflecting on my personal experience. My research career began in … Continue reading →
Continue reading »CityMetric |
Britain’s transport police want you to text them if you’re harassed on the tube
CityMetric Are you a Londoner? If so, there’s a one in 10 chance you’ve experienced unwanted sexual behaviour on the city’s buses, trains and Underground network. If you’re a woman, the likelihood is far higher. Transport networks across the world seem to be … |
I’ve created an Election 2015 Time Map which maps the estimated declaration times that the Press Association have published. It follows on from a similar map of the Scottish independence referendum. Each constituency is represented by a circle which is roughly in its centre (using a longest-interior-vertex centroid determined in QGIS). The area of the … Continue reading Election Time! →
Continue reading »
The GIS Research UK conferences (GISRUK) are the annual gathering of the GIScience research community in the UK. While I have missed the last two (including the current one in Leeds), I have contributed to two papers that are presented in the conference. The first, ‘Participatory mapping for transformation: multiple visual representation of foodscapes and environment … Continue reading GISRUK 2015 papers: participatory mapping in Nairobi and mobile apps for Earthquake and Fire
CityMetric |
The Venezuelan military unveiled a 1200 metre-long flag in Caracas to protest …
CityMetric When I visited his office at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) the first thing he did was get out a black cap laced with wires and small plastic rings, and make me try it on. Image: author’s own. His PhD project, he says, began … |
Originally posted on Extreme Citizen Science blog:
Just a quick one from me, but we’re delighted to report that the newly published fourth edition of Wiley’s popular GIS textbook Geographic Information Science and Systems features an example of some of our work in the Congo Basin. Here we are in full-colour, double-page glory: ? ?…
CityMetric |
We need a Right To Buy for private sector tenants, too
CityMetric The Conservatives fancy themselves as the party of property ownership, a theme that they hope will win them the General Election. They’ve made the revival of a property-owning democracy a cornerstone of today’s manifesto. The trouble is, their record … |
In 2011-2012, together with Richard Treves, I was awarded a Google Faculty Research Award, and we were lucky to work with Paolo Battino for about a year, exploring how to use Google Earth tours for educational aims. The details of the projects and some reports from the project are available on Richard’s blog, who was leading … Continue reading New paper: Footprints in the sky – using student track logs in Google Earth to enhance learning
CityMetric |
A French climber scaled the world’s tallest twisted tower using only chalk and …
CityMetric What did you do this Sunday? If you’re anything like us, you mostly mainlined leftover Easter chocolate and failed to go for that run. Meanwhile, in Dubai, a climber scaled the world’s tallest twisted building in just over an hour. Alain Robert, a … |
CityMetric |
Uber’s handing out free breathalyser tests and rides in Toronto
CityMetric The rate of drink-driving accidents in Canada triples after midnight. But an unlikely white knight has stepped in to help: rideshare company Uber, late of such inspired PR efforts as rides with “incredibly hot chicks” and getting banned in Frankfurt … |