The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
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 »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…
Continue reading »Kew is one of London’s leafy surburban neighbourhoods. Situated on a long curve of the River Thames, ot is of course famous for Kew Gardens,
Continue reading »The eMOTIONAL Cities project has set out to understand how the natural and built environment can shape the feelings and emotions of those who experience it. At its core lies a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) which combines a variety of … Continue reading
Continue reading »SHIFT, in collaboration with Arup and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Connected Environments Group at University College London (UCL), have released the “SHIFT Digital Frontiers” report, a visionary roadmap…
The post SHIFT DIGITAL FRONTIERS REPORT UNVEILED DURING LONDON DATA WEEK appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »Each year CASA master’s students demonstrate their spatial data visualisation skills with a group project. The theme this year was ‘Urban Futures’, and students have produced some very impressive and diverse work, experimenting with a range of visualisation tools and techniques. Click on the images below to visit the project websites. Urban Resilience ProjectsTwo groups … Continue reading Visualisation Projects by CASA Urban Spatial Science Students
Continue reading »The Concept of the Literary Clock A literary clock is a unique fusion of literature and timekeeping. Every minute of the day is represented by a corresponding quote from a…
The post Turning Any Device into a Literary Clock with MQTT appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »The post Make a Scrolling Hub75 Matrix Display using a Pimoroni Interstate75W and MQTT appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »Call for Abstracts! At the 2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting to be held during the 9th to 13th of December in Washington, D.C., Carter Christopher, Wenwen Li, Gautam Thakur and myself are organizing a session entitled: “…
Continue reading »In the recent edition of Key Thinkers on Space and Place edited by Mary Gilmartin, Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin and Sue Roberts, I was asked to write a chapter about Mike Batty. While I have known Mike for a while, to say writing …
Continue reading »Introduction Viewing real-time data from a personal weather station such as a Davis Vantage Pro, a Tempest, or an EcoWhitt device can be complex. However, the majority of systems that…
Continue reading »In the past we have explored various ways to explore vaccine hesitancy and keeping with this theme we have a new paper published in PLOS ONE entitled “Understanding the determinants of vaccine hesitancy in the United States: A comparison of social surv…
Continue reading »Looker room layouts (Source: Gao et al., 2024)One of my favorite winter activities is skiing and now that all the skiing places in the North East have closed (for those interested Killington, VT closed last Saturday), I thought it would be interes…
Continue reading »Its hard to believe that Environment and Planning B (EPB) is turning 50. To celebrate the fact, we have a special issue. Among the many number of contributed commentaries and editorials Mike Batty discusses the history of the journal, and I h…
Continue reading »In past blog posts we have discussed how one can use social media to study vaccine discussions and even tried to build a very simple disease model where vaccination rates were a factor in the spread of an outbreak. However, when it comes to vaccination…
Continue reading »Vector tiles have been around for a while and they seem to combine the best of both worlds. They provide design flexibility, something we usually associate to vector data, while enabling fast delivery, like we generally see on raster services. … Continue reading
Continue reading »At the recent American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, our group had several presentations showcasing some of the research we are doing here at the University at Buffalo with respect to agent-based modeling, social …
Continue reading » Introduction
The Met Office, as the national meteorological service for the United Kingdom, provides valuable weather data through its API called DataPoint. This API caters to a wide range of users, including professionals, scien…
At the upcoming American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, we (Alison Heppenstall, Na (Richard) Jiang, Gary Polhill, Andrew Crooks, Raja Sengupta, Suzana Dragicevic, Sarah Wise, Jeon-Young Kang) have organized 3 sessi…
Continue reading »