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Real Time City Data

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With the recent snow in London, we’ve been looking at real-time sources of transport data with a view to measuring performance. The latest idea was to use flight arrivals and departures from Heathrow, Gatwick and City to measure what effect snow had on operations. The data for Heathrow is shown below: Arrivals and departures data …
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История метро началась с лондонской подземки – BFM.Ru

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BFM.Ru

История метро началась с лондонской подземки
BFM.Ru
Кроме того, это ценный аналитический инструмент. Так, Центр пространственного анализа University College London (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, CASA) «читает» структуру города по пропускной нагрузке терминалов для транспортных …

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UNITY 3D – The infinite museum

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In the 2011-2012 MRes of Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualization we worked on some fascinating topics and new year is always a good time to re-cap. The Infinite museum is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration with Martin Dittus, Ian Morton, Mohammad Masum and myself, for the design of a virtual exhibition space, as a showcase for a constantly updating database of different visualization techniques. The first question that emerged in this case, was why build a spatial structure for the presentation of a-spatial information. In this case the answer is conceptual.
In 1929, Le Corbusier designed the Museum of Unlimited Growth (Musée à croissance illimitée) for the Mundaneum in Geneva. He imagined a square spiral that would develop and grow infinitely in time. In his vision, visitors would follow a path which would let them explore exhibits via a continuous circulation, allowing them to experience what he called a “promenade architectural” (an architectural walk). Despite its utopic nature, the vision behind this concept is the realization of an era of constant change and non-permanence, followed by an optimism of continuous growth.
Later, the idea of “virtuality” provoked an even more interesting swift in planning and design with the emergence of parametric modelling, sensors and new interaction techniques, which allowed new notions, e.g gaming, to become an active player in the design process. This awareness became an inspiration for the development of new solutions, such as the experimental project Arctic Research Facility by Polar Ants for building structures in constantly fluctuating physical surroundings. Or even projects which address to philosophical questions, as in the case of the Lotus Dome  by studio Roosegaarde, in whether technology can be sacred.

The museum of Unlimited Growth – Le Corbusier 1929

In continuance to these ideas, the Infinite Museum, is an interactive application that allows players to visually explore exhibits (images, movies, 3D models, animated objects) and the complex network of relations between them. The project, follows the inspiration of unlimited growth museum, with the difference that in this case, it moves away from the traditional 3d exhibition spaces which rely on a pre-built structure with a “continuous” or a tree- type “network” circulation. Instead, the Infinite Museum explores the possibilities of modular construction and dynamically constructs a map of rooms whose topology is a result of both player choices and pre-defined exhibit relationships.
The idea is to create a typical spatial structure of an exhibition space which will be augmented with the ideas of Web3 such as the use of a cloud network for categorizing the exhibits and guiding the viewer. 3D “types of rooms” connect to each other, in order to create a sequence of spaces that will guide the viewer through the exhibition, while providing him the choices of the cloud network. The user becomes the curator, who structures the exhibition, not by designing it, but by choosing types or “tags” of exhibits and therefore, he is more likely to run into the exhibits that are more related to his group of preferences.
This is a UNITY 3D application, which includes assets built in a range of 3D modeling software packages. Unity, as a game engine, provides excellent tools for interactive 3d space as well as the possibility for developing interesting multi-player game-play.

The infinite museum is a showcase for a range of visualization techniques such as images, videos, 3d objects and 3d animations. 

The application explores the possibilities of modular construction

The application doesn’t rely on a pre-built structure, instead it dynamically creates a map of rooms whose topology is a result of player options and  pre-defined exhibit relationships. 

In terms of typology, the rooms of the Infinite Museum are especially designed so as to be “convex”, meaning they all connect seamlessly, and in their combination fully cover a 2D area. The impression in this case, is not a sequence of rooms, but more of a collection of infinite spaces. Very much like a puzzle with different pieces that are all linkable to each other. In that way there are 6*6*4= 144 possible connections and therefore 144 different spaces generated by just 6 cubic rooms.

The 6 rooms of the infinite museum
The generation of different spaces is illustrated above using random formations.
At this point the project is aimed to be a tool for the collection and presentation of different visualization works. Textures and lighting are defaulted and flexible for further development as the game play progresses. Next steps include texture and pattern design, association of spatial items with exhibit tags, real time shadows and interactions, game-play development and the introduction of multi-players.
The exhibition incorporates visualizations that were produced as part of taught courses, while the project itself was made in the context of the visualization course by Andrew Hudson Smith and Martin Austwick, in the MRes ASAV 2011.

This blogpost contains extracts from our group essay.
Team Members, visit their blogs at:

Martin Dittus              COVSPC
Ian Morton                 visual metro
Mohammad Masum    Spatial Urban
Flora Roumpani          En-topia

Continue reading »
CASA, data visualization, Unity, Virtual Worlds

UNITY 3D – The infinite museum

Posted on by

In the 2011-2012 MRes of Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualization we worked on some fascinating topics and new year is always a good time to re-cap. The Infinite museum is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration with Martin Dittus, Ian Morton, Mohammad Masum and myself, for the design of a virtual exhibition space, as a showcase for a constantly updating database of different visualization techniques. The first question that emerged in this case, was why build a spatial structure for the presentation of a-spatial information. In this case the answer is conceptual.
In 1929, Le Corbusier designed the Museum of Unlimited Growth (Musée à croissance illimitée) for the Mundaneum in Geneva. He imagined a square spiral that would develop and grow infinitely in time. In his vision, visitors would follow a path which would let them explore exhibits via a continuous circulation, allowing them to experience what he called a “promenade architectural” (an architectural walk). Despite its utopic nature, the vision behind this concept is the realization of an era of constant change and non-permanence, followed by an optimism of continuous growth.
Later, the idea of “virtuality” provoked an even more interesting swift in planning and design with the emergence of parametric modelling, sensors and new interaction techniques, which allowed new notions, e.g gaming, to become an active player in the design process. This awareness became an inspiration for the development of new solutions, such as the experimental project Arctic Research Facility by Polar Ants for building structures in constantly fluctuating physical surroundings. Or even projects which address to philosophical questions, as in the case of the Lotus Dome  by studio Roosegaarde, in whether technology can be sacred.

The museum of Unlimited Growth – Le Corbusier 1929

In continuance to these ideas, the Infinite Museum, is an interactive application that allows players to visually explore exhibits (images, movies, 3D models, animated objects) and the complex network of relations between them. The project, follows the inspiration of unlimited growth museum, with the difference that in this case, it moves away from the traditional 3d exhibition spaces which rely on a pre-built structure with a “continuous” or a tree- type “network” circulation. Instead, the Infinite Museum explores the possibilities of modular construction and dynamically constructs a map of rooms whose topology is a result of both player choices and pre-defined exhibit relationships.
The idea is to create a typical spatial structure of an exhibition space which will be augmented with the ideas of Web3 such as the use of a cloud network for categorizing the exhibits and guiding the viewer. 3D “types of rooms” connect to each other, in order to create a sequence of spaces that will guide the viewer through the exhibition, while providing him the choices of the cloud network. The user becomes the curator, who structures the exhibition, not by designing it, but by choosing types or “tags” of exhibits and therefore, he is more likely to run into the exhibits that are more related to his group of preferences.
This is a UNITY 3D application, which includes assets built in a range of 3D modeling software packages. Unity, as a game engine, provides excellent tools for interactive 3d space as well as the possibility for developing interesting multi-player game-play.

The infinite museum is a showcase for a range of visualization techniques such as images, videos, 3d objects and 3d animations. 

The application explores the possibilities of modular construction

The application doesn’t rely on a pre-built structure, instead it dynamically creates a map of rooms whose topology is a result of player options and  pre-defined exhibit relationships. 

In terms of typology, the rooms of the Infinite Museum are especially designed so as to be “convex”, meaning they all connect seamlessly, and in their combination fully cover a 2D area. The impression in this case, is not a sequence of rooms, but more of a collection of infinite spaces. Very much like a puzzle with different pieces that are all linkable to each other. In that way there are 6*6*4= 144 possible connections and therefore 144 different spaces generated by just 6 cubic rooms.

The 6 rooms of the infinite museum
The generation of different spaces is illustrated above using random formations.
At this point the project is aimed to be a tool for the collection and presentation of different visualization works. Textures and lighting are defaulted and flexible for further development as the game play progresses. Next steps include texture and pattern design, association of spatial items with exhibit tags, real time shadows and interactions, game-play development and the introduction of multi-players.
The exhibition incorporates visualizations that were produced as part of taught courses, while the project itself was made in the context of the visualization course by Andrew Hudson Smith and Martin Austwick, in the MRes ASAV 2011.

This blogpost contains extracts from our group essay.
Team Members, visit their blogs at:

Martin Dittus              COVSPC
Ian Morton                 visual metro
Mohammad Masum    Spatial Urban
Flora Roumpani          En-topia

Continue reading »
CASA, data visualization, Unity, Virtual Worlds

PopGRG sponsored sessions for RGS-IBG annual conference: call for papers

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TweetThe Population Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG are delighted to announce our sponsored sessions for the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers annual conference, to be held at the RGS-IBG headquarters (Kensington Gore, London) on Wednesday 28th to Friday 30th August.   Sessions and abstracts are listed below.   Should you […]

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Announcements/ News, Conferences

Shortest network path calculation

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Interactive version (currently Chrome or Safari only) A basic algorithm to calculate the shortest path through random networks between 2 nodes (without passing the same node twice). Networks with a higher ratio of connections to nodes (especially where connections cross each other) contain exponentially more possible paths. The algorithm uses a recursive nested logical process […]

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PhD Studentships at LSHTM

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TweetESRC Studentships at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine We are accepting applications now for social science and public health PhD and MSc funding ESRC 1+3 studentships are available in the Faculty of Epidemiology & Population Health and theFaculty of Public Health & Policy for social science research in the following areas: Demography – Demography & Health; […]

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Jobs, Research Students

Fusing remote sensing with demographic data for synthetic population generation

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When building agent-based models related to “real” world locations and people, the challenge is to build agents which resemble people on the ground. I have blogged about microsimulation approaches before and their utility with respect to agent-based models. A new paper in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science by alumnae from the Department of Computational Social Science here at GMU have developed a new algorithm which could prove useful. Below is abstract of the paper:

We develop a new algorithm for population synthesis that fuses remote-sensing data with partial and sparse demographic surveys. The algorithm addresses non-binding constraints and complex sampling designs by translating population synthesis into a computationally efficient procedure for constrained network growth. As a case, we synthesize the rural population of Afghanistan, validate the algorithm with in-sample and out-of-sample tests, examine the variability of algorithm outputs over k-nearest neighbor manifolds, and show the responsiveness of our algorithm to additional data as a constraint on marginal population counts.

Full Reference:

Rizi, S.M.M., Łatek, M.M. and Geller, A. (2012), ‘Fusing Remote Sensing with Sparse Demographic Data for Synthetic Population Generation: An Algorithm and Application to Rural Afghanistan’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, DOI:10.1080/13658816.2012.734825.

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ABM, Microsimulation, Remote Sensing

Fusing remote sensing with demographic data for synthetic population generation

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When building agent-based models related to “real” world locations and people, the challenge is to build agents which resemble people on the ground. I have blogged about microsimulation approaches before and their utility with respect to agent-based models. A new paper in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science by alumnae from the Department of Computational Social Science here at GMU have developed a new algorithm which could prove useful. Below is abstract of the paper:

We develop a new algorithm for population synthesis that fuses remote-sensing data with partial and sparse demographic surveys. The algorithm addresses non-binding constraints and complex sampling designs by translating population synthesis into a computationally efficient procedure for constrained network growth. As a case, we synthesize the rural population of Afghanistan, validate the algorithm with in-sample and out-of-sample tests, examine the variability of algorithm outputs over k-nearest neighbor manifolds, and show the responsiveness of our algorithm to additional data as a constraint on marginal population counts.

Full Reference:

Rizi, S.M.M., Łatek, M.M. and Geller, A. (2012), ‘Fusing Remote Sensing with Sparse Demographic Data for Synthetic Population Generation: An Algorithm and Application to Rural Afghanistan’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, DOI:10.1080/13658816.2012.734825.

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ABM, Microsimulation, Remote Sensing

Creating 2011 Census Output Area Change Maps Using R

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E08000003The 2001 Census used a different set of Output Areas (OA) than the current 2011 boundaries; reflecting changes in the spatial distribution of the underlying population. For example, if an area has become more heavily populated since 2001, it makes sense that a previous OA might be split into multiple new segments.

The ONS have provided both the Shapefiles and lookup tables for these changes, however, as yet, I haven’t seen any maps of these changes.

I have had a go at creating these in a reproducible way using R – the code with links to all the data (which is public domain) can be found on my Rpubs page. At the base of the Rpubs post are links to downloadable PDF maps of all local authority districts in England and Wales.

A recurring pattern that will become clearer when the high resolution census data become available in 2013, is the splitting of OA in the centre of many large urban areas, typically as a result of increased population density. A couple of direct links to maps are as follows:

For the remaining maps and R code, see the Rpubs page.

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