13th April 2009, Kyoto, Ritsumeikan University

Two prizes came from the UCL camp at this years GISRUK. The previously mentioned “mashup”, and also the prize for the best young research paper by my student Adnan – titled: “Moving to real time segmentation: efficient computation of geodemographic cla…

Today was a jolly nice day with Ollie and I winning the Ordnance Survey Geospatial Mashup Challenge at GISRUK 2009. There were some really good entries and I was quite surprised with the result. One site which really impressed me was: “User Adaptive Tr…

I just presented this paper at GIS Research UK (GISRUK) in Durham sparking an interesting debate about ethics and use of transactional data. This is my first attempt at Keynote on OSX / Macbook – which after an initial failure at getting technology con…

I have just published a new working paper:

Abstract:

Computer mediated communication and the Internet has fundamentally changed how consumers and producers connect and interact across both real space, and has also opened up new opportunities in virtu…

The intent is to make a free trafic solution!<br/><br/>I think from my toughts, that some sort of free programing solution of how cars should interact in traffic should be built.<br/>As when to stop or go, or don’t crash.<br/><br/>The free solution is to make lines, and adapt the objects to Path constrain, and animate them, from here to there… Tricky but you can do it…

Aimsun (www.aimsun.com) is a traffic simulation package that offers good integration capabilities, including a comprehensive SDK. Maybe it will be possible to combine it with CityScape, CyberCity 3D, Maya or 3DSMax.

You might want to take a look at our product CityScape (www.pixelactive3d.com), which allows you to view traffic simulations on the fly as you create your city.

In general we know how to model buildings, thats not too tricky – ours in the render are simply placement models for the street network. <br/><br/>The tricky part is modeling traffic simulation within a city model using software that is not at the $$$ level

CyberCity 3D can provide high detail city models for use in Maya and 3DSMAX. Could add realism to your rendering by replacing those boxy buildings with realistic 3D models.<br/><br/>here’s an example: http://tinyurl.com/atnxvl

I’d love to do this in my city. Do you have any wisdom or tips you’d pass along?

Interesing stuff. I wonder if it could be used for mapping, or more serious collection of aerial imagery… Perhaps you could tow the balloons to control their movement…

Anybody who I have come in contact with over the past two weeks has probably been subjected to me showing them an old 1904 map of Manchester and Salford housing conditions. This has really nice cartography and is accompanied by a book featuring rich te…

Towards a Higher Education Profiler, University College London, London – 11/2/09

Measuring Segregation: Methods, tools and data, a two day workshop. University of Bristol, Bristol – 11/2/09

Everybody likes free data! The Free the Postcode project aims to collect geo-locations using GPS for every UK postcode.

This is now much simpler using an iPhone application: http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=351

Public Engagement: The London Profiler, Public Profiler and the E-Society Classification, University College London, London – 8/1/09

This review begins by acknowledging the success of geodemographics as an important area of activity in applied geography. However, it then develops a critique of the conceptual and computational underpinnings of the approach, and argues that changes in data supply and online communication have rendered current practices obsolete. It presents elements of a new perspective, entailing: changes in the specification, estimation and testing of online geodemographic systems; adoption of consultative practices from online folksonomies; automated generation of pen portraits; and

Singleton, A.D., and Paul A. Longley. 2009. “Geodemographics, Visualisation, and Social Networks in Applied Geography.” Applied Geography 29 (3): 289–298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2008.10.006.

Good news today for OS X users is Google Earth Browser Plug-in is now available on Mac OS X:

http://code.google.com/apis/earth/

http://www.spatialkey.com/ looks a promising new GIS based start up built around geovisualisation. Of particular note are the heat map visualisation demos which link both time and place.

It appears to be built in the new Flex framework which I think w…

I am also affiliated with the QMRG and we have just finished digitising the vast majority of the CATMOG series of quantitative methods guides. These are a great resource and can be downloaded from [here]

Two things stop me from migrating to OS X, firstly SAS and secondly GIS. The former is very unlikely to be solved any time soon, however, GIS on OS X appears a growing area. Here are a list of full GIS and GIS types software I have found:

“Full” GIS

…

https://speakerdeck.com/alexsingleton/what-is-gis-for-the-google-generation

ESRC Research Methods, University Oxford, Oxford – 1/7/08

Always on the look out for nice visualisations I came across Wordle today. I have generated one of my research interests:

Gibin, M., Singleton, A., Milton,R., Mateos, P., Longley, P. (2008) An Exploratory Cartographic Visualisation of London through the Google Maps API. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy. 1(2), 85-97.

Abstract:

This paper begins by reviewing the ways i…

I have always struggled to find a nice easy way to create cartograms. That was until I found a relatively new tool called ScapeToad (http://chorogram.choros.ch/scapetoad/). Within minutes I had generated a very appealing cartogram of London at Output …

University Nottingham – Alex D Singleton – 30/10/08

TSN Masterclass, UEA,Norwich – 3/6/08

Haklay, M., Singleton, A.D., Parker, C. (2008) Web Mapping 2.0: The Neogeography of the GeoWeb. Geography Compass.

Abstract:

The landscape of Internet mapping technologies has changed dramatically since 2005. New techniques are being used and new terms have been invented and entered the lexicon such as: mash-ups, crowdsourcing, neogeography and geostack. A whole range of websites and communities from the commercial Google Maps to the grassroots OpenStreetMap, and applications such as Platial, also have emerged. In their totality, these new applications represent a step change in the evolution of the area of Internet geographic applications (which some have termed the GeoWeb). The nature of this change warrants an explanation and an overview, as it has implications both for geographers and the public notion of Geography. This article provides a critical review of this newly emerging landscape, starting with an introduction to the concepts, technologies and structures that have emerged over the short period of intense innovation. It introduces the non-technical reader to them, suggests reasons for the neologism, explains the terminology, and provides a perspective on the current trends. Case studies are used to demonstrate this Web Mapping 2.0 era, and differentiate it from the previous generation of Internet mapping. Finally, the implications of these new techniques and the challenges they pose to geographic information science, geography and society at large are considered.

Haklay, M., A.D. Singleton, and C. Parker. 2008. “Web Mapping 2.0: The Neogeography of the GeoWeb.” Geography Compass 2 (6): 2011–2039. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00167.x.

Market Research Society Workshop – 2/11/08

Nestoria (www.nestoria.co.uk) kindly requested an interview to discuss some of the activities we have been working on recently in CASA and the Department of Geography.

More after the [link].

You plot your route in real time if you use phonelocator http://phonelocator.mobi

I think you’re correct in identifying the problem that people would think that air above the 3D construction is ‘safe’. Personally (and as usual 🙂 ) I think a 2d color map layer would work just fine. I’d bet you could find users who look at your map and think that the areas between the roads are ‘safe’, I assume they are just unsampled?<br/><br/>A possible improvement would be to produce a set of tubes over each road which are colored. This would give the advantage of making the roads stand out, give the impression that only the roads are sampled and get over the issue of ‘high air being clear’.<br/><br/>Do keep experimenting though!<br/><br/>Rich