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Continue reading »Latest Posts
Crowdsourcing dust storms utilizing social media data
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 »Mapping the Invisible
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 »The Big Egg Hunt
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 »AAG 2025 Talks
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 »Geosimulations for Addressing Societal Challenges Talks @ AAG
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…
Continue reading »MQTT Frame – Beautifully Framed Live Data
The post MQTT Frame – Beautifully Framed Live Data appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »New Editorial: Cities and disasters: What can urban analytics do?
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 »Green London
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 »Call for Papers: Integrating LLMs and Geospatial Foundation Models to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in ABMs
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 »New paper: does public sector relocation have halo effects?
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 »From print to perspective: A mixed-method analysis of the convergence and divergence of COVID-19 topics in newspapers and interviews
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 »New Directions in Mapping the Earth’s Surface with Citizen Science and Generative
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 »AGU
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 »A Large-Scale Geographically Explicit Synthetic Population with Social Networks for the US
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 »Pattern of Life Human Mobility Simulation (Demo)
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 »Studying Contagious Disease Spread: An ABM Framework
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 »Agent-Based Models and Geography
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 »An Agent-based model of COVID-19 Vaccine uptake in New York State
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 »Retention in Higher Education: An Agent-Based Model
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 »That’s you, that is
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 »The Colne Valley Viaduct is Complete
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 »Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023
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 »Call for Abstracts – AAG 2025: Geo-simulation Sessions
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’ Monster Trail
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 »Professor
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 »Genomic profiling and spatial SEIR modeling of COVID-19 transmission
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 »Social Simulation Conference (SSC 2024)
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 »MQTT Frame Privacy Policy
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,…
The post MQTT Frame Privacy Policy appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »Podcast: the state of the art in urban economics and economic geography
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 Silico Human Mobility Data Science
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 Circular Walk
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 »Navigating GeoParquet: Lessons Learned from the eMOTIONAL Cities Project
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 DIGITAL FRONTIERS REPORT UNVEILED DURING LONDON DATA WEEK
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 »Visualisation Projects by CASA Urban Spatial Science Students
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 »Turning Any Device into a Literary Clock with MQTT
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 »Make a Scrolling Hub75 Matrix Display using a Pimoroni Interstate75W and MQTT
The post Make a Scrolling Hub75 Matrix Display using a Pimoroni Interstate75W and MQTT appeared first on Digital Urban.
Continue reading »Call for Abstracts: Future Map @ AGU
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 »Key Thinkers on Space and Place
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 »Enhancing Live Weather Monitoring with MQTT and Chart.js
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…
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