Latest Posts

What is Science?

When you look at the discussions that are emerging around the term ‘Citizen Science‘, you can often find discussion about the ‘Citizen‘ part of the term. What about the ‘Science‘ part? This is something that once you start being involved in Citizen Science you are forced to contemplate. As Francois Grey like to note ‘Science is too important […]

Continue reading »

DataShine: 2011 OAC

The 2011 Area Classification for Output Areas, or 2011 OAC, is a geodemographic classification that was developed by Dr Chris Gale during his Ph.D at UCL Geography over the last few years, in close conjunction with the Office for National Statistics, who have endorsed it and adopted it as their official classification and who collected […]

Continue reading »

Researcher in Geography of Health/Medical Geography and GIS

TweetGeoHealth Laboratory, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Post based in Wellington   Researcher in Health Geography, GeoHealth Laboratory, based in Wellington This is a 2.5 year fixed term position. The successful applicant will have interests in the following areas; neighbourhoods and health, environmental justice and health, environment and health, impacts of urban environment on […]

Continue reading »

Try this 3D rollercoaster for the Oculus Rift headset. Could it help plan cities? – The Guardian


The Guardian

Try this 3D rollercoaster for the Oculus Rift headset. Could it help plan cities?
The Guardian
The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Casa) at UCL in London, where Dawkins studies, had set out to show how a virtual rollercoaster could demonstrate to the Grand Designs Live exhibition’s 100,000 visitors a more tangible example of how

and more »

Continue reading »

3D Buildings

I’ve been experimenting with 3D buildings in my virtual globe project and it’s now progressed to the point where I can demonstrate it working with dynamically loaded content. The following YouTube clip shows the buildings for London, along with the Thames. I didn’t have the real heights, so buildings are extruded up by a random …
Read more

Continue reading »

BSPS day meeting on the ‘usual residence’ concept and alternative population bases, LSE, 24 October 2014

TweetThis forthcomingmeeting will be held at LSE on Friday 24th October 2014, 10.30am-5.00pm. The main question to be addressed is: ‘Is the concept of ‘usual residence’ reaching its sell-by date?’ Now that the Government has confirmed that a further Population Census will take place in 2021, it is an opportune time to consider how far […]

Continue reading »

Geographies of Co-Production: highlights of the RGS/IBG ’14 conference

The 3 days of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) or RGS/IBG  annual conference are always valuable, as they provide an opportunity to catch up with the current themes in (mostly human) Geography. While I spend most of my time in an engineering department, I also like to keep my ‘geographer identity’ up to date as this […]

Continue reading »

Herding Sheep

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28936251
Have you ever wondered how a farmer and a single sheep dog can herd sheep? A recent paper in Journal of the Royal Society Interface explains just how. Using GPS data from collars researchers have developed a computational model which  “reproduces key features of empirical data collected from sheep–dog interaction”. The model has two simple rules:

“The first rule: The sheepdog learns how to make the sheep come together in a flock. The second rule: Whenever the sheep are in a tightly knit group, the dog pushes them forwards.” (BBC)

The movie below (which accompanies the paper) shows some simulation runs with different numbers of agents. The shepherd (blue) approaches and rounds up the agents/sheep (black dots) and then proceed to herd the group toward the target.

Full Reference:

Strömbom. D. Mann, R. P., Wilson, A. M., Hailes, S., Morton, A. J., Sumpter, D. J. T., King, A. J. (2014) Solving the shepherding problem: Heuristics for herding autonomous, interacting agents. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 11: 20140719.

Thanks to @Badnetworker for drawing my attention to this.

Continue reading »

Herding Sheep

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28936251
Have you ever wondered how a farmer and a single sheep dog can herd sheep? A recent paper in Journal of the Royal Society Interface explains just how. Using GPS data from collars researchers have developed a computational model which  “reproduces key features of empirical data collected from sheep–dog interaction”. The model has two simple rules:

“The first rule: The sheepdog learns how to make the sheep come together in a flock. The second rule: Whenever the sheep are in a tightly knit group, the dog pushes them forwards.” (BBC)

The movie below (which accompanies the paper) shows some simulation runs with different numbers of agents. The shepherd (blue) approaches and rounds up the agents/sheep (black dots) and then proceed to herd the group toward the target.

Full Reference:

Strömbom. D. Mann, R. P., Wilson, A. M., Hailes, S., Morton, A. J., Sumpter, D. J. T., King, A. J. (2014) Solving the shepherding problem: Heuristics for herding autonomous, interacting agents. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 11: 20140719.

Thanks to @Badnetworker for drawing my attention to this.

Continue reading »

Opportunities at St Andrews for Population Researchers

TweetThree positions in Human Geography – ML1317 Details: The Department of Geography and Sustainable Development at St Andrews invites applications for three posts in Human Geography (from Lecturer to Professor). Exceptional candidates will be considered for Reader or Professorial positions. We welcome applications from candidates at all career stages who are, or have the potential […]

Continue reading »

OpenStreetMap studies (and why VGI not equal OSM)

As far as I can tell, Nelson et al. 2006 ‘Towards development of a high quality public domain global roads database‘ and Taylor & Caquard 2006 Cybercartography: Maps and Mapping in the Information Era are the first peer review papers that mention OpenStreetMap. Since then, OpenStreetMap received plenty of academic attention. More ‘conservative’ search engines such as ScienceDirect […]

Continue reading »

How making London greener could make Londoners happier – interactive map – The Guardian

How making London greener could make Londoners happier – interactive map
The Guardian
London – with all its tarmac, brick and glass – is actually 38.4% open space and ranks as the world’s third greenest major city. Now Daniel Raven-Ellison wants to go further … and make Greater London a national park. His campaign and online petition

Continue reading »

Happy 10th Birthday, OpenStreetMap!

Today, OpenStreetMap celebrates 10 years of operation as counted from the date of registration. I’ve heard about the project when it was in early stages, mostly because I knew Steve Coast when I was studying for my Ph.D. at UCL.  As a result, I was also able to secured the first ever research grant that focused […]

Continue reading »

Borough Tops

The Diamond Geezer is, this month, climbing the highest tops in each one of London’s 33 boroughs. To find the highest points, he’s used a number of websites which list the places. These derive the data from contour lines, perhaps supplemented with GPS or other measurements. However, another interesting – and new – datasource for […]

Continue reading »
1 89 90 91 92 93 173