AAG2018: Innovations in Urban Analytics

Call for Papers, AAG2018: Innovations in Urban Analytics

We welcome paper submissions for our session at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting on 10-14 April, 2018, in New Orleans.

Session Description

New forms of data about people and cities, often termed ‘Big’, are fostering research that is disrupting many traditional fields. This is true in geography, and especially in those more technical branches of the discipline such as computational geography / geocomputation, spatial analytics and statistics, geographical data science, etc. These new forms of micro-level data have lead to new methodological approaches in order to better understand how urban systems behave. Increasingly, these approaches and data are being used to ask questions about how cities can be made more sustainable and efficient in the future.

This session will bring together the latest research in urban analytics. We are particularly interested in papers that engage with the following domains:

• Agent-based modelling (ABM) and individual-based modelling;
• Machine learning for urban analytics;
• Innovations in consumer data analytics for understanding urban systems;
• Real-time model calibration and data assimilation;
• Spatio-temporal data analysis;
• New data, case studies, demonstrators, and tools for the study of urban systems;
• Complex systems analysis;
• Geographic data mining and visualization;
• Frequentist and Bayesian approaches to modelling cities.

Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Nick Malleson (n.s.malleson@leeds.ac.uk) by 18 October, 2017 (one week before the AAG abstract deadline). Please make sure that your abstract conforms to the AAG guidelines in relation to title, word limit and key words and as specified at: http://annualmeeting.aag.org/submit_an_abstract. An abstract should be no more than 250 words that describe the presentation’s purpose, methods, and conclusions.

For those interested specifically in the interface between research and policy, they might consider submitting their paper to the session “Computation for Public Engagement in Complex Problems” (http://www.gisagents.org/2017/10/call-for-papers-computation-for-public.html).

Key Dates

• 18 October, 2017: Abstract submission deadline. E-mail Nick Malleson by this date if you are interested in being in this session. Please submit an abstract and key words with your expression of intent.
• 23 October, 2017: Session finalization and author notification.
• 25 October, 2017: Final abstract submission to AAG, via the link above. All participants must register individually via this site. Upon registration you will be given a participant number (PIN). Send the PIN and a copy of your final abstract to Nick Malleson (n.s.malleson@leeds.ac.uk). Neither the organizers nor the AAG will edit the abstracts.
• 8 November, 2017: AAG session organization deadline. Sessions submitted to AAG for approval.
• 9-14 April, 2018: AAG Annual Meeting.

Session Organizers

• Nick Malleson, University of Leeds, UK
• Alison Heppenstall, University of Leeds, UK
• Andrew Crooks, George Mason University, US
• Tuuli Toivonen, University of Helsinki, Finland
• Alex Singleton, University of Liverpool, UK
• Ed Manley, UCL, UK

Call for Papers – Computation for Public Engagement in Complex Problems

Call for Papers – Computation for Public Engagement in Complex Problems: From Big Data, to Modeling, to Action 

We welcome paper submissions for our session(s) at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting on 9-14 April, 2018, in New Orleans.  

Session Description: In line with one of the major themes of this conference, we explore the opportunities and challenges that geo-computational tools offer to support public engagement, deliberation and decision-making to address complex problems that link human, socioeconomic and biophysical systems at a variety of different spatial and temporal scales (e.g., climate change, resource depletion, and poverty). Modelers and data scientists have shown increasing interest in the intersection between science and policy, acknowledging that, for all the computational advances achieved to support policy and decision-making, these approaches remain frustratingly foreign to the public they are meant to serve. On one hand, there is a persistent gap in the public’s understanding of and reasoning about complex systems, resulting in unintended and undesirable consequences. On the other hand, there is significant public skepticism about the knowledge generated by the modeling community and its ability to inform policy and decision-making.

We invite theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers that explore advances in geo-computational approaches, including part or all the process to address complex problems: from data collection and analysis, to the development and use of models, to supporting action with data analysis and modeling. We are interested in any work that contributes towards the overall goal of supporting public engagement and action around complex problems, including—but not limited to—the following topics:

• epistemological perspectives; 
• extracting behavioral rules from novel and established data sets; 
• innovative applications of complex systems techniques, and 
• addressing the challenge of complex systems model calibration and validation. 

Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Moira Zellner (mzellner@uic.edu) by October 18, 2017 (one week before the AAG abstract deadline). Please make sure that your abstract conforms to the AAG guidelines in relation to title, word limit and key words and as specified at: http://annualmeeting.aag.org/submit_an_abstract. An abstract should be no more than 250 words that describe the presentation’s purpose, methods, and conclusions.

 Timeline summary: 

• October 18, 2017: Abstract submission deadline. E-mail Moira Zellner (mzellner@uic.edu) by this date if you are interested in being in this session. Please submit an abstract and key words with your expression of intent. 
• October 23, 2017: Session finalization and author notification. 
• October 25, 2017: Final abstract submission to AAG, via the link above. All participants must register individually via this site. Upon registration you will be given a participant number (PIN). Send the PIN and a copy of your final abstract to Moira Zellner. Neither the organizers nor the AAG will edit the abstracts. 
• November 8, 2017: AAG session organization deadline. Sessions submitted to AAG for approval. 
• April 9-14, 2018: AAG Annual Meeting.  

Organizers:

• Moira Zellner, Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago.
• Andrew Crooks, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University 
• Tom Evans, Department of Geography, Indiana University 
• Jeon-Young Kang, Department of Geography, SUNY at Buffalo 
• Jared Aldstadt, Department of Geography, SUNY at Buffalo 
• Arika Ligmann-Zielinska, Department of Geography, Michigan State University

A Semester with Urban Analytics

This past semester I gave a new class at GMU entitled "Urban Analytics". In a nutshell the class was about introducing students to a broad interdisciplinary field that focuses on the use of data to study cities. More specifcally the emphasis of the class was to provide students with a understanding of what methods, tools and theory can be used to monitor, analyze and model cities. 

From my past research and also when preparing the class material,  I have come to the realization that to study cities (like many others, you know who you are) that there is no one general model, tool or dataset. Therefore, one needs to maintain a toolbox of specialized tools than can be applied to different aspects of urban problems and questions. 

The toolbox that we used in class included a variety of software such as ArcGIS, QGIS, GeoDa, SANET along with programing and scripting in Python and R to modeling  cities via UrbanSim, NetLogo and MASON. Data we used ranged from crowdsourced (e.g. volunteered geographical information) data such as from OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia, to crowd harvested (ambient geographical information) data such as Twitter and Flickr, as-well as more traditional sources of data such as the US Census.

The Urban Analytics Toolbox

As an introduction to urban analytics, the course had the following objectives:

1. to understand the motivation for the use of data to study cities, including some historical aspects; 
2. to learn about the variety of Urban Analytics research programs across the several disciplines (urban planning, regional science, public policy, geography, computational social science etc.), through a survey of the literature and case studies. 
3. to understand the distinct contribution that Urban Analytics can make by providing specific insights about cities at multiple scales. 
4. to provide the foundations for more advanced work in the area of Urban Analytics. 

As with many of my courses, students were expected to complete a end of semester project. Below is a selection of these projects which explored some aspect of urban life.

I would like to thank the students for participating in this new class. It was a fun trip.

Special Sessions on GeoComputation @ NARSC

Second Call for participation

Special Sessions on GeoComputation

61st Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International NARSC - RSAI

November 12-15, 2014, Washington, DC, USA

The special sessions on various aspects of GeoComputation are planned for the North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (NARSC) to be held in Washington DC, USA, November 12-15, 2014. Suitable topics for the session presentations are theoretical, methodological and applied issues related to GeoComputation – spatial analysis and modeling, and in the context of regional science.

Please let us know if you are interested to contribute to the special session(s) by sending an email at <suzanad@sfu.ca> with the title, abstract, name of author(s), affiliations, contact details and the unique ID number at your earliest but not later than June 25th, 2014. The abstract should be 2,000 to 5,500 characters and spaces.

Please note that in order to have your presentation included to the special session we do need the unique identification number (ID). The ID, or PIN, is a number included at the bottom of the confirmation email received following the submission of an abstract.

Detailed information about the NARSC conference can be found at . Information about the submission process can be found at . Conference abstract submission deadline is July 1^st, 2014.

Looking forward to seeing you in Washington, DC.

The organizers:

Prof. Suzana Dragićević

Department of Geography

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Email: suzanad@sfu.ca

Prof. Andrew Crooks

Department of Computational Social Science

George Mason University, USA

Email: acrooks2@gmu.edu

Prof. Jean-Claude Thill

Department of Geography and Earth Sciences

University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Email: Jean-Claude.Thill@uncc.edu

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