Driving Anxiety and Visual Attention in Young Drivers

Over the last summer I participated in a research experience for undergraduate at the University at Buffalo (UB) hosted by the Geologic and Climate Hazards Center. In this program students spent several weeks at UB working with faculty on a diverse set of projects ranging from understanding snow events over the great lakes, forest die off to utilizing crowdsourced data to study dust events. One of the projects I was involved with resulted in a poster being presented at the 105th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting entitled "Driving Anxiety and Visual Attention in Young Drivers: A Driving Simulator Study". 

In this study Phoebe Schrag worked alongside Austin Angulo, Irina Benedykc, Gongda Yu, Daisha Cardenas, Hayden Radel (from UB's Transportation Research and Visualization Laboratory (TRAVL)) and myself to explore driving anxiety of young drivers between the ages of 18 and 25. Using eye-tracking data from a high-fidelity virtual reality (VR) driving simulator we explored the effects of self-reported driving anxiety on visual attention, decision-making, and cognitive load. We found that driving anxiety can impair situational awareness. If this sounds of interest and you want to find out more, below you can read the abstract to the poster along with a link to the actual poster itself. 

Abstract: 

Motor vehicle crashes have remained the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults in the United States. Although high crash rates are commonly attributed to inexperience, risk-taking behavior, and underdeveloped executive functions, the role of emotional factors such as driving anxiety remain under-explored. Driving anxiety, which is characterized by persistent fear or worry while driving, may have a significant impact on young or novice drivers due to their limited experience and developing emotional regulation abilities. However, existing research has relied heavily on adult samples, self-report measures, or clinical cases, rarely incorporating real-time behavioral data from young adults. This study addresses these gaps by using eye-tracking in a high-fidelity virtual reality (VR) driving simulator to objectively evaluate the effects of self-reported driving anxiety on visual attention, decision-making, and cognitive load. Thirty-one licensed drivers aged 18–25 were classified into anxiety and non-anxiety groups using a questionnaire with reference to the Driving Cognitions Questionnaire. Participants completed five mixed urban-rural scenarios (two dynamic, two static, and one repeated dynamic) while wearing a Varjo XR3 headset with iMotions eye-tracking monitoring. Key eye-tracking metrics (e.g., dwell time proportion, fixation duration and saccade count) were analyzed using scenario-specific Welch’s t-tests (α = 0.05). The results showed that anxious drivers had significantly fewer saccadic movements in high-demand scenarios, indicating reduced scanning and increased cognitive load. These findings demonstrate how driving anxiety can impair situational awareness and suggest that targeted psychological interventions could improve attentional control. This work informs emotionally adaptive driver training for young drivers.

KEYWORDS: Driving Anxiety, Eye-Tracking, Visual Attention, Young Drivers, Cognitive Load, VR Driving Simulation.

Full Reference:

Schrag, P., Yu, G., Cardenas, D., Radel, H., Angulo, A., Crooks, A.T. and Benedyk, I. (2026), Driving Anxiety and Visual Attention in Young Drivers: A Driving Simulator Study, 105th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, 11th – 15th January, Washington DC. (poster pdf)

GIS and ABM: Past, Present and Future

The other day, Alison Heppenstall and myself were invited to give a keynote at the 2021 International Conference on Geospatial Information Sciences. Its not hard to guess what we chose to be the title of our talk: "GIS and Agent-Based-Modelling: Past, Present and Future."

The talk was a synthesis of two publications (Crooks et al. 2019 and Heppenstall et al. 2021) along with some things we are currently working on. For those who are interested the conference has released not only our talk but also the other keynotes.

Alice: 3D programming environment

Alice is a easy to use 3D programming environment where one can create an animation for telling a story or be used for playing an interactive game. It is designed to teach the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. 

In Alice,  people, animals, and vehicles etc are 3D objects that populate a virtual world which one can then animate. What is nice about Alice is its interactive interface, where one can drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program (similar in a way to StarLogo TNG). Below is our (Ernesto Carrella and myself) first brief attempt of modeling agents exiting a room (we quite like the funny walk which reminds us of a John Cleese's silly walks sketch).

 

Another nice feature of Alice is one can import models from Sketchup to Alice, opening up many possibilities, as shown in the movie below.

Avatars in OpenSim

OpenSim (OpenSimulator) "is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols." In a sense its similar to Second Life (SL) but one can host environment on ones own web server (Click here to see some of ourt previous work with SL).

One of the problems with using SL is that one has to own/rent the land in which the environment is created and housed. While with OpenSim one only needs a web server which in a sense is highly appealing for creating permanent environments. Another problem we encountered when using SL was the time it took to execute our agent-based models due to the SL servers. So when I was shown by Chris Rouly this latest test on the ScienceSim Beta Grid by Nebadon Izumi showing 1000 Avatars of mostly bots but some human controlled avatars in real time (as shown below), this got me thinking again about agent-based modeling in virtual worlds.

It would be nice to see Avatars (agents) populating real buildings such as the Ajax FC stadium below. Where the agents are programed to react to changing conditions such as evacuation in times of crisis.

The Ajax FC stadium (Source: KZero Worldswide)

One of our initial tests on using SL for the evacuation of buildings can be seen below. But in our example we only use a maximum of 100 agents but using 1000s of agents with real anthropomorphic dimensions in a 3D space and in real time is highly appealing.

Virtual Worlds for teaching GIS

Following on from our previous posts on Second Life (SL), I just came across a post on the ArcUser Online website which talks about how SL can be used for GIS education. The article is by Michael DeMers of New Mexico State University. The paper is entitled "Inside the Metaverse" and has three nice podcasts accompanying it.

The YouTube movie below gives an idea about the potential for teaching GIS within virtual worlds (Thanks to Digital Urban for the link).

New paper: NeoGeography and Web 2.0

The current issue of the Journal of Location Based Services is a special edition on Neogeography edited by Sanjay Rana and Thierry Joliveau.

Apart from the editorial there are three papers in this special issue. The first is by Michael Goodchild, entitiled "NeoGeography and the nature of geographic expertise" The abstract of the paper is below:

"NeoGeography has been defined as a blurring of the distinctions between producer, communicator and consumer of geographic information. The relationship between professional and amateur varies across disciplines. The subject matter of geography is familiar to everyone, and the acquisition and compilation of geographic data have become vastly easier as technology has advanced. The authority of traditional mapping agencies can be attributed to their specifications, production mechanisms and programs for quality control. Very different mechanisms work to ensure the quality of data volunteered by amateurs. Academic geographers are concerned with the extraction of knowledge from geographic data using a combination of analytic tools and accumulated theory. The definition of NeoGeography implies a misunderstanding of this role of the professional, but English lacks a basis for a better term. "

The second article is by Marcus Foth et al., entitled "The Second Life of urban planning? Using NeoGeography tools for community engagement" The abstract of the paper reads:

"The majority of the world's citizens now live in cities. Although urban planning can thus be thought of as a field with significant ramifications on the human condition, many practitioners feel that it has reached the crossroads in thought leadership between traditional practice and a new, more participatory and open approach. Conventional ways to engage people in participatory planning exercises are limited in reach and scope. At the same time, socio-cultural trends and technology innovation offer opportunities to re-think the status quo in urban planning. NeoGeography introduces tools and services that allow non-geographers to use advanced geographical information systems. Similarly, is there a potential for the emergence of a neo-planning paradigm in which urban planning is carried out through active civic engagement aided by Web 2.0 and new media technologies thus redefining the role of practicing planners? This paper traces a number of evolving links between urban planning, NeoGeography and information and communication technology. Two significant trends - participation and visualisation - with direct implications for urban planning are discussed. Combining advanced participation and visualisation features, the popular virtual reality environment Second Life is then introduced as a test bed to explore a planning workshop and an integrated software event framework to assist narrative generation. We discuss an approach to harness and analyse narratives using virtual reality logging to make transparent how users understand and interpret proposed urban designs".

While the third paper is by Andrew Hudson-Smith, Maurizio Gibin; Richard Milton; Michael Batty and myself entitled "NeoGeography and Web 2.0: concepts, tools and applications" in which we explore the concepts and applications of Web 2.0 through the new media of NeoGeography and its impact on how we collect, interact and search for spatial information. We argue that location and space are becoming increasingly important in the information technology revolution. To this end, we present a series of software tools which we have designed to facilitate the non-expert user to develop online visualisations which are essentially map-based. These are based on Google Map Creator, which can produce any number of thematic maps which can be overlaid on Google Maps. We then introduce MapTube, a technology to generate an archive of shared maps, before introducing Google Earth Creator, Image Cutter and PhotoOverlay Creator. All these tools allow users to display and share information over the web. Finally, we present how Second Life has the potential to combine all aspects of Web 2.0, visualisation and NeoGeography in a single multi-user three-dimensional collaborative environment.

If you are interested in reading our paper, see below.

Hudson-Smith, A., Crooks, A.T., Gibin, M., Milton, R., and Batty, M. (2009), Neogeography and Web 2.0: Concepts, Tools and Applications, Journal of Location Based Services, 3(2) 118 - 145. (pdf)

AAG Agent Talk

Next week, I will be attending the AAG annual meeting in Las Vegas, which I am quite looking forward to. There seems to be a good selection of agent-based modelling talks along with others relating to GIS, urban planning etc. I will be presenting a paper with Andrew Hudson-Smith in the Modeling Geographic Complexity 2 session entitled "Agents in the City: Modeling and Visualizing Emergent Phenomena."

The abstract for the talk is:

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is increasingly being used as a tool for the spatial simulation of a wide variety of urban phenomena. As ABM moves into the spatial domain, we need new ways to visualize and communicate such models especially to those who we seek to influence and who we believe that such modeling will inform their activities. Coupled with the above challenge is how we represent agents in space. The use of ABM for geospatial simulation has traditionally been dominated by the 2D view of the world with the third dimension rarely ventured into. We would argue that this is due to the nature of the discipline where the focus is on theory rather than outreach and end user visualization; and that model builders are not taking advantage in improvements in computer technology. We will illustrate our attempts to visualize, share and communicate geospatial agent-based models specifically focusing on the third dimension with several examples utilizing 3D Studio Max and Second Life, a virtual online world. These examples range through the movement of cars and pedestrians in a cityscape to evacuation of pedestrians from buildings and residential segregation. These models demonstrate how through the interaction of individual agents complex phenomena emerges over time and in space. Furthermore they demonstrate how different theories and concepts can be incorporated into 3D environments. Additionally these models provide outputs to which non-expert users can easily relate to, thus allowing them to come under greater scrutiny than was possible in the past.

Agents in the City: building cityscapes

Hope to see you there.

AAG: The Rise of Neogeography

If any readers are attending the AAG next week in Las Vegas, Andrew Hudson-Smith of Digital Urban and myself have organised a session entitled "Concepts, Tools and Applications: The Rise of Neogeography." This session discusses the concepts, tools, applications and challenges arising when collecting, sharing and communicating data for the Neogeographer. The session explores a wide range of topics from Digital Earths, Volunteered Geographic Information and through to Virtual Worlds.

The session will take place on Friday, 27th of March, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in the North Hall N116, Las Vegas Convention Center

The program is as follows:

• Verity Vlodovic (University of Nottingham) "Making your mind up: Second Life bucks the trend as the fizz goes out of GIS"
• Alex Singleton - University College London, "Virtual Geodemographics"
• Andrew Hudson-Smith, CASA, "Neogeography: Crowdsouring and Mapping for Masses"
• Paul Longley University College London, "Geovisualisation of the 2011 UK Census. Bringing the decennial Census to the Google generation"
• Donald Cooke - Tele Atlas "Neogeography and Crowdsourcing: the View from a Walled Garden"

Hope to see you there!

The Research Potential of Virtual Worlds for ABM

There is a growing interest and use of virtual worlds for both entertainment and academic research. Worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft attract thousands of users and have both virtual and real world economies. Such virtual worlds have come a long way since the original text worlds such as Zork (known as MUDS), they have developed into 3D immersive environments, where users can chat using both voice and text.

Virtual worlds can be broadly broken down into two distinct categories, the first being game focused such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies (e.g. MMORGs). The second type being socially focused such as Second Life and Active Worlds (e.g. Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments).

Such virtual worlds have a great potential as sites for research in the social, behavioural, and economic sciences (see Bainbridge (2007), The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds). Universities are using them to promote themselves and exploring there use for teaching (e.g. Ohio University, see the movie below). While others are using virtual worlds for military applications, such as combat simulation (see movie below) or for studying the spread of epidemics (e.g. Kafai et al., 2007). For the geographer, the ability of people to create their own land and build their own houses leads to the creation of a digital geography and research can be carried out in topics such as of urban sprawl and the development of ghost towns were land and buildings have been abandoned by their original inhabitants (see Dodge and Kitchin, 2001 for more information).

The growth of cities within virtual worlds (Source Chapter 4 in the Atlas of Cyberspace)

Ohio University Second Life Campus.

Military applications within virtual worlds: large scale simulation of real world battle fields in Second Life -Iraq.

My own interest in virtual worlds arises because they offer a new arena to explore agent-based modeling for the social scientist, they can be viewed as a digital laboratory where real world landscapes (including buildings, roads, terrain) can be imported and explored thus moving away from an artificial laboratory on ones desktop into a more collaborative 3D environment comparable to a real-world laboratory accessible by others, who are able to visualize and discuss issues such as pedestrian egress from buildings in real time or taking one of the examples above, imagine using agents as the enemy within combat simulations.

Examples of agent-based models in virtual worlds include ant foraging (Tectonic 2007, see the movie below) or herding behavior of sheep (Merrick and Maher, 2007). While our own work at CASA explores three simple agent-based models as pedagogic demonstrators and as a “proof-of-concept” (see the movie below), including Conway’s Game of Life, Schelling’s (1978) Segregation model. These models were chosen as they highlight how classical automata styles of models which have inspired a generation of modelers can be created and explored in Second Life. The third model is a prototype pedestrian evacuation model which is more complex than the previous two and highlights how a variety of models that can be created in Second Life and potentially linked to real world places such as football or underground stations. This model relates to the genus of such models of which the social forces model developed and popularised by Helbing and Molnár (1995) is typical.

Ants in Second Life (Tectonic)

While virtual worlds offer much potential there are still problems such as the need of land (maybe OpenSim can help here?), deficiencies of the internet (e.g. bandwidth, package delivery etc.), server side delays, limited script sizes, etc. Nevertheless, there is the potential to build realistic cities using real world data, populate such cities with agents and see how the city might evolve over time.

There is also the potential to use evolutionary computation for such modeling. For example the movie below is by Karl Sims and shows results involving simulated Darwinian evolutions of virtual block creatures who are tested for their ability to perform a given task. The successful survive and make offspring for a new population. As this cycle of variation and selection continues, creatures with more and more successful behaviours can emerge (see Evolved Virtual Creatures,1994).

Darwinian evolutions of virtual block creatures (Evolved Virtual Creatures,1994).

For those interested, I found this site a useful resource for understanding virtual worlds entitled "Designing Virtual Worlds" by Kathryn Merrick.

Any thoughts, comments or links are more than welcome.

References that might be of interest:

Bainbridge, W.S. (2007) The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds. Science. 317(5837): 472-476.

Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2001) Atlas of Cyberspace, Addison-Wesley, London, UK.

Kafai, Y.B., Feldon, D., Fields, D., Giang, M. and Quintero, M. (2007) 'Life in the Times of Whypox: A Virtual Epidemic as a Community Event', in Steinfeld, C., Pentland, B., Ackermann, M. and Contractor, N. (eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Communities and Technology, Springer, New York, pp. 171-190.

Helbing, D. and Molnár, P. (1995) Social Force Model for Pedestrian Dynamics, Physical Review E, 51(5): 4282-4286.

Merrick, K. and Maher, M. (2007) Motivated Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Characters in Open-Ended Simulation Games. Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. Salzburg, Austria, pp. 127-134.

Schelling, T.C. (1978) Micromotives and Macrobehavior, WW Norton and Company, New York, NY.

Urban Informatics

Cities provide habitats for over half the worlds population and this is expected to increase to 70% by 2050 (United Nations, 2007). Coinciding with this growth is the increasing use of information communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones, wireless networks, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and web based services in our personal and professional activities. Such technology is changing our daily lives, not only in the way we communicate and interact with each other or share information but also how we view the city.

Urban informatics research has evolved to explore this change. It is concerned with the impact of technology, systems and infrastructure on people in urban the environment. It draws researchers together from a broad spectrum of academic communities. For example, the social (media studies, cultural studies etc.) the urban (urban studies, urban planning, etc.) and the technical (computer science, software design human-computer interaction etc.) and focuses attention on the opportunities and problems of such ubiquitous computing.

Marcus Foth in this edited book entitled “Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City” brings together in 29 chapters on recent research and development in the field of urban informatics from around the world. The book covers a plethora of topics including; community engagement, digital cities, digital identities, locative media, mobile and wireless applications, participatory planning, personal privacy, surveillance and sustainability.

The book is spilt into six parts, the first part introduces urban informatics and highlights it diverse application areas, including how people are adapting to such digital technologies and how they are impacting on urban dynamics. Section two explores who is participating and how ICTs are being used. Questions addressed include why people join online communities, its use for community planning, how such technologies can trigger or sustain civic participation or how ICTs can be used in public spaces for collective expression through large screen interactive projections.

The third section explores how one can engage urban communities through the use of ICTs and enable the communication of information and interaction between people in the city. For example, location based media accessed through GPS enabled devices. Section four discusses how ICTs can impact on location, navigation and space such as studying online social networks along-side their real world counterparts. How augmented maps can aid car navigation or how virtual cities can be used as a test-bed for examining the design of urban public spaces through the use of agent-based modelling. Section five discusses the development of wireless and the mobile cultures and how such technologies impact on our daily lives and activities both at home and in the city including the development of community wireless networks and how mobile phone use in urban cultures are reducing the need for premade plans.

The final section explores how ubiquitous and pervasive computing might develop and be used in the future, not only how it can advance urban functions but also its potential problems. For example, the increasing deployment of sensors and electronic devices within the transport network will allow for real time access to route planning thus avoiding congested areas. For the citizen of a city, the development of ICTs will encourage greater mobility for or be used to coordinate social action such as protests (see Justo, 2004). ICTs could also be used as a tool for collective problem solving but such technology will also challenge existing social structures and potentially distance people from more traditional face to face contact.

In summary, the book pulls together a diverse literature of ICTs, how they are used throughout the world. The chapters range from critical reflections on who is using the technology and how, to more technical applications. The chapters are mostly well written and referenced. Each chapter has a key terms section which is extremely useful in understanding each chapter. The chapters are mostly well written. My only criticisms of the book are the quality of the images (they are all black and white) while some of the text refers to them in colour and the cost at $265. Nevertheless, it does provide a useful resource for social and computer scientists.

In relation to my own research, I am interested in how such technologies can be utilised for the creation of agent-based models and thus providing a greater understanding of cities and their inhabitants.

References

Justo, P D, 2004, Protests Powered by Cellphone, The New York Times (September 9th).

United Nations, 2007, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision, Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, New York, NY.

Virtual cities for simulating movment in public spaces

While reading Urban Informatics (Foth, 2009) I came across an interesting article by Nakanishi et al. (2009) entitled “Virtual Cities for Simulating Smart Urban Public Spaces” which explores the use of virtual cities as a test bed for examining the design of urban public spaces. Specifically the authors combine an agent-based model with a virtual city model (in this case a platform at the Kyoto subway station) and used augmented reality to allow humans to interact with the agents (as if the agents and the humans where in the same crowd) through the use of positioning sensors around the station and then simulated an emergency.

Further information about the project, including the software Freewalk where humans and agents can socially interact with one another in a virtual city space can be found here.

References:

Foth, M. (2009), Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City, IGI Global, Hershey, PA.

Nakanishi, H., Ishida, T. and Koizumi, S. (2009), 'Virtual Cities for Simulating Smart Urban Public Spaces', in Foth, M. (ed.) Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City, IGI Global, Hershey, PA, pp. 257-269.

Agent-based models in Second Life

Just a quick update on our work with agent-based modelling (ABM) in Second Life. Below are a series of models that we have created in Second Life as proofs of concept and a test for how well Second Life copes with different types of agent-based models. We have created three models which we demonstrate below.

Our first model is chosen Conway’s Game of Life. The movie below details its inner workings:



The sound track is 'A Lonely Place without You' by New Inception.

Our second model is Schelling’s (1978) Segregation model. Where through mild tastes and preferences to locate with like groups segregation arises. The above models were chosen as they highlight how classical automata styles of models which have inspired a generation of modellers can be created and explored in Second Life.

Our third model is a prototype pedestrian evacuation model which is more complex than the previous two and highlights at the variety of models that can be potentially created in Second Life. We first started off with agents randomly walking around a room avoiding each other and walls as the movie below demonstrates.



Then we took the model further were agents exit the building once an alarm is sounded. Within this model we have designed three different room configurations, from a simple square room, a more complex room with internal walls and tables as obstacles, and a multi-floor building were the agents have to walk down the stairs towards the exit (all of which are shown below). From these three scenarios one can explore how room configurations, obstacles and density of surrounding pedestrians impact on pedestrian egress.

To further help understand we record the paths the pedestrians walk when exiting the building. The movie below shows the paths traveled of pedestrians exiting the simple room from the movie above.

All the models where written using the Linden Scripting Language (see Rymaszewski et al., 2007) rather than following a loose coupling approach. Further details (including code and model descriptions) and movies of simulations from the models can be found here. If you use Second Life, you can visit our agent street (The SLURL to go there directly is here). In agent street you can experiment with the models and there are also vending machines which allow you to download the model.



Any thoughts or comments or most welcome.

Concepts, Tools and Applications: The Rise of Neogeography

Just a quick note that Andrew Hudson-Smith from Digital Urban and myself are organizing a session at the 2009 AAG. entitled "Concepts, Tools and Applications: The Rise of Neogeography" Below is an extended abstract for the session:

The world of Geographic Information (GI) Science has changed. It has experienced expeditious growth over the last few years leading to fundamental changes to the field. Web 2.0, specifically The Cloud, GeoWeb and Crowd Sourcing are revolutionising the way in which we gather, present, share and analyse geographic data. This renaissance in the importance of geography in the Web 2.0 world is becoming known as 'Neogeography'.

Neogeography is geography for the general public using Web 2.0 techniques to create and overlay their own locational and related information on and into systems that mirror the real world. Location and space now represents a key part of the Web 2.0 revolution. Tagging not only the type of information but where such information is produced, who uses it and at what time, is fast becoming the killer application that roots information about interactivity generated across the web to systems that users can easily access and use in their own communication with others.

The aim of this session is twofold; first to bring together practitioners to discuss concepts and challenges that the field of Neogeography faces. Secondly, to provide an opportunity for researchers and developers to present recent tools and applications for collecting, sharing and communicating spatial data for the Neogeographer. We are actively seeking topics ranging across the entire spectrum of Neogeography, from Crowdsourcing, Digital Earths, Neogeography, Web Mashups, Volunteered Geographic Information, Virtual Worlds (e.g. Second Life) and associated Web 2.0 technologies.

Anyone who wishes to presents a paper must first register for the annual meeting, submit an abstract (no more than 250 words that describes the presentation's purpose, methods, and conclusions) by the October 16, 2008. Once this has been done, you need to send us your program identification number (PIN), which we will use to add you to the session.

Further details on the paper requirements and cost of registration for the AAG meeting can be found at http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2009/index.htm

We look forward to hearing from you

Andrew and Andy