SIMPOP Models

I been meaning to highlight the SIMPOP models for a while, and after listening to Denise Pumain talk at the AAG annual meeting a few months ago entitled "Modelling spatial evolution: the example of urban systems." I thought it was about time.

The SIMPOP model is basically a multi-agent model of cities systems evolution. In the model, agents are geographical entities: towns and cities. "This choice refers to evolutionary urban theory : the hypothesis is that the dynamics of a town or a city depends on its ability to interact with other towns and cities, which in turn depends on its relative situation in the settlement system (in terms of hierarchical level, specialization, accessibility). The city is then seen as a coherent entity, whose potential of growth depends first on its external interactions (core rules of the model) and second on internal specificities (governance). The interurban interactions are the driving forces shaping the emergence and evolution of the system of cities. (SIMPOP website)."

The model has been developed since 1996 and has been used to model the growth of Europe from 1300 and the United States of America from 1650.

To find out more about the models visit the SIMPOP Project website which has an introduction to the generic model, application domains and a list of publications resulting from the work (however, some of the links are currently not working).

Tracking Pedestrians

Tracking peoples movement is an extremely time consuming task to do by hand however such analysis informs our ability to realistically model peoples moment in pedestrian models.

Researchers at the Computer Vision Laboratory, ETH have been working on multi-object tracking which combines object detection and space-time trajectory estimation. The ability to automate such a process obviously has benefits for understanding pedestrian movement in cities

To see a video of the work click here.

References

B. Leibe, K. Schindler, N. Cornelis, L. Van Gool. (2008). Coupled Object Detection and Tracking from Static Cameras and Moving Vehicles. In IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 30, No. 10, pp. 1683-1698.

A. Ess, B. Leibe, K. Schindler, L. Van Gool. (2008). A Mobile Vision System for Robust Multi-Person Tracking. In IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'08), Anchorage, USA, June 2008.

Digital Urban pedestrian tracking tags

The Urban Experience

Reading up on American cities, I just come across a very interesting book entitled "The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy" by Barry Bluestone, Mary Huff Stevenson and Russell Williams.

The books description: The Urban Experience provides a study of metropolitan areas by combining economic principles, social insight, and political realities with an appreciation of public policy to understand how U.S. cities and suburbs function in the 21st century (click here to read more).

New Paper: Mapping for Masses

Andrew Hudson-Smith, Michael Batty, Richard Milton and myself from CASA have just found out that our paper "Mapping for the Masses Accessing Web 2.0 Through Crowdsourcing" in Social Science Computer Review which comes out later this year can be downloaded from OnlineFirst.

For those interested the abstract is:

"The authors describe how we are harnessing the power of web 2.0 technologies to create new approaches to collecting, mapping, and sharing geocoded data. The authors begin with GMapCreator that lets users fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base. The authors then describe MapTube that enables users to archive maps and demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information, to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the bottom-up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing, and traditional broadcasting. The authors conclude by arguing that such tools are helping to define a neogeography that is essentially ‘‘mapping for the masses,’’ while noting that there are many issues of quality, accuracy, copyright, and trust that will influence the impact of these tools on map-based communication."

Keywords: network economies; web-based services; map mashups; crowdsourcing; crowdcasting; online GIS. 

Full Reference:

Hudson-Smith, A., Batty, M., Crooks, A.T., and Milton R. (2009), Mapping Tools for the Masses: Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing, Social Science Computer Review, 27 (4): 524-538. (pdf)

Pedestrian modelling of Oxford Circus redesign

Oxford Circus in London is a busy intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street with more than 200m visitors a year (BBC). Work is to begin on a £5m project to pedestrianise part of Oxford Circus. Based on crossings in Tokyo, the new design will stop all traffic in all directions, and allow people to cross diagonally as well as straight ahead. Street clutter and barriers at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street will also be removed.

Graphic showing the Oxford Circus redesign

Why blog about this? The movie below created by Designhive shows how Atkins' two-dimensional traffic and pedestrian models can be coupled with 3D Studio Max in such a way it is difficult to distinguish the model from a real piece of video footage. Combining the models in the simulation in this way makes the finished product particularly compelling. Furthermore it has the benefit of being based on the technical models developed to test the proposals prior to their implementation (such as the removal of street clutter).

The pedestrian model is a particle-based system controlling 5000 agents to match up the data produced by Atkins Intelligent Space. When the final simulation was rendered, the 'particles' were replaced with animated people, programmed to walk while the points were moving and idle when the points stopped for traffic lights.

Thanks to Duncan Smith for flagging this. Further information:

• Intelligent Space
• designhive
• BBC News Item: Oxford Circus crossing redesigned
• Building Design website news item