Where 2.0 Conference Talks

The presentations from the Where 2.0 conference always blow me away. I just been looking at some, and three in particular caught my attention. The first was Jack Dangermond's "Realizing spatial intelligence on the GeoWeb" The idea behind the talk was that geographic knowledge created in GIS environments is increasingly being made available to Web 2.0 users.

Other interesting talks with regard to building city models and understanding cities was Ludvig Emgård "World's Most Realistic 3D City Models?" and John Geraci's "DIY City: An Operating System for Cities."

World's Most Realistic 3D City Models?

DIY City: An Operating System for Cities

Useful Link:
GIS and Science blog

SLEUTH model used in Finland

Sanna Iltanen from the EDGE Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Research (Tampere University of Technology) and currently a visitor at our lab gave a talk the other day entitled "Experiments with SLEUTH-model" where she discussed the SLEUTH model, the input data needed to initialize the model, its calibration and explored some simmulation results from different land-use policies in the Helsinki and Turku city regions of Finland. More information about her talk can be found here.

A previous post on SLEUTH can be found here

Game of Life on a globe

Always interested in ways to visualize models, I just seen Richard Milton's version of John Conway's Game of Life on a globe model. Richard has has written a short tutorial on how it was done (click here). The the Java applet allows you to explore how different configurations of automata evolve around the globe.

To view the applet click here. Another similar model (shown below) was created by Ventrella to celebrate Earth Day. Click here to see more details about the model.

Modelling Housing Markets

After reading about land markets I come across this simple NetLogo model by Nigel Gilbert et al. The model explores how some of the main features of the English housing market emerges from the interactions between buyers, realtors and sellers (click here to run the model).

There is a paper that accompanies the model (click here) which discusses the potential advantages of agent-based modeling over more traditional 'top down' techniques for exploring the housing market. While the model is not based on any particular geographical location or attempts to represent either the characteristics of individual housing units, nor spatial attributes such as proximity to services. It is still a very interesting paper investigating the complicated interactions that create a housing market in a simple model.

Reference:
Gilbert, N, Hawksworth, J C, and Sweeney, P (2008) 'An Agent-based Model of the UK Housing Market'. University of Surrey http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/housingmarket/ukhm.html or click here to read the paper.

Micropolis: Open source SimCity

SimCity is a city-building simulation game whose objective as the name suggests is to build and design a city. The original SimCity has now been released under the name Micropolis through a GPL license, therefore allowing people to experiment with the original model, maybe even adding more complex behaviors and rules?

Adams (1998) highlights how SimCity provides a valuable teaching tool for urban geography, planners, designers and policy makers. The GUI of the game facilitate the learning about the complex, dynamic, and interrelated nature of urban problems.

References:

• Adams, P.C. (1998), 'Teaching and Learning with SimCity 2000', Journal of Geography 97(2): 45-55.
• Wikipedia entry on SimCity