Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations

A new book entitled "Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations (New Directions in Planning Theory)" by Gert De Roo, Jean Hillier and Joris Van Wezemael has recently been published. 

To quote from the book description:

Complexity, complex systems and complexity theories are becoming increasingly important within a variety disciplines. While these issues are less well known within the discipline of spatial planning, there has been a recent growing awareness and interest. As planners grapple with how to consider the vagaries of the real world when putting together proposals for future development, they question how complexity, complex systems and complexity theories might prove useful with regard to spatial planning and the physical environment. This book provides a readable overview, presenting and relating a range of understandings and characteristics of complexity and complex systems as they are relevant to planning. It recognizes multiple, relational approaches of dynamic complexity which enhance understandings of, and facilitate working with, contingencies of place, time and the various participants' behaviors. In doing so, it should contribute to a better understanding of processes with regard to our physical and social worlds.

We have a chapter in the book:

Crooks, A. T. (2012), The Use of Agent-Based Modelling for Studying the Social and Physical Environment of Cities, in De Roo, G, Hiller, J. and Van Wezemael, J. (eds.), Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, pp. 385-408. (pdf)

The agent-based modeling (ABM) paradigm provides a mechanism for understanding the effects of interactions of individuals and through such interactions emergent structures develop, both in the social and physical environment of cities. This chapter explores how through the use of ABM, and its linkage with complexity theory, allows one to create agent-based models for the studying cities from the bottom-up. Specifically the chapter focuses on segregation and land-use change. Furthermore, it will highlight the growing interest between geographical information systems (GIS) and ABM. This linkage is allowing modellers to create spatially explicit agent-based models, thus relating agents to actual geographical places. This approach allows one to explore the link between socio-economic geography of the city and its built physical form, and can support decision-making regarding interventions within the social and physical environment. 

Our chapter can be downloaded from here.

Procedural Modeling of Cities: NetLogo

Thanks to the Electric archaeology blog, I have just been introduced to the Procedural Modeling of Cities pages from the Center for Connected Learning (CCL) and Computer-Based Modeling. The site has a number of simple to complex examples of city growth which might be of interest to those teaching basic concepts of urban systems via a modeling paradigm. I know they will come in handy with the courses I teach @ GMU.

Examples include the concepts relating to positive feedback, path dependence, sprawl which are part of the NetLogo Urban Suite .

Diseases and Refugee camps

Dadaab refugee camp

One of the projects we are working on at GMU is exploring the the dynamics of refugee camps and the spread of diseases within such camps. 

Our initial focus is on the the Dadaab refugee camps which are located in Kenya, approximately 100 kilometers from the Somali border. The camps themselves are homes to roughly 500,000 people, with nearly 99% of the population coming from Somalia. Within the camps the mortality rate is ~ 0.44/10,000 per day with  diseases such as cholera and measles being among the causes of death.

Below are some movies of the prototype models that are currently being developed in Mason ABM toolkit and utilizing its GeoMason extension. The first movie shows a overview of the model dashboard, while the second show the spread of cholera within the area.

While the second movies (below) shows our first attempt at modeling one type of disease, that of cholera. In the simulation we pollute one bore hole with cholera and simulated how it might spread through the camp under specific conditions.

While this is still work in progress, we thought it worth sharing to see what feedback we may get. More details about the models will come soon.

Click here to see previous blog posts on diseases

Synthetic population data for the U.S

When creating agent-based models, one question is how many agents to include and where are they located.  Often we create synthetic individuals or households based on census data however, this can be a rather time consuming task. So a recent project from RTI has caught my attention. It is a  U.S. wide geospatially explicit synthetic population funded under a grant from NIH/NIGMS. 

The dataset provides a synthetic version of each household and person in the U.S. based on 2005-2009 ACS public use microdata and other sources.  LandScan 90-meter night-time population distributions were used to place each household across the landscape (a total of 112,383,675).

The basic website location for information and to download the data is at: https://www.epimodels.org/midas/pubsyntdata1.do 

Another short write up can be found here: http://www.openabm.org/forum/2852

Call for papers: Intelligent Agents in Urban Simulations and Smart Cities

Readers of the blog might be interested in the "Intelligent Agents in Urban Simulations and Smart Cities" workshop at the  ECAI-2012 Conference in Montpellier, France, August 27 or 28, 2012.

To quote from the call for papers:

In this workshop, we intend to address specific methodological and technological issues raised by the deployment of agents in rich environments such as virtual cities. We will welcome contributions tackling issues related to reactive agents, cognitive architectures, the capacity to scale up to handle thousands or hundreds of thousands of agents, the ability to simulate realistic group behaviors which might be judged non rational, etc., all in the context of urban agents. We will also welcome contributions showcasing original applications of agent and multi-agent technologies within urban simulations, be it for design, planning, education, training, or entertainment. 

Workshop Chairs: 

• Vincent Corruble (contact), Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), France 
• Fabio Carrera, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), USA 
• Stephen Guerin, Santa Fe Complex, USA 

Important Dates: 

• *6 June 2012*: Workshop paper submission deadline 
• 28 June 2012: Notifications to authors (subject to modification) 
• 13 July 2012: Submissions of camera-ready copies of selected papers 
• 27 or 28 August 2012: Workshop date 

Submission information: 

• 12 page max. submissions, Springer Verlag LNCS conference format Contact: Vincent Corruble (iaussc2012@easychair.org) workshop page: http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~corruble/IAUSSCws/Home.html