Dynamic, interactive and visual analysis of population distribution and mobility dynamics in an urban environment using the mobility explorer framework

© 2017 by the authors. This paper investigates the extent to which a mobile data source can be utilised to generate new information intelligence for decision-making in smart city planning processes. In this regard, the Mobility Explorer framework is introduced and applied to the City of Vienna (Austria) by using anonymised mobile phone data from a mobile phone service provider. This framework identifies five necessary elements that are needed to develop complex planning applications. As part of the investigation and experiments a new dynamic software tool, called Mobility Explorer, has been designed and developed based on the requirements of the planning department of the City of Vienna. As a result, the Mobility Explorer enables city stakeholders to interactively visualise the dynamic diurnal population distribution, mobility patterns and various other complex outputs for planning needs. Based on the experiences during the development phase, this paper discusses mobile data issues, presents the visual interface, performs various user-defined analyses, demonstrates the application's usefulness and critically reflects on the evaluation results of the citizens' motion exploration that reveal the great potential of mobile phone data in smart city planning but also depict its limitations. These experiences and lessons learned from the Mobility Explorer application development provide useful insights for other cities and planners who want to make informed decisions using mobile phone data in their city planning processes through dynamic visualisation of Call Data Record (CDR) data

Participatory governance in smart cities: The urbanAPI case study

Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. This paper presents some results from an EU FP7 RTD project urbanAPI, in which three ICT applications target different aspects of participatory urban governance. The 3D Scenario Creator allows urban planners to visualise urban development proposals in three dimensions, share them with different stakeholders and obtain their feedback. The Mobility Explorer allows urban land use and transport planners to visualise and analyse population distribution and mobility patterns in the city. Finally, the Urban Development Simulator simulates socio-economic activity in response to alternative planning scenarios. These urbanAPI ICT applications are implemented in four pilot cities; Vienna (Austria), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), Bologna (Italy) and Ruse (Bulgaria), and evaluated with respect to their various requirements. Results show that the applications are useful tools, enhancing spatial planning assessements, and enabling public participation, communicating proposed plans to different stakeholders and identifying key development issues which can provide crucial inputs in planning and decision making processes

ICT enabled participatory urban planning and policy development: The UrbanAPI project

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance. Design/methodology/approach: This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities - Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse - with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes. Findings: The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe. Originality/value: This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Recent Computer Technologies for an Innovative Cartographic Language: Espon Cartographic Language, Interim Report 1

Review of the state of the art in recent computer technologies and related cartographic software in support of ensuring an innovative cartographic language. The service provider is asked to review the state of the art in recent computer technologies and related cartographic software development in support of ensuring an innovative cartographic language. The service provider shall, based on this review, present options for modernising the ESPON Cartographic Language. The fulfilment of this task should not be limited only to more “traditional” cartography, but explore new options for adding new cartographic concepts, types of illustrations and computer animated presentations, that could support the presentation of the geography of policy orientations and forward-looking territorial evidence to the European territorial policy arena. The review shall lead to recommendations of cartographic technologies and techniques to consider in a modernised ESPON Cartographic Language. It shall be used as input for recommendations on new cartographic elements to consider in a modernised ESPON Cartographic Language under task 4 and 5. Three dimensions for an Innovative cartographic language will be explored in three directions:- Former Semiotic language combined with new technologies- Usability of the produced representations - Focus on added dimensions like interactivity, animation, multimedia, 3D, etc

ODT Flow: Extracting, Analyzing, and Sharing Multi-Source Multi-Scale Human Mobility

In response to the soaring needs of human mobility data, especially during disaster events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated big data challenges, we develop a scalable online platform for extracting, analyzing, and sharing multi-source multi-scale human mobility flows. Within the platform, an origin-destination-time (ODT) data model is proposed to work with scalable query engines to handle heterogenous mobility data in large volumes with extensive spatial coverage, which allows for efficient extraction, query, and aggregation of billion-level origin-destination (OD) flows in parallel at the server-side. An interactive spatial web portal, ODT Flow Explorer, is developed to allow users to explore multi-source mobility datasets with user-defined spatiotemporal scales. To promote reproducibility and replicability, we further develop ODT Flow REST APIs that provide researchers with the flexibility to access the data programmatically via workflows, codes, and programs. Demonstrations are provided to illustrate the potential of the APIs integrating with scientific workflows and with the Jupyter Notebook environment. We believe the platform coupled with the derived multi-scale mobility data can assist human mobility monitoring and analysis during disaster events such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and benefit both scientific communities and the general public in understanding human mobility dynamics

A Geovisual Analytic Approach to Understanding Geo-Social Relationships in the International Trade Network

The world has become a complex set of geo-social systems interconnected by networks, including transportation networks, telecommunications, and the internet. Understanding the interactions between spatial and social relationships within such geo-social systems is a challenge. This research aims to address this challenge through the framework of geovisual analytics. We present the GeoSocialApp which implements traditional network analysis methods in the context of explicitly spatial and social representations. We then apply it to an exploration of international trade networks in terms of the complex interactions between spatial and social relationships. This exploration using the GeoSocialApp helps us develop a two-part hypothesis: international trade network clusters with structural equivalence are strongly ‘balkanized’ (fragmented) according to the geography of trading partners, and the geographical distance weighted by population within each network cluster has a positive relationship with the development level of countries. In addition to demonstrating the potential of visual analytics to provide insight concerning complex geo-social relationships at a global scale, the research also addresses the challenge of validating insights derived through interactive geovisual analytics. We develop two indicators to quantify the observed patterns, and then use a Monte-Carlo approach to support the hypothesis developed above

Application-based COVID-19 micro-mobility solution for safe and smart navigation in pandemics

Short distance travel and commute being inevitable, safe route planning in pandemics for micro-mobility, i.e., cycling and walking, is extremely important for the safety of oneself and others. Hence, we propose an application-based solution using COVID-19 occurrence data and a multi-criteria route planning technique for cyclists and pedestrians. This study aims at objectively determining the routes based on various criteria on COVID-19 safety of a given route while keeping the user away from potential COVID-19 transmission spots. The vulnerable spots include places such as a hospital or medical zones, contained residential areas, and roads with a high connectivity and influx of people. The proposed algorithm returns a multi-criteria route modeled on COVID-19-modified parameters of micro-mobility and betweenness centrality considering COVID-19 avoidance as well as the shortest available safe route for user ease and shortened time of outside environment exposure. We verified our routing algorithm in a part of Delhi, India, by visualizing containment zones and medical establishments. The results with COVID-19 data analysis and route planning suggest a safer route in the context of the coronavirus outbreak as compared to normal navigation and on average route extension is within 8%–12%. Moreover, for further advancement and post-COVID-19 era, we discuss the need for adding open data policy and the spatial system architecture for data usage, as a part of a pandemic strategy. The study contributes new micro-mobility parameters adapted for COVID-19 and policy guidelines based on aggregated contact tracing data analysis maintaining privacy, security, and anonymity