Bayesian Surprise in Indoor Environments

This paper proposes a novel method to identify unexpected structures in 2D floor plans using the concept of Bayesian Surprise. Taking into account that a person's expectation is an important aspect of the perception of space, we exploit the theory of Bayesian Surprise to robustly model expectation and thus surprise in the context of building structures. We use Isovist Analysis, which is a popular space syntax technique, to turn qualitative object attributes into quantitative environmental information. Since isovists are location-specific patterns of visibility, a sequence of isovists describes the spatial perception during a movement along multiple points in space. We then use Bayesian Surprise in a feature space consisting of these isovist readings. To demonstrate the suitability of our approach, we take "snapshots" of an agent's local environment to provide a short list of images that characterize a traversed trajectory through a 2D indoor environment. Those fingerprints represent surprising regions of a tour, characterize the traversed map and enable indoor LBS to focus more on important regions. Given this idea, we propose to use "surprise" as a new dimension of context in indoor location-based services (LBS). Agents of LBS, such as mobile robots or non-player characters in computer games, may use the context surprise to focus more on important regions of a map for a better use or understanding of the floor plan.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure

Alternative Routen in komplexen Umgebungen

Durch die immense Verbreitung kostengünstiger GPS-Empfänger, eingebaut in mobile Endgeräte, wurde in den letzten Jahren eine beeindruckend starke Nutzung von ortsbezogenen Anwendungen und Diensten erreicht. Ein beliebter Anwendungsfall ist die Navigation im Straßenverkehr zusammen mit der Präsentation von alternativen Routen, die dem Anwender eine Auswahl nach eigenen Präferenzen oder Erfahrungen ermöglicht. Die Wegefindung in komplexen Umgebungen unterscheidet sich von der in Straßennetzen hauptsächlich durch die Tatsache, dass sich ein Anwender nahezu in alle Richtungen bewegen kann. Beispiele hierfür sind Fußgänger in Flughäfen, Krankenhäusern, Messehallen oder Parks, mobile Roboter in Industrieanlagen oder Lagerhallen, sowie Nicht-Spieler-Charaktere in Computerspielen. Auch in diesen Szenarien ist das Vorhalten von alternativen Routen sinnvoll, um beispielsweise eine personalisierte Navigation zu ermöglichen, proaktiv Stau zu vermeiden oder taktische Bewegungen durchzuführen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden Ansätze und Verfahren vorgestellt, die das Thema der alternativen Routen in komplexen Umgebungen auf unterschiedlichen thematischen Ebenen behandelt. Darunter fallen die Berechnung alternativer Routen in Freiflächen, der Vergleich geospatialer Trajektorien, sowie die Identifizierung von Strukturen in Gebäuden. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden alternative Routen in komplexen Umgebungen mittels des topologischen Konzepts der Homotopie definiert, sodass zwei Routen als Alternativen zueinander angesehen werden, wenn sie Hindernisse unterschiedlich umlaufen. Hierzu wird eine effiziente Annäherung des Tests auf Homotopie vorgestellt und es werden zwei Algorithmen zum Berechnen solcher Routen implementiert. Anschließend findet eine strukturierte Darstellung bestehender Qualitätsmetriken für alternative Routen und Alternativgraphen in Straßennetzen statt, woraufhin die Übertragbarkeit dieser Ansätze auf komplexe Umgebungen diskutiert wird. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden Ansätze zum direkten Vergleich von Routen vorgestellt. Einerseits wird ein Scoring von Routen basierend auf der Annahme vorgeschlagen, dass Routen, die oft auf einem kürzesten Pfad liegen, auch oft durchlaufen werden. Andererseits wird ein System vorgestellt, das die Berechnung archetypischer Routen ermöglicht, indem es aus einer Menge von Routen die extremsten Exemplare extrahiert. Korrespondierend dazu wird die archetypische Distanz definiert, mit der Routen nicht nur geometrisch, sondern in einem mehrdimensionalen Merkmalsraum verglichen werden können. Schließlich wird im dritten Teil der Arbeit die quantitative Analyse der visuellen Wahrnehmung von Raum in den Kontext alternativer Routen integriert. Basierend auf der Idee sogenannter Isovisten wird die lokale Umgebung eines Anwenders angenähert, um somit alternative Routen zu berechnen, diese zu annotieren, und schließlich Strukturen in Gebäuden zu ermitteln. Zusammengefasst können die Beiträge der vorliegenden Arbeit in ihrer Gesamtheit als ein Werkzeugkasten verstanden werden, der von weiteren ortsbezogenen Anwendungen und Diensten verwendet werden kann.Due to the immense dissemination of low-cost GPS receivers built into mobile devices, an impressive use of location-based services has been achieved in recent years. A popular application is navigation in road networks in conjunction with the presentation of alternative routes that allows users a choice according to their own preferences or experiences. Route finding in complex environments differs from that in road networks mainly due to the fact that a user can move almost in all directions. Examples include pedestrians in airports, hospitals, exhibition halls, or parks, mobile robots in industrial facilities or warehouses, as well as non-player characters in computer games. In these scenarios the provision of alternative routes is useful, too, for example, to enable personalized navigation, to avoid jams proactively, or to carry out tactical movements. This thesis presents approaches which deal with the topic of alternative routes in complex environments at different thematic levels. This includes the calculation of alternative routes in open space, the comparison of geospatial trajectories, and the identification of structures in buildings. First, alternative routes in complex environments are defined using the topological concept of homotopy, so that two routes can be considered alternative if they pass obstacles differently. For this purpose an efficient approximation of the homotopy test is presented together with the implementation of two algorithms for the calculation of such routes. Subsequently a structured presentation of existing quality metrics for alternative routes and alternative graphs in road networks takes place, whereupon the transferability of these approaches into complex environments is discussed. Second, approaches for the direct comparison of routes are presented. On the one hand, a scoring of routes is suggested based on the assumption that routes, which often lie on a shortest paths, are also often traversed. On the other hand, a system is presented that allows the calculation of archetypal routes by extracting the most extreme instances from a set of routes. Corresponding to this, the archetypal distance is defined, with which routes can be compared not only geometrically but in a multi-dimensional feature space. Third, the quantitative analysis of the visual perception of space is incorporated into the context of alternative routes. Based on the idea of so-called Isovists, a user's local environment is approximated in order to calculate alternative routes, to annotate them, and to determine structures in buildings. In summary, the contributions of this thesis can be understood in their entirety as a toolbox which can be used by other location-based services

Spatial planning in a complex unpredictable world of change:Towards a proactive co-evolutionary type of planning within the Eurodelta

This book is a message to be humble before truth and reality and to relinquish the idea of controlling them. Planners do not have that much control. In retrospect, it was easy to conclude that in conditions of constant population growth and with an economy in fairly good shape, a linear model of urban development would be relatively easy to maintain: the origin of the idea of certainty and control. The population in the Western world is no longer growing though; on the contrary, many regions and cities are facing population decline. Added to that, the economy is proving quite uncertain as well. The two together impact on spatial development. This all means that we have to consider a fundamentally different perspective on the role of spatial planning and its position in urban and rural development. Instead of planning aiming to achieve controlled development, it might get more out of the various autonomous processes affecting urban and the rural areas. In addition to planners being experts or mediators, we might appreciate planners becoming managers of change, transition managers, adaptive responders and social entrepreneurs, supporting and guiding the various parties within urban and rural areas to find the positions which suit them best.This book acknowledges these new identities and positions, with the planner acting as a manager of change. This book tries to present arguments in support of a discipline of spatial planning which adopts a different stance to the world, a more adaptive stance, and with a keen eye for self-organization processes: an eye for non-linear kinds of planning in a world of change.<br/

Spatial planning in a complex unpredictable world of change:Towards a proactive co-evolutionary type of planning within the Eurodelta

This book is a message to be humble before truth and reality and to relinquish the idea of controlling them. Planners do not have that much control. In retrospect, it was easy to conclude that in conditions of constant population growth and with an economy in fairly good shape, a linear model of urban development would be relatively easy to maintain: the origin of the idea of certainty and control. The population in the Western world is no longer growing though; on the contrary, many regions and cities are facing population decline. Added to that, the economy is proving quite uncertain as well. The two together impact on spatial development. This all means that we have to consider a fundamentally different perspective on the role of spatial planning and its position in urban and rural development. Instead of planning aiming to achieve controlled development, it might get more out of the various autonomous processes affecting urban and the rural areas. In addition to planners being experts or mediators, we might appreciate planners becoming managers of change, transition managers, adaptive responders and social entrepreneurs, supporting and guiding the various parties within urban and rural areas to find the positions which suit them best.This book acknowledges these new identities and positions, with the planner acting as a manager of change. This book tries to present arguments in support of a discipline of spatial planning which adopts a different stance to the world, a more adaptive stance, and with a keen eye for self-organization processes: an eye for non-linear kinds of planning in a world of change.<br/

Cities Made of Boundaries: Mapping Social Life in Urban Form

Cities Made of Boundaries presents the theoretical foundation and concepts for a new social scientific urban morphological mapping method, Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. Its vantage is a plea to establish a frame of reference for radically comparative urban studies positioned between geography and archaeology. Based in multidisciplinary social and spatial theory, a critical realist understanding of the boundaries that compose built space is operationalised by a mapping practice utilising Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Benjamin N. Vis gives a precise account of how BLT Mapping can be applied to detailed historical, reconstructed, contemporary, and archaeological urban plans, exemplified by sixteenth to twenty-first century Winchester (UK) and Classic Maya Chunchucmil (Mexico). This account demonstrates how the functional and experiential difference between compact western and tropical dispersed cities can be explored. The methodological development of Cities Made of Boundaries will appeal to readers interested in the comparative social analysis of built environments, and those seeking to expand the evidence-base of design options to structure urban life and development

Cities Made of Boundaries

Cities Made of Boundaries presents the theoretical foundation and concepts for a new social scientific urban morphological mapping method, Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. Its vantage is a plea to establish a frame of reference for radically comparative urban studies positioned between geography and archaeology. Based in multidisciplinary social and spatial theory, a critical realist understanding of the boundaries that compose built space is operationalised by a mapping practice utilising Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Benjamin N. Vis gives a precise account of how BLT Mapping can be applied to detailed historical, reconstructed, contemporary, and archaeological urban plans, exemplified by sixteenth- to twenty-first century Winchester (UK) and Classic Maya Chunchucmil (Mexico). This account demonstrates how the functional and experiential difference between compact western and tropical dispersed cities can be explored. The methodological development of Cities Made of Boundaries will appeal to readers interested in the comparative social analysis of built environments, and those seeking to expand the evidence-base of design options to structure urban life and development

Understanding functional urban centrality: spatio-functional interaction and its socio-economic impact in central Shanghai

A deeper understanding of the structural characteristics of urban settings is a prerequisite to evaluating the effects of urban design and planning proposals more efficiently. This thesis aims at shaping a new, comprehensive approach to uncover the structure of cities through the investigation of a diachronic spatio-functional process and the socio-economic impacts of such a process. It proposes a spatial network-based framework, in which individual street segments, indexed by space syntax centrality measures, are utilised to develop a series of more complex urban function connectivity measures by an analysis of the spatial network and land-use patterns in tandem. The specific application of this approach in Central Shanghai is conducted with a threefold focus: firstly, to trace the evolutionary interdependence between the spatial grids and the land-use distribution; secondly, to explain the varying economic value of the spatio-functional relationship in the housing market; and thirdly, to capture the impact of the spatiol-functional interaction on the variation of co-presence. The outputs confirm that the centrality structures of the spatial network and the land-use distribution affect each other over time; however, certain degrees of inconsistency are observed, suggesting a distinct complementary relationship between these two systems, which is further validated by the improvement of the proposed model’s predictability of urban performance. The findings verify the hypothesis that urban spatio-functional synergy is a strong determinant of the formation of urban function regions, the delineation of housing submarkets, and the discrepancy of the spatial co-presence in the city. These results demonstrate that urban performance is directly affected by the way the spatial and functional structures of the city interact. Such findings support the proposition that understanding the complexities of the spatio-functional interaction in a morphological analysis can enhance the efficiency of urban design and planning interventions, which aim to improve socioeconomic conditions in cities