Astrophysics datamining in the classroom: Exploring real data with new software tools and robotic telescopes

Within the efforts to bring frontline interactive astrophysics and astronomy to the classroom, the Hands on Universe (HOU) developed a set of exercises and platform using real data obtained by some of the most advanced ground and space observatories. The backbone of this endeavour is a new free software Web tool - Such a Lovely Software for Astronomy based on Image J (Salsa J). It is student-friendly and developed specifically for the HOU project and targets middle and high schools. It allows students to display, analyze, and explore professionally obtained astronomical images, while learning concepts on gravitational dynamics, kinematics, nuclear fusion, electromagnetism. The continuous evolving set of exercises and tutorials is being completed with real (professionally obtained) data to download and detailed tutorials. The flexibility of the Salsa J platform tool enables students and teachers to extend the exercises with their own observations. The software developed for the HOU program has been designed to be a multi-platform, multi-lingual experience for image manipulation and analysis in the classroom. Its design enables easy implementation of new facilities (extensions and plugins), minimal in-situ maintenance and flexibility for exercise plugin. Here, we describe some of the most advanced exercises about astrophysics in the classroom, addressing particular examples on gravitational dynamics, concepts currently introduced in most sciences curricula in middle and high schools.Comment: 10 pages, 12 images, submitted to the special theme issue Using Astronomy and Space Science Research in Physics Courses of the American Journal of Physic

Passenger Flows in Underground Railway Stations and Platforms, MTI Report 12-43

Urban rail systems are designed to carry large volumes of people into and out of major activity centers. As a result, the stations at these major activity centers are often crowded with boarding and alighting passengers, resulting in passenger inconvenience, delays, and at times danger. This study examines the planning and analysis of station passenger queuing and flows to offer rail transit station designers and transit system operators guidance on how to best accommodate and manage their rail passengers. The objectives of the study are to: 1) Understand the particular infrastructural, operational, behavioral, and spatial factors that affect and may constrain passenger queuing and flows in different types of rail transit stations; 2) Identify, compare, and evaluate practices for efficient, expedient, and safe passenger flows in different types of station environments and during typical (rush hour) and atypical (evacuations, station maintenance/ refurbishment) situations; and 3) Compile short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations for optimizing passenger flows in different station environments

Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in Historic Centres Through Visitor-Flow Monitoring

Historic centres are highly regarded destinations for watching and even participating in diverse and unique forms of cultural expression. Cultural tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is an important and consolidated tourism sector and its strong growth is expected to continue over the coming years. Tourism, the much dreamt of redeemer for historic centres, also represents one of the main threats to heritage conservation: visitors can dynamize an economy, yet the rapid growth of tourism often has negative effects on both built heritage and the lives of local inhabitants. Knowledge of occupancy levels and flows of visiting tourists is key to the efficient management of tourism; the new technologies—the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and geographic information systems (GIS)—when combined in interconnected networks represent a qualitative leap forward, compared to traditional methods of estimating locations and flows. A methodology is described in this paper for the management of tourism flows that is designed to promote sustainable tourism in historic centres through intelligent support mechanisms. As part of the Smart Heritage City (SHCITY) project, a collection system for visitors is developed. Following data collection via monitoring equipment, the analysis of a set of quantitative indicators yields information that can then be used to analyse visitor flows; enabling city managers to make management decisions when the tourism-carrying capacity is exceeded and gives way to overtourism.Funded by the Interreg Sudoe Programme of the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF

Cell Towers as Urban Sensors: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Mobile Phone Location Data

Understanding urban dynamics and human mobility patterns not only benefits a wide range of real-world applications (e.g., business site selection, public transit planning), but also helps address many urgent issues caused by the rapid urbanization processes (e.g., population explosion, congestion, pollution). In the past few years, given the pervasive usage of mobile devices, call detail records collected by mobile network operators has been widely used in urban dynamics and human mobility studies. However, the derived knowledge might be strongly biased due to the uneven distribution of people’s phone communication activities in space and time. This dissertation research applies different analytical methods to better understand human activity and urban environment, as well as their interactions, mainly based on a new type of data source: actively tracked mobile phone location data. In particular, this dissertation research achieves three main research objectives. First, this research develops visualization and analysis approaches to uncover hidden urban dynamics patterns from actively tracked mobile phone location data. Second, this research designs quantitative methods to evaluate the representativeness issue of call detail record data. Third, this research develops an appropriate approach to evaluate the performance of different types of tracking data in urban dynamics research. The major contributions of this dissertation research include: 1) uncovering the dynamics of stay/move activities and distance decay effects, and the changing human mobility patterns based on several mobility indicators derived from actively tracked mobile phone location data; 2) taking the first step to evaluate the representativeness and effectiveness of call detail record and revealing its bias in human mobility research; and 3) extracting and comparing urban-level population movement patterns derived from three different types of tracking data as well as their pros and cons in urban population movement analysis

Social Media for Cities, Counties and Communities

Social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) and other tools and services with user- generated content have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Some government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens, especially during crises and emergencies. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered. Potential exists to rapidly identify issues of concern for emergency management by detecting meaningful patterns or trends in the stream of messages and information flow. Similarly, monitoring these patterns and themes over time could provide officials with insights into the perceptions and mood of the community that cannot be collected through traditional methods (e.g., phone or mail surveys) due to their substantive costs, especially in light of reduced and shrinking budgets of governments at all levels. We conducted a pilot study in 2010 with government officials in Arlington, Virginia (and to a lesser extent representatives of groups from Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia) with a view to contributing to a general understanding of the use of social media by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses and the public. We were especially interested in gaining greater insight into social media use in crisis situations (whether severe or fairly routine crises, such as traffic or weather disruptions)