Modelling a 3D city poses an interesting challenge. To create a virtual city, a road pattern has ... more Modelling a 3D city poses an interesting challenge. To create a virtual city, a road pattern has to be designed and a large number of buildings need to be generated. Every urban place has a road network, often a superimposed pattern plan that serves a population density and buildings which follow statutory rules. This patterned behaviour of the city is why it is possible to develop rules or “computational instructions,” to generate city models. In this article, we are going to discuss how to use procedural modelling and CityEngine, a rule-based application commonly used in the movie industry and gaming to produce vast realistic cityscapes, for regional and urban planning via an urban analytics approach. Unlike cinema’s imaginary worlds, cities have real-life population dependencies that need to be modelled for the development of planning scenarios. The goal is then to use the generative properties of the procedural modelling approach, along with population prediction models, to crea...
This is the first stable release of the data and methodology for CityEngine-Twitter, a real-time ... more This is the first stable release of the data and methodology for CityEngine-Twitter, a real-time urban data visualisation project which uses Twitter data to grow buildings within a CityEngine simulation.
Fragmentation of the UK public library sector manifests itself, amongst other things, in poor ava... more Fragmentation of the UK public library sector manifests itself, amongst other things, in poor availability, understanding, and use of the sector’s data. This leads to a lack of knowledge of the existing services and interdependencies within the system, its relative strengths and weaknesses in the provision, and its value to different communities, both at the regional and national levels. The project ‘Data-driven Libraries’, currently undertaken by the Alan Turing Institute and the British Library, indicates that usage of techniques stemming from mathematical modelling could be beneficial to better understand its current provision, as well as to drive future planning and development. This includes showing how different communities and socio-economic groups use libraries, the level of demand for a range of services on offer, and their impact. As a result, mathematical modelling could provide a quantitative base upon which the future planning and development of libraries can be establi...
In this paper we describe the development of a number of projects which, through the use of new s... more In this paper we describe the development of a number of projects which, through the use of new systems and technologies, aim to change the way we perceive and study the urban environment. CityDashboard, Procedural Cities and PigeonSim are some of the projects presented that will attempt to provide an insight into the process of creating, modelling and communicating aspects of a “smart” city. In this framework, we are leading to the development of a comprehensive system which will aid in the analysis and understanding of the urban environment through urban visualizations, open data platforms, complexity theories and interactive systems.
The term Procedural Cities derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques w... more The term Procedural Cities derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques which allows the generation of digital 3D geometries using a set of rules. Currently, planning policies are formed in text and plans. There is a disconnect between the planning policy document, urban analytics and the design proposal model that has to comply with it. At the same time, spatial data analysis is requiring increasingly advanced skills and there is a need for an evaluation tool for the “nonexperts” of the field. The main research question of this thesis is whether a range of visual and urban modelling techniques could be used to help inform and evaluate urban planning scenarios in a comprehensive way. The term Procedural Cities in this thesis, derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques which allows the generation of digital 3D geometries using a set of rules. This thesis aims to explore the possibilities of this characteristic by developing a framewor...
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management, 2019
In this paper, we demonstrate that developments in computer hardware to support the increasingly ... more In this paper, we demonstrate that developments in computer hardware to support the increasingly complex artificial intelligence workflows for Deep Learning networks can be adapted for urban modelling and visualisation. The hypothesis here is that by leveraging the current practice of AI as a Service (AIaaS), then this enables Urban Modelling as a Service (UMaaS) to be developed. The starting point for this paper is a 3D visualisation of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, developed using a web-based spatial interaction modelling system which calculates population metrics on the fly, capable of showing the results of interventions by urban planners in real-time. We take the web application that powers the interactive visualisation and use Google's TensorFlow AI library to accelerate the matrix operations required to run the spatial interaction model, making the web application fast enough to be used interactively.
Living in the Internet of Things: Cybersecurity of the IoT - 2018, 2018
Every day we find ourselves moving through a blend of material spaces and immaterial networks. Th... more Every day we find ourselves moving through a blend of material spaces and immaterial networks. This invisible layer created from the millions of the data streams and network connections that take place around us tends to get denser with the recent development and deployment of the IoT devices in the urban space. In our work we aim to explore how the available technology of Mixed Reality spectrum can be applied to provide us an immerse view of the information that exist within the invisible layer of the "cyberspace" [1]. To this extend, we propose "VR Binoculars", a digital visualization framework that operates in real time.The available Virtual (VR), Augmented (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) technology is used as a medium to unveil the information that exist in our surrounding space. Specifically, we situate the user within an environment where the digital data visualizations and the physical space are matched together, providing to the user the ability to interact, orient themselves and navigate naturally.For us the proposed framework it is able to promote a better understanding of the IoT ecosystem, it can justify the use of sensors in the public space, and it can raise awareness about privacy and data sharing. Using different urban environments as test cases (indoor, outdoor) we present our methodology and our first results.
The use of rule-based modelling and historical data for scenarios to improve resilience within th... more The use of rule-based modelling and historical data for scenarios to improve resilience within the building stock Digital documentation has become integral to the preservation, analysis and communication of historical sites. New platforms are now being developed that involve complex 3D models and allow the analysis of spatial data. These include procedural modelling, a technique that enables the rapid development of 'dynamic' 3D environments, and generation of simulations for entire cities, resulting in low cost, high resolution 3D city models. Though procedural modelling has been used in the context of archaeology to 'recreate' cities at specific historic time points, the use of historical data in the development of rule-based procedural models for current cities has been little explored. Here, we test the extent to which construction age data, historical building regulations and architectural knowledge can be used in the generation of procedural rules, and the level of detail and potential impact that these models may have. Rather than creating an accurate representation of the city, we instead seek to simulate the way in which urban areas are likely to behave under certain conditions, in order to test what-if? planning scenarios. This allows us to explore more flexible ways of digitally 'creating' cities, past and present, and to gain insights into underlying 'rules' that govern their physical form.
Handbook of Research on Social, Economic, and Environmental Sustainability in the Development of Smart Cities
This chapter introduces a range of analytics being used to understand the smart city, which depen... more This chapter introduces a range of analytics being used to understand the smart city, which depends on data that can primarily be understood using new kinds of scientific visualisation. We focus on short term routine functions that take place in cities which are being rapidly automated through various kinds of sensors, embedded into the physical fabric of the city itself or being accessed from mobile devices. We first outline a concept of the smart city, arguing that there is a major distinction between the ways in which technologies are being used to look at the short and long terms structure of cities, and we then focus on the shorter term, first examining the immediate visualisation of data through dashboards, then examining data infrastructures such as map portals, and finally introducing new ways of visualising social media which enable us to elicit the power of the crowd in providing and supplying data. We conclude with a brief focus on how new urban analytics is emerging to m...
In this chapter, we begin by surveying the development of computer graphics as it has influenced ... more In this chapter, we begin by surveying the development of computer graphics as it has influenced the development of the spatial representation of social and economic data, charting the history of computer cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) which have broadened into a wide array of forms for scientific visualisation. With the advent of the World Wide Web and the widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to most kinds of computer device, visualisation has become central to most sciences and to the dissemination of many kinds of data and information. We divide our treatment of this domain according to three themes. First we examine how the 2-‐dimensional map has become key to many kinds of spatial representation, showing how this software has moved from the desktop to the web as well as how 2-‐d has moved to 3-‐d in terms of the visualisation of maps. Second, we explore how social data is being augmented by space-‐time series generated in real time and show how such real-‐time streaming of data presents problems and opportunities in which visualisation is key. We illustrate these new data for basic feeds from cities but then move to examine data from transit systems, social media, and data that is pulled from the crowd – crowdsourcing. Finally we note the development of visual analytics showing how 2d and 3d spatial representations are essential to interpreting the outputs and the workings of more complex models and simulations. We conclude with the notion that much of what we develop in this chapter for the space-time domain is generic to the future representation of all kinds of social data.
Modelling a 3D city poses an interesting challenge. To create a virtual city, a road pattern has ... more Modelling a 3D city poses an interesting challenge. To create a virtual city, a road pattern has to be designed and a large number of buildings need to be generated. Every urban place has a road network, often a superimposed pattern plan that serves a population density and buildings which follow statutory rules. This patterned behaviour of the city is why it is possible to develop rules or “computational instructions,” to generate city models. In this article, we are going to discuss how to use procedural modelling and CityEngine, a rule-based application commonly used in the movie industry and gaming to produce vast realistic cityscapes, for regional and urban planning via an urban analytics approach. Unlike cinema’s imaginary worlds, cities have real-life population dependencies that need to be modelled for the development of planning scenarios. The goal is then to use the generative properties of the procedural modelling approach, along with population prediction models, to crea...
This is the first stable release of the data and methodology for CityEngine-Twitter, a real-time ... more This is the first stable release of the data and methodology for CityEngine-Twitter, a real-time urban data visualisation project which uses Twitter data to grow buildings within a CityEngine simulation.
Fragmentation of the UK public library sector manifests itself, amongst other things, in poor ava... more Fragmentation of the UK public library sector manifests itself, amongst other things, in poor availability, understanding, and use of the sector’s data. This leads to a lack of knowledge of the existing services and interdependencies within the system, its relative strengths and weaknesses in the provision, and its value to different communities, both at the regional and national levels. The project ‘Data-driven Libraries’, currently undertaken by the Alan Turing Institute and the British Library, indicates that usage of techniques stemming from mathematical modelling could be beneficial to better understand its current provision, as well as to drive future planning and development. This includes showing how different communities and socio-economic groups use libraries, the level of demand for a range of services on offer, and their impact. As a result, mathematical modelling could provide a quantitative base upon which the future planning and development of libraries can be establi...
In this paper we describe the development of a number of projects which, through the use of new s... more In this paper we describe the development of a number of projects which, through the use of new systems and technologies, aim to change the way we perceive and study the urban environment. CityDashboard, Procedural Cities and PigeonSim are some of the projects presented that will attempt to provide an insight into the process of creating, modelling and communicating aspects of a “smart” city. In this framework, we are leading to the development of a comprehensive system which will aid in the analysis and understanding of the urban environment through urban visualizations, open data platforms, complexity theories and interactive systems.
The term Procedural Cities derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques w... more The term Procedural Cities derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques which allows the generation of digital 3D geometries using a set of rules. Currently, planning policies are formed in text and plans. There is a disconnect between the planning policy document, urban analytics and the design proposal model that has to comply with it. At the same time, spatial data analysis is requiring increasingly advanced skills and there is a need for an evaluation tool for the “nonexperts” of the field. The main research question of this thesis is whether a range of visual and urban modelling techniques could be used to help inform and evaluate urban planning scenarios in a comprehensive way. The term Procedural Cities in this thesis, derives from the concept of procedural modeling; a set of techniques which allows the generation of digital 3D geometries using a set of rules. This thesis aims to explore the possibilities of this characteristic by developing a framewor...
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management, 2019
In this paper, we demonstrate that developments in computer hardware to support the increasingly ... more In this paper, we demonstrate that developments in computer hardware to support the increasingly complex artificial intelligence workflows for Deep Learning networks can be adapted for urban modelling and visualisation. The hypothesis here is that by leveraging the current practice of AI as a Service (AIaaS), then this enables Urban Modelling as a Service (UMaaS) to be developed. The starting point for this paper is a 3D visualisation of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, developed using a web-based spatial interaction modelling system which calculates population metrics on the fly, capable of showing the results of interventions by urban planners in real-time. We take the web application that powers the interactive visualisation and use Google's TensorFlow AI library to accelerate the matrix operations required to run the spatial interaction model, making the web application fast enough to be used interactively.
Living in the Internet of Things: Cybersecurity of the IoT - 2018, 2018
Every day we find ourselves moving through a blend of material spaces and immaterial networks. Th... more Every day we find ourselves moving through a blend of material spaces and immaterial networks. This invisible layer created from the millions of the data streams and network connections that take place around us tends to get denser with the recent development and deployment of the IoT devices in the urban space. In our work we aim to explore how the available technology of Mixed Reality spectrum can be applied to provide us an immerse view of the information that exist within the invisible layer of the "cyberspace" [1]. To this extend, we propose "VR Binoculars", a digital visualization framework that operates in real time.The available Virtual (VR), Augmented (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) technology is used as a medium to unveil the information that exist in our surrounding space. Specifically, we situate the user within an environment where the digital data visualizations and the physical space are matched together, providing to the user the ability to interact, orient themselves and navigate naturally.For us the proposed framework it is able to promote a better understanding of the IoT ecosystem, it can justify the use of sensors in the public space, and it can raise awareness about privacy and data sharing. Using different urban environments as test cases (indoor, outdoor) we present our methodology and our first results.
The use of rule-based modelling and historical data for scenarios to improve resilience within th... more The use of rule-based modelling and historical data for scenarios to improve resilience within the building stock Digital documentation has become integral to the preservation, analysis and communication of historical sites. New platforms are now being developed that involve complex 3D models and allow the analysis of spatial data. These include procedural modelling, a technique that enables the rapid development of 'dynamic' 3D environments, and generation of simulations for entire cities, resulting in low cost, high resolution 3D city models. Though procedural modelling has been used in the context of archaeology to 'recreate' cities at specific historic time points, the use of historical data in the development of rule-based procedural models for current cities has been little explored. Here, we test the extent to which construction age data, historical building regulations and architectural knowledge can be used in the generation of procedural rules, and the level of detail and potential impact that these models may have. Rather than creating an accurate representation of the city, we instead seek to simulate the way in which urban areas are likely to behave under certain conditions, in order to test what-if? planning scenarios. This allows us to explore more flexible ways of digitally 'creating' cities, past and present, and to gain insights into underlying 'rules' that govern their physical form.
Handbook of Research on Social, Economic, and Environmental Sustainability in the Development of Smart Cities
This chapter introduces a range of analytics being used to understand the smart city, which depen... more This chapter introduces a range of analytics being used to understand the smart city, which depends on data that can primarily be understood using new kinds of scientific visualisation. We focus on short term routine functions that take place in cities which are being rapidly automated through various kinds of sensors, embedded into the physical fabric of the city itself or being accessed from mobile devices. We first outline a concept of the smart city, arguing that there is a major distinction between the ways in which technologies are being used to look at the short and long terms structure of cities, and we then focus on the shorter term, first examining the immediate visualisation of data through dashboards, then examining data infrastructures such as map portals, and finally introducing new ways of visualising social media which enable us to elicit the power of the crowd in providing and supplying data. We conclude with a brief focus on how new urban analytics is emerging to m...
In this chapter, we begin by surveying the development of computer graphics as it has influenced ... more In this chapter, we begin by surveying the development of computer graphics as it has influenced the development of the spatial representation of social and economic data, charting the history of computer cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) which have broadened into a wide array of forms for scientific visualisation. With the advent of the World Wide Web and the widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to most kinds of computer device, visualisation has become central to most sciences and to the dissemination of many kinds of data and information. We divide our treatment of this domain according to three themes. First we examine how the 2-‐dimensional map has become key to many kinds of spatial representation, showing how this software has moved from the desktop to the web as well as how 2-‐d has moved to 3-‐d in terms of the visualisation of maps. Second, we explore how social data is being augmented by space-‐time series generated in real time and show how such real-‐time streaming of data presents problems and opportunities in which visualisation is key. We illustrate these new data for basic feeds from cities but then move to examine data from transit systems, social media, and data that is pulled from the crowd – crowdsourcing. Finally we note the development of visual analytics showing how 2d and 3d spatial representations are essential to interpreting the outputs and the workings of more complex models and simulations. We conclude with the notion that much of what we develop in this chapter for the space-time domain is generic to the future representation of all kinds of social data.
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Papers by Flora Roumpani