Hi Alan, Alasdair,
The social sciences are going through a sea of change due to the
availability of hard data -GPS data included.
What this means is we need a new generation of maths-highly-educated
scientists to approach problems in cities. This generation is here and we
are working on the problems -so I wouldn't really dismiss it...
But don't just take my word for it, see Philip Ball's recent editorial in
Nature on work done by Barabasi and colleagues studying patterns of human
mobility using mobile phone data:
http://philipball.blogspot.com/2008/06/youre-not-molecule-but-sometimes-youre.html
All the best,
Rui
__________________________________________________
Recent papers:
Scaling and allometry in the building geometries of Greater London
Michael Batty, Rui Carvalho, Andy Hudson-Smith, Richard Milton, Duncan
Smith, Philip Steadman
[to appear in European Physical Journal B (EPJ B))
Dr. Rui Carvalho
School of Mathematical Sciences
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4N
On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:30:57 +0100, Alan Penn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Yes, completely. If you want some fun on holiday sometime set the
>option on your sat nav to 'shortest distance' and then see where it
>takes you. You get to go down all the narrow wiggly lanes through
>places you would normally never discover. This gives a rather
>beautiful illustration of the fallacy that people might navigate
>according to distance minimisation (pre-GPS of course :-)
>
>**A word of warning though - don't try it in those Italian hill towns
>where the roads get narrower and narrower until nothing larger than a
>cinquecento will fit through...
>
>Alan
>
>
>
>On 14 Jun 2008, at 12:10, Alasdair Turner wrote:
>
>> There is a problem with GPS tracks from cars however, in that you need
>> to know that you are not simply discovering the GPS manufacturer's
>> algorithm for routing.
>>
>> Alasdair
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 5:21 PM, Rui Carvalho <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>> Hi Bin, Martin,
>>>
>>> Yes, the use of GPS data is definitely a step in the right direction.
>>>
>>> Any chance someone might be able to summarize the findings with these
>>> datasets in a couple of paragraphs -sorry, time is limited these
>>> days :)
>>>
>>> Rui
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:07:37 +0200, Martin Tomko <[log in to unmask]
>>> >
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Bin, Rui,
>>>> very interesting paper indeed. As for what the use may be for
>>>> ranking
>>>> streets according to some other criteria then administrative/
>>>> functional
>>>> rankings designed by road network planners, we have been looking
>>>> at how a
>>>> similar process may underline people's inference of familiarity
>>>> with a
>>>> street. We argued that developping experiential rankings may support
>>>> generation of better route directions. See Tomko, Claramunt, Winter
>>>> (2008): Experiential hierarchies of streets , Computers,
>>>> Environment and
>>>> Urban Systems 32(1): 41-52
>>>> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0198971507000221
>>>>
>>>> and some consecutive papers. I am reading Bin's paper with great
>>>> interest,
>>>> as he was able to look at actual correlation with traffic data. In
>>>> our
>>>> approach, we had to use named streets as basic network elements,
>>>> as common
>>>> labels are relied upon in route directions. I will see if the two
>>>> approaches could be brought together somehow.
>>>>
>>>> cheers
>>>> Martin
>>>> =
>>>> =
>>>> =
>>>> =
>>>> =
>>>> ====================================================================
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Course Director
>> MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation
>> UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
>>
>> http://www.vr.ucl.ac.uk/people/alasdair
>>
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