Geosimulation

In the light of my latest spatio-temporal visualization, I stumbled on Paul Torrens’ Geosimulation and his research on modeling time, space, and behavior. He will present his work on Wi-Fi mapping and geography at the upcoming O’Reilly Emerging Technologies (ETech) conference.

Paul describes geosimulation as:

Geosimulation is a catch-all phrase that can be used to represent a new wave of spatial simulation modeling that has come to the fore in very recent years. Besides traditional urban modeling and simulation, the intellectual roots of geosimulation derive from recent developments in computer science and geographic information science. The geosimulation approach draws together a diversity of theories and techniques, offering a unique perspective that traditional simulation has commonly lacked: a view of urban phenomena as a result of the collective dynamics of interacting objects, often represented at the scale of individual households, people, and units of real estate and at time-scales approaching “real time”.

The book Geosimulation. Automata-based modeling of urban phenomena covers the subject

The cloud of Wi-Fi signal that envelops central Salt Lake City, UT, generated by ~1700 access points. Courtesy of Paul Torrens.

Relation to my thesis: Besides the geospatial information visualization, this works relates to my exploration of agent-based modeling. Generating a “geosimulation” was one of the potential approach to validate models of people use of location information. It is also interesting to see that these types of spatio-temporal analysis (urban analytics) projects now reaching the audience of emerging technologies conferences. I strongly expect a “urban computing” (or whatever the catch-all word will be) track at LIFT 2009…