Andrew Hudson-Smith' Digital Urban

QRator, the Museum focused ‘Internet of Things/Smart Places’ project developed jointly with us here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Digital Humanities and UCL Museums, with funding from the UCL Public Engagement Unit , has won The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation.  Known as ‘The Oscars’ of the museums world we are honoured to of won, to have a museum brave enough to trust and openly engage with the public via innovative software and devices (iPads) while taking on ideas based around the Internet of Things made all the difference.
QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content. It is supported by the UCL Public Engagement Unit under the Beacons for Public Engagement programme – funded by the UK funding councils, Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.
The project is powered by Tales of Things technology developed at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, which has created a method for cataloguing physical objects online which could make museums and galleries a more interactive experience. QRATOR takes the technology a step further bringing the opportunity to move the discussion of objects direct to the museum label and onto a digital collaborative interpretation label, users’ mobile phones, and online allowing the creation of a sustainable, world-leading model for two-way public interaction in museum spaces.
Notable thanks go to Steven Gray of CASA, Claire Ross of Digital Humanities, Jack Ashby and Mark Carnall of the Grant Museum of Zoology. With the support of Prof. Claire Warwick and Dr Melissa Terras of Digital Humanities and Sally MacDonald, Director of UCL Museums  it goes to show what can be achieved via cross disciplinary research and a drive to just go and do it. Thanks also goes to Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads and Emma-Louise Nichols and Simon Jackson from the Grant Museum who moderate the content day in and day out.



Finally thanks to the UCL side of the TalesofThings team -  Dr Ralph Barthel and Dr Martin De Jode for working behind the scenes and putting the technology in place. TalesofThings is funded by the Digital Economy Research Councils UK.
Other museums shortlisted in the category were Glasgow Life: Riverside Museum Pin Point Visualisation Ltd: Exhibita Pro The Public Catalogue Foundsation: Your Painting Victoria and Albert Museum: Five Truths
You can find our more from http://www.qrator.org see also the post from UCL Museums on the award and a write up over at DigitalNerdosaurous.

Over the last few weeks we have been looking at ESRI's CityEngine and how it can be used to create rapid urban scenes. As we noted it moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Of course the heart of the CityEngine is the ability to import real world data but to get to grips with the interface it is sometimes easier to look at creating urban scenes from simple procedural rules.


As part of the MRes in Advanced in Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA we have been looking at various techniques to visualise urban data. One such technique is the creation of a 3D exhibition space, allowing agent based models and urban data to be visualised within an architectural space. 




Music by Portoponte

The movie above combines the use of CityEngine in Lumion with SketchUp and 3DMax to insert an exhibition space into a city while burning the CASA logo into the street network. CityEngine is a notable step forward for ESRI, both in terms of visualisation and analysis, linking it with Lumion and SketchUp allows it to be taken even further, towards the ultimate city creation toolkit...

As regular readers will know we recently held a one day conference here at CASA entitled Smart Cities, Bridging the Physical and Digital. As part of the conference Steven Gray and George MacKerron built various exhibition pieces, including the  London Data Table. Created in the shape of Greater London, the table had various visualisations projected onto its surface; from live aircraft positions, live traffic and bike hire usage to movies of public transport over 24 hours. 




Steven, over on his Big Data Blog has written a write up on the logistics behind the build -  How big do we make the table? Can we find a projector with a short enough throw to project to the table? How were we going to mount the projector etc....

Here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, we have just made live our latest in a series of services examining live data feeds - CityDashBoard. The system pulls in data from a variety feeds, developing our view that the next trend in OpenData is towards a live view of the city and live data feeds.




With the cities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh,  Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle included, it is London with the largets amount of live feeds at the moment. As Duncan Geere noted in the write up of CityDashboard in Wired -  the dashboard for the city pulls in TfL data, RSS feeds from BBC London news, geographical information from OpenStreetMap, weather data from Google, trends from Twitter, traffic cameras and water levels along the Thames. It also includes data from UCL's radiation detector.


Each section has a countdown to the next update with the weather from the Davis Vantage Pro 2 on the roof of CASA updating every 2 seconds, radiation every 5 seconds etc...


Based on a concept developed by Oliver O'Brien, Andrew Hudson-Smith and Richard Milton, here in CASA, the design and planning was developed by Duncan Smith and Oliver O'Brien with website development ultimately led by Oliver. Take a look at Olivers site for development details.


You can visit CityDashboard live at http://www.citydashboard.org/


The project is an output of NeISS, which is funded by JISC.

Last Friday (April 20th) over 350 members of the public attended our Smart Cities ‘Bridging Physical and Digital’ open day and conference at Senate House, London. The full day of talks, accompanied by the Smart Cities exhibition, was aimed at opening a discussion on the meaning behind the Smart City and, perhaps more importantly, how to make it a reality.

Four articles covering the day’s highlights and research announcements appeared in Wired with a further two in New Scientist, helping to make the event one of the most successful in the history of CASA. Professor Michael Batty kicked off the day with the dynamics of urban places and how key technological developments can be used to gain an insight into the wider science of cities. Carlo Ratti, Director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab continued the theme with a keynote address, mixing computer science with architecture, art and design to envisage the digital city across a multitude of platforms. Jon Reades was the first researcher whose work was picked up by Wired with a view on how data could be the solution to London’s stretched transport networks.

As Duncan Geere of Wired noted: “Reades is working on taking data from Transport for London and using it to draw out information that can be used to better-inform decisions about what parts of the network need to be tweaked for maximum impact. Some of the early results are already intriguing. A large proportion of commuting journeys aren't symmetrical -- they don't go to and from the same places. While in the mornings, people tend to travel straight to work in the quickest way possible, in the evenings they tend to stop off at a pub, or to see a friend and take a more circuitous route, reducing demand.” With the first three talks complete the exhibition opened, showcasing a wide range of digital research from CASA presented in a physical from. As New Scientist asked: "have you ever looked at a pigeon and wished you could experience life through its beady eyes? Well now you can, thanks to the Pigeon Simulator – created as a new way to visualise the cities and its data feeds."





 Data can be visualized in a myriad of ways, yet sometimes it is the simplest that are the most effective. The London Data Table cycled through a series of visualisations from live aircraft feeds through to data from the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme to present a view of London from above.



Combining a projector with a short throw lens, a table cut to the outline of London and various processing scripts and movies allowed an instant view of complex data feeds. Another highlight was the touch table enabled ‘Riot Simulator’ mixing data from the recent London riots with research into urban and behavioral modeling made hands on with the help of Lego. The concept behind the riot table was the focus of Sir Alan Wilson’s talk in the second part of the conference with modeling suggesting that an earlier police response could have shortened the London riots. As reported in a second article in Wired, we are within sight of being able to model this kind of event, and optimal police response.



James Cheshire and Martin Zaltz Austwick focused on the visualisation of global bike hire schemes. China, perhaps unsurprisingly, has some of the largest cycle hire schemes in the world. The patterns hidden in the datasets can be the key to understanding a variety of aspects of the cities. These hidden patterns can be linked to our overall level of happiness in places as it varies throughout the city. George MacKerron examined aspects of happiness in his talk linking in location via the ‘Mappiness’ iPhone application. In the third Wired write up of the day George notes that the results of Mappiness pinpoint coasts as the place where people are happiest, followed by mountains, moors, woodland and grassland. Urban areas come right at the bottom of the list. Location is arguably central to the concept of Smart Cities.

Andrew Hudson-Smith focused on the Internet of Things but more specifically the Internet of Second Hand Things and tracking the Geography of Everything. Via a partnership with Oxfam earlier trials are taking place to tag and track second hand goods. Smart cities start with the fabric that creates place, the objects around us. From the view of a hyper-local-social system with bus stops that tweet up the views of a connected urban realm, the Internet of Things is central to making places and spaces smart. Finally in a full day of talks Duncan Smith and Ollie O’Brien presented and launched a beta version of CityDashboard. CityDashBoard aggregates simple spatial data for cities in the UK and displays the feeds on a dashboard and map. Funded by JISC as part of the NeISS project the data feeds are diverse from real-time weather through to a background radiation count.


The day rounded off with a panel session consisting of Mike, Carlo, Alan and Andy, chaired by James and recorded for a forthcoming GlobalLab podcast. Finally the wine reception allowed a final opportunity to visit the exhibits, from the Xbox tube simulation through to Pigeon Sim, RFID powered Internet of Things demos and another outing for the Tweet-o-Meter. It was a day of sensors, tracking, mapping, visualising, modeling and making which represented the diverse mix of research that goes on at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, all with a common theme of cities and making places, and those organizations that plan them, smart...

Having recently made various presentations on the future of augmented reality, we have to say that the Google Glasses concept brings AR back into play:



With technology it always seems like one is waiting for the next big thing, but this takes it to another level....

Find out more at http://g.co/projectglass

Carrying on the theme of new papers, we are pleased to announce the following publication: Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 306-321; doi:10.3390/fi4010306 Article Driving the Internet: Mobile Internets, Cars, and the Social
Gerard Goggin  Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney, Holme Building (Ao9a), Sydney NSW 2006, Australia Received: 22 December 2011; in revised form: 7 March 2012 / Accepted: 14 March 2012 / Published: 20 March 2012 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Transformations from the Mobile Internet)

Abstract: This paper looks at the tandem technologies of cars and the Internet, and the new ways that they are assembling the social with the mobile Internet. My argument is two-fold: firstly, the advent of mobile Internet in cars brings together new, widely divergent trajectories of Internet; secondly, such developments have social implications that vary widely depending on whether or not we recognize the broader technological systems and infrastructures, media practices, flows, and mobilities in which vehicular mobile Internets are being created.
Download the full text from Future Internet...

As Editor of Future Internet (ISSN 1999-5903), an open access journal on Internet technologies and the information society, published by MDPI online we are pleased to announce the publication of the latest paper:
Characteristics of Heavily Edited Objects in OpenStreetMap Peter Mooney 1 and Padraig Corcoran 2  1 Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland2 School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Abstract


This paper describes the results of an analysis of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) database for the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland (correct to April 2011). 15; 640 OSM ways (polygons and polylines), resulting in 316; 949 unique versions of these objects, were extracted and analysed from the OSM database for the UK and Ireland. 


In our analysis we only considered “heavily edited” objects in OSM: objects which have been edited 15 or more times. Our results show that there is no strong relationship between increasing numbers of contributors to a given object and the number of tags (metadata) assigned to it. 87% of contributions/edits to these objects are performed by 11% of the total 4128 contributors.


 In 79% of edits additional spatial data (nodes) are added to objects. The results in this paper do not attempt to evaluate the OSM data as good/poor quality but rather informs potential consumers of OSM data that the data itself is changing over time. In developing a better understanding of the characteristics of “heavily edited” objects there may be opportunities to use historical analysis in working towards quality indicators for OSM in the future.


As ever with Future Internet the paper is freely available for download...

Over the past few days we have been working on a series of techniques to visualise and augment procedural cities.


If you add in a model of a BenQ projector, the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation Handbook, a city within the CASA logo and a webcam you get the following augmented reality:




We are exploring this as part of our digital visualisation module on the MRes here in CASA, aiming to build in the latest research into the lectures. The combination of Lumion, 3DMax, Illustrator, CityEngine and AR is intriguing...

The best way to learn new modelling software is to step away from complex data and take a side look at its capabilities. We have used this approach to run through the various features of CityEngine, producing a series of movies based around the logo of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, here at University College London.

First up we integrated the CASA logo into the cityscape by manually tracing the logo and building a network around it. Via an import into iMovie the result is a playful fly around the logo:




Taking the concept further we built the city around the logo, using the nodes and hubs as interconnected cityscapes. With the city base rising out the sea it presents a different feel to the original movie:




Finally, we used an alpha channel on the logo, allowing us to lower the outline onto the cityscape:




The combination of Adobe Illustrator, ESRI CityEngine, AutoDesk 3DMax and finally Lumion make for a rapid way to create unique cityscapes. The next steps are to integrate actual data.....

We are pleased to announce the latest FutureInternet Journal paper as part of the special issue on NeoGeography and WikiPlanning:


WikiGIS Basic Concepts: Web 2.0 for Geospatial Collaboration Stéphane Roche 1,* , Boris Mericskay 1 , Wided Batita 1 , Matthieu Bach 2  and Mathieu Rondeau 3  1 Centre for Research in Geomatic, Pavillon Casault, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V0A6, Canada2 Fujitsu Canada, 2000, boulevard Lebourgneuf, bureau 300, Québec, QC G2K0B8, Canada3 Interdisciplinary Centre for the Development of Ocean Mapping–CIDCO, 310 allée des Ursulines, Rimouski, QC G5L3A1, Canada
With the emergence of Web 2.0, new applications arise and evolve into more interactive forms of collective intelligence. These applications offer to both professionals and citizens an open and expanded access to geographic information. In this paper, we develop the conceptual foundations of a new technology solution called WikiGIS. WikiGIS’s strength lies in its ability to ensure the traceability of changes in spatial-temporal geographic components (geometric location and shape, graphics: iconography and descriptive) generated by users. The final use case highlights to what extent WikiGIS could be a relevant and useful technological innovation in Geocollaboration.


As an open access journal you can download the full paper direct from Future Internet.

This is very much a work in progress post, but we are interested in integrating text/patterns/logos into 3D models of the city. At the moment we are putting a work flow in place to take our CASA logo and burn it into the street patten of a procedural city.


Using the CityEngine, combined with vector files and Lumion/3DMax some interesting results can be obtained, especially if you also build in some physics/particle engine and agent based model capability.


We will have more on this in the coming days....

Update 14th March 2012 - Below is the first second draft movie:


Next stages are to build the city over time, we should have a work flow in place soon...

In the words of NASA -  Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured recently from the International Space Station (ISS) and set to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds, orange city lights, lightning flashes in thunderstorms, and dark blue seas.

On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth's thin atmosphere, frequently decorated by dancing auroras as the video progresses. The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth, a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes.




Images: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ Music: 'Freedom Fighters' by Two Steps from Hell Inspiration: http://youtu.be/74mhQyuyELQ Editor: David Peterson

 Sequences: 1. North-to-south down the western coast of North and South America.
2. North-to-south over Florida, the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands. 
3. South-East Asia, approaching the Philippine Sea.
 4. Western Europe, from France through Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Middle East.
 5. Aurora Australis, over the Indian Ocean, approaching Australia.
 6. Aurora Australis, over the Indian Ocean.
 7. Aurora Australis, unknown location in the Southern Hemisphere.

USEUM, the latest innovation out of CASA and Digital Humanities here at UCL, participated in Athens Startup Weekend hosted by Microsoft Hellas last weekend and won 1st prize.

From the official website of the competition:
"1st place – USEUM - A brilliantly executed and presented platform that will disrupt the way we buy art. They describe it best as “A bridge between art lovers and artists. It’s a web platform where art enthusiasts can discover emerging artists based on their artistic preferences. ” This team will be visiting Berlin in March to pitch at HackFwd at the Pitch in Berlin V2 event"


Foteini and the winning team handed the mic for the winners' speech
USEUM was represented by a team of 3 developers (Georgia Kalyva, George Manoltzas, Michalis Nikolaidis) and a businessman (Nikolaos Soulitzis), led by USEUM's founder Foteini Valeonti. Foteini is currently taking a PhD programme in CASA with joint supervision at UCL DH. Within a few short months she has the backing of UCL Advances and won a mentorship from Rapid Innovation Group. In short its everything a University research lab should be about, innovation, research with the addition of support and a push to get research into the wild.
USEUM aspires to become the no-brainer network for the arts and is potentially a game changer, a beta will be released in late March.
For future updates take a look at http://useum.org/

As reported on today's BBC Technology, Oxfam has launched its new Shelflife system linking goods with the past using QRCodes. 


Ever wished an object could tell its story? That’s the idea behind Oxfam’s unique pilot scheme, Oxfam Shelflife. Powered and based on the idea behind Tales of Things, the Oxfam Shelflife app uses QR codes to enable the public to discover the stories behind Oxfam’s donated, ethical and Unwrapped products, and even share their own stories for the items they donate.
The project is the latest innovation from Oxfam which promotes sustainability by encouraging people to look beyond disposable consumerism. The stories behind vintage and second-hand items are all part of their desirability. At the moment these stories can be lost when an item is acquired by a new owner but Oxfam Shelflife enables the stories to stay with the items in a more long-lasting way.
Oxfam’s Sarah Farquhar, Head of Retail Brand said: “Every item has a story to tell and Oxfam Shelflife enables people to share these stories. We’ve found that items with an interesting story behind them are instantly more appealing to our customers so we hope Oxfam Shelflife will encourage people to love items for longer.  This commitment to sustainability is an important part of what Oxfam shops bring to the high street.”
The scheme allows donors to ‘tag’ a QR code to their donated object, using the free Oxfam Shelflife app on their iPhone and share the story behind the item for the next owner to discover. Shoppers who visit the participating Oxfam stores can then scan the QR code on the item, via the app, which will take them to the unique story behind the object. Usually QR codes direct users to a website or URL but the Oxfam Shelflife app enables users to engage and interact with the technology, taking QR codes on to a new level.


The concept behind Oxfam Shelflife is based on an original idea developed by the Tales of Things initiative (TOTeM: Tales of Things and Electronic Memory), a collaboration between five British universities: University College London, The University of Edinburgh/Edinburgh College of Art, Brunel University, the University of Dundee and the University of Salford. The TOTeM initiative was funded by a £1.4m grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. 


How does it work? Take a look at the Oxfam Shelflife intro:





It is hard to put into the words the pride we have in the project, from an idea and technology born in a research Sandpit funded by the Digital Economy Research Councils UK through to a refined and redesigned concept running in Oxfam Shops. The whole system went through a complete series of user testing and design stages to produce an app and system as simple as possible while still building on the concept of read/write Internet of Things tagging. Oxfam now has its first every smart phone app and its based on the Internet of Things, making every shop a social museum. Although the best part is helping Oxfam in its mission to help transform lives via attaching stories and memories to second hand goods.


We will have more on Shelflife in coming days/weeks as well a news on a new 'Powered by Tales of Things' site coming soon, created via the new API.


Head over to http://shelflife.oxfam.org.uk/ to view some of the hundreds of objects donated with stories.

As part of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA, we are exploring various concepts relating to urban visualisation. These include both traditional urban based modelling approaches and more abstract visualisations and simulation techniques.


Currently we are exploring applications for physics engines in urban modelling, the first step of which is a series of techniques to introduce gravity and mass to urban models. We produced a tutorial back in 2009 using 'Reactor', Autodesk no longer use this engine and have now moved onto MassFX. MassFX adds a number of new options and tweaks to the simulation which took some time to work out. The concept however is the same, create a city using 'Greeble' and drop 200+ balls into the urban realm, using Lumion is it possible to view the simulation in realtime:




Music by Portoponte

Understanding MassFX is a first step towards mixing procedural cities, agent based modelling and physics simulations within a 3D urban environment, we will have more soon....

Carrying on form our previous post - Origins vs. Destinations visualises  data drawn from a random sample of New York City Yellow Cab GPS data collected in 2010:


Programmed by Juan Francisco Saldarriaga, Spatial Information Design Lab, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University the data is drawn from the work of David A. King, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and Jonathan R. Peters, College of Staten Island.

For more details on this research take a look at http://davidaking.blogspot.com/2012/01/visualizing-nyc-taxi-activity.html

A quick weekend post - following on from our first look at CityEngine and Lumion we have expanded the visualisation to add in various standard items from the Lumion library along with a surrounding terrain and waterside setting:



Total development time: 15 minutes with rendering 1.5 hours, its getting quicker to make cities....

Yesterday a license for CityEngine landed on our desk from the nice people at ESRI and to be honest we were a little too excited for our own good, after all its only software. However, CityEngine and its integration with ESRI ArcGIS, while maintaining full export capabilities to load into 3DMax/Lumion/Unity etc, is a game changer.


It moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Over the coming weeks we will be putting the software through its paces and exporting into Max/Lumion and Unity as part of introducing CityEngines onto our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation. The clip below details out first output direct from CityEngine into Lumion, adding in a general landscape, sample trees and transport objects:




Linking in our previous post on ArcGIS Twitter Visualisation in Lumion it seems that the worlds of GIS and architectural visualisation/game engines are finally starting to become accessible.

George MacKerron here in CASA has been looking at using a Kinect or three in our forthcoming ANALOGIES (Analogues of Cities) conference + exhibition.
Inspired in part by Ruairi Glynn‘s amazing work here at UCL, along with Martin at CASA who has been happily experimenting with the OpenKinect bindings for Processing, George has recently got to grips with the excellent Three.js, which makes WebGL — aka 3D graphics in modern browsers. As a fan of making things accessible over the web he has begun to investigate prospects for working with Kinect data in HTML5 and the results are intriguing - a live 3D, movable webcam... View the live stream here or click on the screenshot to connect (note it needs Chrome at the moment), you can also pan and zoom around with the mouse. Hopefully George will be at his desk for the full effect.
For those without Chrome, the movie below details the concept:




We view this as a glimpse of the future of webcams, the next step is to up the resolution (bandwidth heavy)  and add image data. The implications for video conferencing or indeed that industry that academically we probably cant mention are notable...
Take a look at the blog post from George for full technical details.