Science

NSF Sustainable Urban Systems “New Mobility, Cities and Data” Workshop Report

On July 15-16 2019, a diverse group of university researchers and community stakeholders from Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Oregon participated in a workshop to explore issues surrounding new mobility technologies, sustainable urban systems and data.  This event was organized in response to the National Science Foundation Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 19-032; “Concepts for Advancing Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) Research Networks”) released in December 2018.

Deeper scientific understanding of cities and more nuanced, effective sustainability policy and planning interventions are crucial as we move towards an almost completely urbanized planet by the end of the 21st century.  A pressing concern are questions and needs relating to new technology-enabled services that are disrupting the mobility landscape of cities.  Urban mobility is experiencing a revolution, much of it driven by the private sector, with new technologies and services involving light individual transport (e.g., scooters), shared vehicles, microtransit, mobility as a service and eventually connected and autonomous vehicles.  The impacts of the new mobility revolution on urban sustainability is uncertain: similar to the introduction of cars and highways in the early 20th century, it is possible that mobility technologies and services that individually appear to be sustainable and beneficial may collectively reshape cities to have larger environmental footprints, greater inequality and/or less economic flexibility and resilience.

Urban sustainability data observatories (USDOs) are a means for persistent, ongoing data collection, archiving and analysis to enable new knowledge about complex human and coupled human-natural systems, such as cities. They integrate many of the diverse elements that are needed to significantly advance sustainable urban systems (SUS) science. Importantly, they support new data and methods for understanding current SUS drivers and interactions, advancing comparative studies, developing the science to model the future of SUS, and fostering the science of knowledge co-production. USDOs can also facilitate more sensitive and nuanced understanding of how context and history shape the outcomes of policy and planning interventions in complex urban systems.  Finally, they can go beyond observation to enable platforms and processes for data-enabled engagement and discussions among heterogeneous stakeholders concerned with the environmental, social and economic future of their community.

A report on the workshop is now available here (in PDF) SUS Workshop Report – FINAL 25 Sept 2019.

Towards an integrated science of movement

New paper: Miller, H.J., Dodge, S., Miller, J.A. and Bohrer, G. (2019) “Towards an integrated science of movement: Converging research on animal movement ecology and human mobility,” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 33, 855-876.

Abstract: There is long-standing scientific interest in understanding purposeful movement by animals and humans. Traditionally, collecting data on individual moving entities was difficult and time-consuming, limiting scientific progress. The growth of location-aware and other geospatial technologies for capturing, managing and analyzing moving objects data are shattering these limitations, leading to revolutions in animal movement ecology and human mobility science. Despite parallel transitions towards massive individual-level data collected automatically via sensors, there is little scientific cross-fertilization across the animal and human divide. There are potential synergies from converging these separate domains towards an integrated science of movement. This paper discusses the data-driven revolutions in the animal movement ecology and human mobility science, their contrasting worldviews and, as examples of complementarity, transdisciplinary questions that span both fields. We also identify research challenges that should be met to develop an integrated science of movement trajectories.

National Academies webinar on “Using GIS to Make Urban Mobility More Sustainable”

The Geographical Sciences Committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine has posted a recording of my 1 March 2017 webinar on “Using GIS to Make Urban Mobility More Sustainable.”  Thanks to the GSC for sponsoring and hosting this event!