HCU meets MIT. Urban Simulations Using the Example of Olympic City and Rothenburgsort

HCU meets MIT. Urbane Simulationen, am Beispiel von Rothenburgsort

Term Paper HafenCity University Hamburg

15.03.2016

Professors : Ariel Noyman (MIT), Ira Winder (MIT), Gesa Ziemer, Katrin Hovy, Tobias Holtz

Course: Sustainability ‘made in Germany’ Term: Winter Term 2015

Authors: Özçelik Seyhan (6035780)

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Introduction The CityScope was a seminar involving cooperation of two universities: HCU and MIT. In this workshop; researchers of two universities and students from different departments came together and tried to comprehend the CityScope which is a tool that is designed to be used while decision making process in urban planning. In the mean while; we also looked for new ways to enhance the tool in order to make it more effective, convincing and widely used.

With this workshop; I had a chance to have knowledge about collaborative tangible user interfaces and i was able to practise it in a plannig project. So, the seminar gained me another perspective that how the decision making process can work. Also; i had familiarity with the technology that used in CityScope and saw the example of an intersection of two areas; planning and computer science.

About the CityScope

CityScope is a system for real time digital reconstruction and 3D Projection.It enables mapping of arbitrarily many tagged physical objects.

This system; detects arbitrarily many uniquely tagged physical objects in real time as they are moved by the user. In this case; these physical objects are the lego bricks that have tags under them. We used those lego bricks on the table.

CityScope perfoms real-time digital reconstruction of objects’ configuration including form, position, ID and any metadata. So that means; when a user place the physical object in a spatial region the tool produce digital outcome by evaluating its shape; position and the information coded in the tag which placed under them.

It performs real time analysis of the objects’ configuration and real time visualization of analysis via display screens and projection mapping of visual content onto objects.

When the user place physical objects on the table; it detects, digitally reconsruct and project lights on. The table consisted of grids. This physical grid simplifies detection and digital reconstruction of the objects and also simplifies projection of light onto the physical objects.

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System is able to give instantaneous feedback; processes are performed in real-time which is faster than human reaction time.

The system includes uniquely tagged 3D objects. The table constraints the placement of 3D objects into a scene. One or more sensors that located under the table for scanning the scene and one or more computers, one or more display screens and ome or more projectors for projecting light onto the scene.

Tagged object; we used lego bricks, are custom built to fit into the table grid. Unique tags are placed in a discrete place on the object; the bottom or inside of the object. Tags carry two types of information these are; piece ID and rotation.

These tagged objects will be explained in the following sections and how we use them in order to create prototypes (Winder, 2015).

Collaborative tangible interfaces for complex planning systems

In complex systems such as urban plannig; stakeholders interact with each other for the decision-making process. But generally stakeholders are from different backgrounds and with varying levels of subject matter expertise and domain knowledge. This complexity in the decision making process for urban planning causes inadequate understanding between the actors.

Traditional urban modelling and planning tools are often designed for specific professional audiences such as architects, planners, etc.They are not accessible to a wider scope of users In this case; collaborative interactive systems effectively facilitate stakeholder dialogues and interactions, and consequently help them make more informative decisions. collaborative interactive systems.

Collaborative tangible interfaces; create collaborative interaction spaces where users can efficiently work with each other, and see the result of their interaction immediately which makes the planning process more efficient.

The studies examining user interactions with tangible user interfaces in the context of urban planning, have been shown that these tools utilize stakeholders’ engagement and decisionmaking (Alrasheda & Almalkia,2015).

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In the workshop; we had a chance to approve this statement. Cause the participants were from different disciplinaries and also they were from different countries. So every participant had a distinct perspective about planning process. Even, some of them has so little knowledge about planning process because their profession was not planning.

Yet, CityScope helped us to find a common ground. Because it was way easier to communicate with lego bricks rather then using sketches and planning terms. Participants were more relaxed and courageous around the CityScope, they were less worried about sharing their ideas. Because; the tool give people the feeling that anyone can participate easily by just moving, adding some lego bricks and this is such a easy and accurate way to explain your thoughts. Knowing there is so little chance to be misunderstood, people become more engaging(Alrasheda & Almalkia,2015).

The seminar structure The procedure of the seminar; was consisted of two parts. These were; Community Meeting session and PlayGround.

Community meeting part; included traditional urban planning procedure which starts with site visit and then analysis of the area. After that we made sketches and suggested urban design solutions.

The first day of the seminar was reserved for the site visit so we were able to observe and collect data about the neighbourhood which we will work on: Rothenburgsort.

About Rothenburgsort Hamburg is one of the most sparsely populated cities in the world. Compared to Barcelona which is commonly recognized as one of the most attractive cities in Europe, Hamburg is therefore almost six times less dense. This fact opens up tremendous opportunities for internal development. In Hamburg there is residential land potential,which can be used without significant costs for external development. In particular; east part of the city offers enormous potential for Hamburg's continued growth.

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Therefore; Hamburg business community interested in the development concept which takes place in upstream on the Elbe and Bille in eastern Hamburg. There are investments; on new residential areas. They are creating modern industrial and commercial structures and rising urban quality. This development concept takes place in between the city center and eastern districts Hammerbrook Borgfelde, Rothenburgsort, Hamm, Horn, Bill Brook and Billstedt.

Image 1: Leben und Arbeiten Entlang der Bille-Achse, (2015) This development also aims; more intensive use of existing commercial areas with participation of local companies and population. This is an an important contribution in order to afford spaces by adding more jobs. Moreover, the development concept provide densification of residential areas; especially in the ones that very close to downtown; such as Rothenburgsort. Rothenburgsort neighbourhood; can contribute this urban concept by strengthening its residential and recreational quality(Leben und Arbeiten Entlang der BilleAchse, 2015).

As it explained above Rothenburgsort is a neighbourhood which has development pressure.

Although; there are opportunities provided by this pressure; the threats that exist for the residents of the neighbourhood can not be ignored.

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After data collection, we analysed them under the topics of; economy and sociology; urban plannig and created maps. Then every group worked on their particular zones to suggest an urban design solution. Again we created maps and sketches. So that; we completed the first phase of the procedure and moved to the second part which is PlayGround.

In PlayGround phase; we carried our design into the table by using lego bricks. We had realtime feedback by CityScope through the heat maps. The heat map is created by projection shows green and red spots on the map, so that user would understand if the design matches with the parameters that described before. Thus, we were able check the design immediately and see the calculations on the screen. Therefore, we could fix them quickly.

Image 2: the author

Recently; urban transportation professionals are under increasing pressure to perform datadriven decision making and to provide data-driven performance metrics. This pressure mainly comes from federal government. Also increased volume and variety of transportation data is a driving force.

This sudden increase of data is achieved through improved technology for sensors and mobile devices as well as reduced device and storage costs.

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However; using this data for decisions and performance metrics is proving to be difficult. (Tufte & Elazzabi, 2014).

But using CityScope we can create a structure for supporting data-driven decision So, in this paper; i will try to answer the question “How CityScope can be used in data-driven transport planning?�

Transport assessment plays a vital role in urban planning and traffic control. It is influenced by multi-faceted traffic factors involving road infrastructure and traffic flow. But conventional solutions can hardly meet the requirements and expectations. So a new a datadriven solution by leveraging a visual analysis system to evaluate the real traffic situations based on taxi trajectory data can be solution to meet the requirements.

There is a sketch-based visual interface designed for supporting dynamic query and visual reasoning of traffic situations within multiple coordinated views. To clarify; it is a novel roadbased query model for analysts to interactively conduct evaluation tasks and this model is supported by a bi-directional hash structure. This hash structure is called TripHash and it enables real-time responses to the data queries over a huge amount of trajectory data.

I will try to explain this technology better with a case study which is about using opposite directions to analyze reversible lanes.

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Image 3: Wang, F., Chen, W., (2014), A Visual Reasoning Approach for Data-driven Transport Assessment on Urban Roads Tianmushan Road is connects a lot of important office buildings, malls, hospitals to the residential areas which places in the Xihu District. It was determined that intense traffic flow of east bound was in the morning, and a high west bound traffic flow in the evening rush hour.

However; in the meanwhile the lanes of the opposite direction always have a lower occupation in the same hours.

In the light of this analysis it can be thouÄąght that the different transportation capacities of the two roads can be attributed to the implementation of a reversible lane. The city government was also agreed with this idea and they assigned one of the five lanes of Shuguang Road as the reversible lane used for different directions in corresponding rush hours. After implication it was confirmed that the use of the reversible lane is successful.

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In conclusion; using such dynamic datas with CityScope can create more accurate results and that would enable us making suitable decisions for cities (Wang & Chen, 2014).

It is an important topic that data we recieve from mobile phones can bring significant benefits to urban analysis. The pervasiveness of mobile phone has transformed mobile phones from a commnications device to a tool for socio spatial research. It is a fact that mobile phone providers can potentially gather relevant data on a very refined spatio� temporal scale for every 85 out of 100 inhabitants in the world. That kind of data can include basic information about personal communication patterns, interactions and mobil ity which can enable researchers to better understand spatial human behavior, the predictabilit y of which is well documented. These information that mainly takes place in complexity science domain which generally focuses on individual behavioural patterns. But it can also result in applications in the spatial analysis domain.

MIT SENSEable City Lab made one of the first implementations to monitor urban mobility in order to monitor urban mobility in order to study locations and intensities of urban activities based on the use of location and traffic data derived from telecom base stations.

So this connection made me consider about integration of two MIT projects; and that is how i came up with the second research question of this paper which is; “What would be the outcome of combining MIT SENSEable City with CityScope?�

The main incentive for MIT to conduct this study was; despite the booming of mobile communications, data from cell phones had scarcely been used and could become a powerful tool for urban analysis.

Various case studies have been made about this work. For instance; urban research using mobile phone data has taken place in Graz and Milan. This original approach to urban studies was an effort to understand the increasing complexity of human settlements through investigating the human dynamics in these cities and not focusing on their physical shapes.

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I will further explain this topic with a case stud. The figure below presents the study area, which is the city of Amsterdam, and the different GSM zones. In the analysis 520 such zones are included. Various telecommunications counts are included in the data these are; the number of new calls that took place in a specific zone during the course of an hour, the number of SMS sent from a specific zone, the average call length and so forth.

In the analysis two variables are utilized: the Erlang, which is an aggregation of all telecommunication activity, and the number of new calls initiated in a GSM zone during a one�hour period. The data concerns all the phone activity in the study area during one month.

The figure also presents the average number of Erlangs for each zone for the study period during different times of the day as an average of the study period.

Image 4: Tranos, E., Steenbruggen, J., (2013), Mobile Phone Data and Urban Analysis: An Exploratory Space–Time Study

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The key focus in this analysis is the relation between mobile phone usage and urban space given the temporal variability. Urban space is represented here by the different land use types and the spatial unit of our analysis is the GSM cell areas.

To sum up; despite the existence of some first implementations in the urban analysis field, there is still a great potential for new applications mobile phone data domain, especially in understanding cities from a spatio�temporal perspective. So, this potential can be used with CityScope and the greater perspective can be created to urban decision making process.

(Tranos & Steenbruggen, 2013).

References Tranos, E., Steenbruggen, J., (2013), Mobile Phone Data and Urban Analysis: An Exploratory Space–Time Study Wang, F., Chen, W., (2014), A Visual Reasoning Approach for Data-driven Transport Assessment on Urban Roads Tufte, K., Elazzabi, B., (2014, Guiding Data-Driven Transportation Decisions Leben und Arbeiten Entlang der Bille-Achse, (2015) Alrasheda, T., Almalkia, A., Aldawooda,S., (2015), An observational study of usability in collaborative tangible interfaces for complex planning systems Winder, I., (2015), System for real time digital reconstruction and 3D Projectio Mapping of arbitrarily many tagged physical objects

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