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WICI Specialist Conference: Call for Abstracts Currently Open

The Waterloo Institute for Complexity & Innovation (WICI) has announced the theme of this year’s Specialist Conference: “Modelling complex urban environments”. The conference takes place on the 21st-22nd July 2018 at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) with the intention of bringing together researchers from multiple disciplines with experience and interest in modelling complex environments, from smart cities to urban planning.

The call for abstracts is now open with a deadline of 1st March 2018 (see below for specific guidelines).

One theme may be of particular interest, organised and led by Alison Heppenstall of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics:

Integrating “big data” and “smart cities” data with urban modelling

This theme is designed to interrogate the role which increasingly available so-called ‘Big’ data has to play in altering the ways in which spatial, statistical and geographical analysis is conducted. It will look at the ways in which new methodologies have been fostered by the arrival of Big data in order to better understand how urban systems and infrastructure behave, with an emphasis on how they may be useful in the drive towards sustainability and efficiency. The goal of the session is to bring research together on the topic in order to produce a journal issue.

Within this theme, WICI are particularly interested in papers that engage with the following:

  • Integrating urban analytics and agent/individual-based modelling
  • Machine learning for urban analytics
  • Innovations in consumer data analytics for understanding urban systems
  • Real-time model calibration and data assimilation
  • Spatio-temporal data analysis
  • New data, case studies, demonstrators, and tools for urban analytics
  • Geographic data mining and visualisation
  • Frequentist and Bayesian approaches to modelling cities.

Paper proposals should include:

  • a short but descriptive title
  • a list of all contributing authors and their affiliations
  • an abstract of no more than 250 words
  • a list of 3-5 keywords
  • and an identification of the theme to which the proposal is submitted, if applicable.

Session proposals should include:

  • a short but descriptive title
  • a session abstract of no more than 250 words
  • a list of organizers and their affiliations
  • 3-5 keywords
  • and a list of potential paper contributions, following the format from above.

All proposals should be directed to Noelle Hakim (noelle.valeriotehakim@uwaterloo.ca). For full details on the conference and all proposed themes, see here.