We have a new article published in the journal Public Transport entitled An Adaptive Scaled Network for Public Transport Route Optimisation. LUCAS researchers teamed up with colleagues from Cardiff University to tackle the challenge of automatic bus route optimisation. The first step was the creation of several bus route optimisation instances based on the city of Nottingham. We are making these datasets publicly available to enable other researchers to apply their own optimisation algorithm. Published alongside the instance data are our results as presented in the publication and a python program used to evaluate route sets.

We have a new article on urban energy simulation accepted for publication in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI). Using the Open Geospatial Consortium CityGML EnergyADE schema as the central data model, the paper describes the creation of urban scenes from standard UK map and energy survey datasets. Simulation of these scenes to estimate residential building energy demand is undertaken using CitySim+ - an improved, CityGML EnergyADE compliant, version of the spatially-explicit urban simulation software, CitySim. Further details are available in paper. The full abstract is below.

Amanda Winter has written a policy review for the International Journal of Community Well-Being.

Sustainable city is a multi-faceted and contested concept which is recognized differently by different actors. Public participation is considered an essential part of sustainable urban governance, where citizens are being included in specific ways in shaping understandings of the priorities and pressures of urban development, service delivery, and the future of the urban area. Public participation has been incorporated into sustainable development policy processes in cities around the world, although the rationale, motivations and methods of such practices vary in different socio-political and economic conditions.

Dr Julian Rosser and co-authors have a new article accepted in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (CEUS). The paper describes a machine learning approach to inferring the age of residential buildings based on features extracted from map databases. Building age is not commonly available in the UK at the individual property level, however, such data is vital in estimating energy usage. The problem is treated as a supervised classification task and where a random forest is trained to estimate an age category / band according to the building’s shape and neighbourhood characteristics. Approaches for improving the predictive model performance by exploiting the predicted class probabilities, and spatial / topological relations between buildings are then tested. Taking inspiration from graph-based techniques used in image segmentation methods, we can introduce some spatial reasoning to post-process and improve class predictions.

Dr Trung Hieu Tran and the co-authors have recently published a paper in the International Journal of Management Science (OMEGA, impact factor: 4.311). The paper describes an integrated slacks-based model for measuring the efficiency of decision-making units in Data Envelopment Analysis. The model has been applied for evaluating the sustainability of construction firms in Nottingham, UK in terms of financial aspects. It supports the firms in recognising the strength and weakness to improve and obtain the sustainable development.

Prof Darren Robinson and Dr Yong Mao are editing a Special Issue of the journal Entropy. The call title is “Entropy and Scale-Dependence in Urban Modelling” and is accepting submissions until 16th November 2018.

We have a new journal article on using Ordnance Survey MasterMap and AddressBase Plus data for energy modelling studies published in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. The paper describes techniques to automatically extract information on the geometric and topological characteristics of residential buildings, which can then be used as parameters for estimating the energy use at the city scale.

Gavin Long co-authored a paper to be published in the April 2018 edition of Energy Strategy Reviews. The paper summarises the results and findings of the InSmart project, offering insights into how European cities might effectively make the transition to a low carbon future.

Gavin Long co-authored a paper to be published in the March 2018 edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production. The paper combines actual energy use data from smart meters with energy demand predictions generated from building energy simulations and household surveys carried out under the InSmart project.

In November, Amanda made a presentation at ‘The Impact of Rapid Urbanisation on Health in Chinese Mega-Cities’ workshop held in Xiamen. This workshop aimed to build collaboration and knowledge-sharing between 55 researchers from the UK and China. It was funded under the Researcher Links scheme offered within the Newton Fund, the British Council and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and was organized by Cardiff University and the Institute of Urban Environment (Chinese Academy of Sciences).

In October, Amanda made a presentation at the ‘Emission Control and Sustainable Energy in Green Port Development’ workshop held in Dalian. This workshop aimed to build collaboration and knowledge-sharing between researchers in the UK and China. It was funded under the Researcher Links scheme offered within the Newton Fund, the British Council and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and was organized by Liverpool University and Dalian University.

LUCAS’ Ben Purvis recently attended the ERC GeoDiverCity International Workshop on “Theories and models of urbanization” at the Institut des Systèmes Complexes in Paris. The workshop brought together academics from a variety of disciplines such as physics, computer science, economics, and geography to engage in discussions relating to urban theories and modelling. Keynotes included talks from Michael Batty, Elsa Arcaute, Fulong Wu, and Michael Storper.

A summary of the InSmart project completed by Gavin Long and Darren Robinson has been published as a GeoPlace case study. The work describes the development of a virtual energy model of Nottingham’s building stock, through integration of the Local Land and Property Gazetteer data found within GeoPlace’s AddressBase products.

Written by Julian Rosser

Our Economic theme PhD researcher, Phil Northall, recently travelled to the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), part of Lund University, in Sweden, to engage with other academics in the field of the sharing economy, and to present his work on ‘categories and classifications in the sharing economy’.

Written by Stephen Parkes and Julian Rosser

Amanda Winter gave a paper presentation at the “Reimagining Civil Society in a Period of Uncivil Societies” Conference at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Amanda Winter and TrungHieu Tran recently joined LUCAS as Leverhulme Fellows on the Sustaining Urban Habitats project.

Written by Stephen Parkes.

Last month Darren Robinson gave a talk as part of the event “Urban microclimate: overcoming obstacles to high density resilient cities” organised by Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE).

We are a group of researchers based at the University of Nottingham who are interested in understanding how cities develop and function, and how we can improve on their social, economic and environmental sustainability.