UrbanSim
From Travis Kriplean's Homepage
UrbanSim
UrbanSim is designed to help in the analysis of various policy alternatives for urban development through a simulation system that models the interactions between land use, transportation, employment and household choices over a span of twenty to thirty years. As such, it provides a foundation for discussion, counteracting typical deadlock when planners and politicians disagree on base truths. Currently, UrbanSim is used nearly exclusively by members of metropolitan planning organizations.
I am working on building technological infrastructure for creating a tighter feedback loop between local organizations, citizens, urban modelers, decision makers, and scientific simulations. The goal is to foster richer public participation by allowing citizens and organizations to contribute to discussions and decisions about land use and transportation alternatives in their region [1].
I am taking this motive beyond, to social media. We ultimately want to support effective and inclusive public deliberation regarding controversial decisions. In particular, I have to been applying collaborative authoring techniques to connect deliberative democratic approaches to public administration. One example is the embedding of wiki-based systems into public comments procedures for controversial urban planning decisions to support the joint-authorship of policy perspectives and joint-exploration of simulation results. A challenge here is to design interfaces that help translate non-traditional political activities into public input to which governmental agencies can respond.
I work with my advisor Alan Borning, Paul Waddell, and other members of the UrbanSim team.
History
One of the reasons I came to the University of Washington was to work on the UrbanSim project. I have been a research assistant on the project since the last quarter of my first year. My involvement in the UrbanSim work will develop into my thesis research.
References
See the publications page for paper and slide links.
- ↑ Batya Friedman; Alan Borning, Janet Davis, Brain Gill, Peter Kahn, Travis Kriplean, Peyina Lin (2008). "Laying the Foundations for Public Participation and Value Advocacy: Interaction Design for a Large Scale Urban Simulation". dg.o 2008: 9th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research.