Developing e-Infrastructure and Geographical Models

Speaker: Andy Turner,

Affiliation: Centre for Computational Geography, University of Leeds.

Date/Time: 20th May 2009, 13:00-14:00.

Location: Room G74, Philip Lyle Building.

Map: http://www.info.rdg.ac.uk/maps/maps-display.asp

Abstract:

An introduction to: geographical modelling and computational geography; MoSeS, GENESIS and NeISS.

Geographical modelling is a window into modelling everything that focuses on here and now at human scales.

MoSeS has been concerned with modelling, simulation and social science. As a first phase research node of the UK National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS), it focussed on the development and use of a demographic model of the UK from 2001 to 2031. Part of the model used MPJ Express and some of the outputs were generated by running this on the UK National Grid service.

GENESIS is a second phase research node of NCeSS which began in October with a focus is on generative geographical simulation. As part of GENESIS I am developing “agent based models” of two types: those based on publicly available data that can be freely distributed, and; those that take account of more resticted data, but which might be more realistic/detailed. I am developing models that operate with a daily time step and run for years and models that operate on a second time step and run for a day. The computational requirements for these models are considerable and I am investigating ways to scale and partition the task.

NeISS is about developing a National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation in the UK. Part of this is to orchestrate the data and computation, and part of it is about developing modelling and analysis tools.

Let us think collectively about what we do and how we might collaborate.

Bio:

Andy Turner has a background in mathematics, geography and information systems and has been a researcher based at the University of Leeds, Centre for Computational Geography since 1997.