Topic: Uncovering Spatial Structures in Urban and Regional Systems from Communication and Transportation Big Data:Two Case Studies

Speaker: Prof. Jean-Claude Thill, Knight Foundation Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA; Editor-in-Chief of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.

Introduction to the speaker

Jean-Claude Thill is the Knight Foundation Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research focuses on the spatial dimensions of socio-economic organizations, particularly the interfacing between transportation and mobility systems, and urban land use, urban forms and functions. During his career, he has authored or co-authored over a hundred and twenty publications and got many awards from different academic organizations. Now Professor Thill is the Editor-in-Chief of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, American Editor of the International Journal of Society Systems Science, and co-editor of the book series on Advances in Spatial Science published by Springer. He is on the editorial board of a number of regional, national, and international journals in the fields of geography, GIScience, regional science, and spatial planning.

Brief introduction to the report

Transportation and communication systems generate large volumes of data that can reveal otherwise difficult to observe and measure aspects of modern societies. These data sets can legitimately be called ‘big data’. This lecture will present two cases where meaningful and novel information on spatial organization has been extracted from such big data. The first case is that of smart card bus data in Beijing, from which commuting patterns are extracted to complement conventional travel behavior surveys. The second case pertains to cell phone data in Heilongjiang Province, which enable to establish the central place structure of the province using principles and techniques of network science.

Host: Prof. LU Feng

Time: 2:00pm 22, Jan. 2015

Venue: Room2321, IGSNRR