A physiology-inspired framework for holistic city simulations

Life, services and activities within cities have commonly been studied by separate disciplines, each one independent from the others. One such approach is the computer simulation, which enables in-depth modelling and cost-effective evaluation of city phenomena. However, the adoption of integrated ci...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Meta, Irene, Cucchietti, Fernando|||0000-0002-9027-1263, Navarro Mateu, Diego, Graells Garrido, Eduardo, Guallart, Vicente
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/366539
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/366539
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103553
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Urban environment
Policymaking
Urban informatics
Integrated modelling
Holistic simulation
Simulació per ordinador
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Aplicacions de la informàtica::Aplicacions informàtiques a la física i l‘enginyeria
Descripción
Sumario:Life, services and activities within cities have commonly been studied by separate disciplines, each one independent from the others. One such approach is the computer simulation, which enables in-depth modelling and cost-effective evaluation of city phenomena. However, the adoption of integrated city simulations faces several barriers, such as managerial, social, and technical, despite its potential to support city planning and policymaking. This paper introduces the City Physiology: a new conceptual framework to facilitate the integration of city layers when designing holistic simulators. The physiology is introduced and applied through a process of three steps. Firstly, a literature review is offered in order to study the terminology and the progress already made towards integrated modelling of different urban systems. Secondly, interactions between urban systems are extracted from the approaches studied before. Finally, the pipeline to carry out the integration strategy is described. In addition to providing a conceptual tool for holistic simulations, the framework enables the discovery of new research lines generated by previously unseen connections between city layers. Being an open framework, available to all researchers to use and broaden, the authors of this paper envisage that it will be a valuable resource in establishing an exact science of cities.