News Archive
Walkability Perception and its Relations to Scenery Elements and Socio-Demographics
Walking has numerous benefits for the mental and physical health. It is a sustainable mode of mobility that modern cities should incentivise. Walkability, a notion of how friendly a street is for walking, entails different aspects like the perception of safety, beauty and social vibrancy. The perception of walkability is also influenced by the physical structure and spatial configuration of streets and their features.
Most studies on walkability are conducted based on interviews collecting valuable and detailed data. However, this data collection procedure is time- and resource-intensive and difficult to upscale to large areas. This project will leverage on street view imagery, deep learning image interpretation, crowdsourcing technologies, and geospatial datasets to develop a data-driven account of how the perception of walkability relates to physical, social and visual attributes of streets across different social groups, thus providing city administrators and planners a concrete and transferable methodology that helps them evaluate and enhance the liveability of their cities. Besides a transferable methodology to estimate city-wide walkability, we will propose data visualisations that surface the diversified perception of the urban space across different groups and that may support data-based theoretical developments on this multi-dimensional concept.
The geographical and cultural aspects of geoinformation
Decisions on how to encode and model information in a geographical database are theory- laden and contingent upon the social and cultural contexts in which they are made. Hence, the very meaning and structure of geoinformation and geodata intrinsically embed these contexts. Furthermore, representations of the world via geoinformation may emphasize certain perceptions of the world or promote new ones, hence facilitating social processes of digital transformation and marking a complete cycle of influences from culture/society to geoinformation and back again. With this in mind, the Geographical and Cultural Aspects of Geoinformation: Issues and Solutions (GeoCultGIS) workshop was organized in 2019 as part of the AGILE conference in Limassol, Cyprus. The workshop offered researchers dealing with any of the three relations the opportunity to present their work and participate in open discussions on related topics. This issue of Transactions in GIS includes four articles stemming from this workshop and the call for papers that followed it.
Research Assistant in Deep Learning image interpretation
Description
Role
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick is looking for a Research Assistant to support researchers investigating the relation between human perception of urban spaces and attributes extracted from street view images (i.e. from Google Street View)
The role holder will implement a deep learning image interpretation model based on existing Python libraries and models. You will also help developing an interface for online human assessment of the images. The role will enable its holder to interact with experienced researchers in the fields of psychology, architecture and urban science, thus contributing to the development of collaboration skills and an interdisciplinary profile.
This role is a six-month 20% FTE position with flexible working hours and location.
Duties and responsibilities
- Develop Python code for image object detection and segmentation based on existing libraries and deep learning image interpretation models
- Help establishing an online survey for the human assessment of street view images
Skills and experience
The role holder should have very good Python coding skills
- A solid conceptual understanding of deep neural networks.
- Data management skills are essential
- Interest in urban science and experience in image processing are desirable.
Location
- A mixture of remote working and campus based work
Additional information
Start Date: 6th September for 6 months
Interview Date: 31st August
Advert Closure: 25th August
Link to apply: Unitemps - Research Assistant in Deep Learning Image Interpretation
Creative Malfunction: Finding Fault with Rowhammer
New paper! In 'Creative Malfunction: Finding Fault with Rowhammer, CIM's Matt Spencer examines one of the most significant hardware vulnerabilities of recent years for what it tells us about the nature of repair and transformation in computational systems. http://computationalculture.net/creative-malfunction-finding-fault-with-rowhammer
The People Like You Project
Want to learn more about how online recommendations and classifications work? @PersonalisePLY has designed an app to help you find out. Read about their project – and how you can participate in their research – here: https://algorithmicidentities.net/big-sister/open-call/
Workshop: Life and Death in the Cemetery
Workshop: Life and Death in the Cemetery
As part of our More-than-Human: data interactions in the smart city project, we are organizing a workshop at the Tower Hamlets Cemetry Park in East London on Monday 19th July from 11am-2pm.
How might we use data and technology for thriving multispecies interactions in the city?
About the event
In this workshop we will explore More-than-Human relations in the urban cemetery together.
What microscopic communities live around us? How are the lives and deaths of humans entwined with other species? How might urban data be used for making the invisible visible? And how might we design new technologies for more equitable living spaces for all of London's inhabitants - human and non-human, big and small – and not just an elite few?
The workshop is part of a research project exploring new roles for data and technology to support more sustainable, inclusive, just and diverse cities.
When: Monday 19th July from 11am-2pm
Where: Soanes Centre, Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, Southern Grove, London E3 4PX
Who: Interested people including urban planners, designers, researchers, growers, citizen scientists, parks users, biodiversity experts, local councillors.
Who is involved ?
The project is a collaboration between researchers at City, University of London, Goldsmiths University, Warwick University, Newcastle University, and the London School of Economics, and project partners the Roving Microscope and Cordwainers Grow. It is funded through an EPSRC Human Data Interactions Network Plus grant.
Further details and sign-up:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/life-and-death-in-the-cemetery-tickets-160179837205
Dr Naomi Waltham-Smith, Associate Professor in CIM, has received the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2020/21
Dr Naomi Waltham-Smith, Associate Professor in CIM, has received the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2020/21 in recognition of how her practice has made a real difference to student learning this year.
This year WATE celebrates 'everyday excellence' and recognises the contributions to learning and teaching at Warwick that have really made a difference in unprecedented times. You can read more about the award and Naomi’s contributions here.
“Uncovering social and regional inequalities using spatial data and interdisciplinary methods” – a workshop led by Zofia Bednarowska-Michaiel
Dr Zofia Bednarowska-Michaiel ran a CIM Research Workshop on 19th of May 2021. It aimed to bridge participants on campus and those joining online together. The workshop focused on an interdisciplinary approach to researching inequalities around the role of regional science and spatial data in stimulating policy discussions around inequalities.
Calvillo and Puig de la Bellacasa’s collaboration at the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art
Fluffy Grounds kicks-off a collaboration between Calvillo and Puig de la Bellacasa on air-soil relations commissioned for the 13th Shanghai Biennale.
The 13th Shanghai Biennale exhibition has been curated by Andres Jaque with Marina Otero, Lucia Pietroiusti, YOU Mi and Filippa Ramos, and can be visited at the Power Station of Art museum (Shanghai). Fluffy Grounds, directed by C+arquitectas, has been produced with the support of UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/T00665X/1), the Centre for Digital Inquiry (University of Warwick) and A/C Accion Cultural Española.
April 12–July 18, 2021
Wenhao Bi's paper 'Playing politics digitally: young Chinese people’s political feelings on social media platforms
Wenhao Bi's paper 'Playing politics digitally: young Chinese people’s political feelings on social media platforms in the forthcoming special issue 'Cultural critique and the politics of identity for the journal Cultural Studies is now available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.1912808