Workshop on platial analysis (PLATIAL'18)

The concept of 'place' is about to become one of the major research themes in the interdisciplinary field of geographical information science (GIScience), as well as in adjoining fields. Briefly put, while locations provide objective references (e.g., point coordinates), places are the units utilized by humans to approach the geographic world. On the one hand, the current 'platial turn' is caused by the plethora of particularly urban geographic datasets that have become available in the last years, many of which are user-generated (e.g., geosocial media feeds). These so-called ambient geospatial datasets mirror small and limited glimpses of the everyday lives of people and how these approach and experience the geographic world into the digital sphere. Ambient geographic datasets may thus be understood as something deeper than just mere 'attributes referenced over point locations', which is why they have recently been conjectured to be of platial rather than of spatial nature. 'Platial' can hereby be understood as the place-based counterpart to the space-based adjective 'spatial'.

The research project Creative Time Costings - featuring the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies' Celia Lury with Principal Investigator Jo Briggs (Northumbria) alongside Sue Ball (Media and Arts Partnership), Graham Pullin (University of Dundee), Sarah Teasley (Royal College of Art), and the Leeds Creative Timebank — is featured in the Design Research for Change Showcase, running from 20th September-23rd September 2018. The exhibition is part of the London Design Fair and has been developed by researchers from a range of design disciplines including product, graphics, interaction, fashion, and furniture collaborating with other specialist areas such as healthcare, business, engineering, and elsewhere.

Located in the Old Truman Brewery in London, the showcase will give a flavour of 67 projects in total with a mixture of physical exhibits and digital displays.

Project lead Jo Briggs, Associate Professor in Design at Northumbria said: "Creative Temporal Costings was a three-month ‘sprint’ project comprising an experimental social design intervention undertaken with Leeds Creative Timebank to investigate the value of creative collaborative exchange in an emerging ‘parallel’ non-monetary economy; and to test and develop new research methods for social design, to prototype new forms of collaborative research oriented towards social change.”

For more information about Creative Temporal Costings and a link to the catalogue produced by artists at Leeds Creative Timebank click here and here

One of the key challenges to achieve the goal of improving the life conditions for people who live in disadvantaged communities in low and middle-income countries is the lack of accurate and up-to-date spatial data about urban areas and vulnerable communities without access to basic services and in humanitarian need.

We spoke to Edvin Dudinskij about his CIM MSc dissertation in which he investigates the use of visualisation in Science Fiction movies.

CIM is now accepting PhD applications for students who wish to be considered for a number of University scholarships, including ESRC scholarships (for social science applicants), CADRE scholarships (for arts and humanities students) and Chancellor's International Scholarships (for international students).

We spoke to Christine Jeavans and the BBC data journalism team to find out more about how they use R, and other software, in their work.

Craig Gent has been awarded an Early Career Fellowship from the Institute of Advanced studies.

Congratulations to Philipp Ulbrich, a PhD student from Warwick’s EPSRC funded CDT for Urban Science and Progress, who was invited to make a technical contribution to UN-HABITAT, resulting in a synthesis report on Sustainable Development Goal 11 that relates to Sustainable Cities and Communities. The report was produced to support in-depth discussions of Goal 11 progress at the High Level Political Forum in New York from 9 to 19 July 2018. Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities, of which Philipp is a part, has been acknowledged as a technical contributor. A copy of the report along with an executive summary can be found here.