The City Modelling Reading List: Episode #4
Recent reads in transport, cities & modelling, decarbonisation, and software engineering
Published in
3 min readAug 18, 2023
In the lab, we read and share a lot of content about city and transportation planning, decarbonisation, modelling, data science, software engineering, and more.
Here, we present a lightly curated list of things we’ve read recently that tickled our fancy.
Transport
- A scheme to increase public transit ridership in Germany by lowering ticket costs has been hailed as a great success: https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/31/deutschlandticket-germanys-49-ticket-pushes-passenger-numbers-up-25-on-local-train-service
- Paris city hall is to impose higher parking fees on owners of SUVs in its battle to reduce pollution: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/paris-charge-suv-drivers-higher-parking-fees-tackle-auto-besity
- Off-peak public transport travel has recovered to pre-pandemic levels in London, although commuter travel levels are still down, according to TfL:
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/off-peak-travel-on-londons-transport-exceeding-pre-pandemic-levels-64919/
Decarbonisation
- Construction has begun on Dogger Bank, which will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm with the capacity to provide electricity for up to 6 million homes:
https://www.construction-europe.com/news/first-turbine-installation-marks-milestone-for-world-s-largest-offshore-wind-farm/8030978.article - The first “tribrid” trains running on battery, electric and diesel power have been rolled out in Italy, slashing carbon emissions and fuel costs by 50%:
https://www.hitachirail.com/press/#/pressreleases/first-battery-train-in-europe-completes-phase-one-roll-out-3261767 - Research using a calcium titanium oxide mineral in the manufacturing process offers hope of increasing the efficiency limit of solar panels:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2381425-solar-panels-could-be-about-to-get-much-better-at-capturing-sunlight/
Modelling & Cities
- Emergent behaviour plays a significant role in our modelling, so we were intrigued to read about AI agents in a virtual town interacting with each other in surprising ways using natural language generated by an LLM:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/surprising-things-happen-when-you-put-25-ai-agents-together-in-an-rpg-town/ - Researchers at Ohio State University have developed VR software to provide a completely safe environment in which to test real autonomous vehicles using simulated sensor data:
https://news.osu.edu/testing-real-driverless-cars-in-a-virtual-environment/ - Our interest in using agent-based models for transport planning is well documented, but ABMs have broader applications, including calculating the minimum viable size for a Mars colony: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/16/mars_colony_size/
Data Science & Software Engineering
- Kranti Bandi remembers the Manchester Baby, the first stored-program computer, built using ideas from such Computer Science luminaries as Alan Turing and John von Neumann:
https://nextgen-digitalvision.medium.com/remembering-the-manchester-baby-the-first-electronic-digital-computer-to-store-a-program-82a009b7b9d8 - In an attempt to become a leader in AI technology, Japan’s government has effectively abolished copyright for any data used for AI training: https://technomancers.ai/japan-goes-all-in-copyright-doesnt-apply-to-ai-training/
- Clive Thompson on how technical and other constraints spurred the creativity of the designer of the classic Space Invaders arcade game: https://clivethompson.medium.com/design-lessons-from-space-invaders-5bef75fe8f03