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Urban Activity Explorer: Visual Analytics and Planning Support Systems

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Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures (CUPUM 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((LNGC))

Abstract

Urban Activity Explorer is a new prototype for a planning support system that uses visual analytics to understand mobile social media data. Mobile social media data are growing at an astounding rate and have been studied from a variety of perspectives. Our system consists of linked visualizations that include temporal , spatial and topical data, and is well suited for exploring multiple scenarios. It allows a wide latitude for exploration, verification and knowledge generation as a central feature of the system. For this work, we used a database of approximately 1,000,000 geolocated tweets over a two-month period in Los Angeles. Urban Activity Explorer’s usage of visual analytic principles is uniquely suited to address the issues of inflexibility in data systems that led to planning support systems. We demonstrate that mobile social media can be a valuable and complementary source of information about the city.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 1306 Ivy Meadows Dr. #511, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Alireza Karduni & Eric Sauda

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, USA

    Isaac Cho, Wewen Dou & William Ribarsky

  3. School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University, Bristol, USA

    Ginette Wessel

Authors
  1. Alireza Karduni
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  2. Isaac Cho
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  3. Ginette Wessel
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  4. Wewen Dou
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  5. William Ribarsky
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  6. Eric Sauda
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alireza Karduni .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Human Geography and Planning, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Stan Geertman

  2. School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Andrew Allan

  3. UNSW Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Chris Pettit

  4. School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

    John Stillwell

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Karduni, A., Cho, I., Wessel, G., Dou, W., Ribarsky, W., Sauda, E. (2017). Urban Activity Explorer: Visual Analytics and Planning Support Systems. In: Geertman, S., Allan, A., Pettit, C., Stillwell, J. (eds) Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures. CUPUM 2017. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57819-4_4

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