1 Year – MRes Project – Data Driven Cities

Towns and cities have structures which have evolved around human activities, in some cases for centuries, their style and form being dictated by the requirements of those who live there and events affecting the city. This project will use a range of data sources, principally Open StreetMap, but also data from property taxation, censuses or transport networks to build models of cities in order to analyse their structure and support development by suggesting possible changes.

The principle development task within this project will be to develop a simple software metric capable of assessing the range of facilities available to a household by various travel modes and within a range of time and distance constraints, using Open Streetmap data. For example the tool may be asked to identify all of the points of interest within a 15 minute walking distance of an address or all of those within a 30 minute public transport ride of an address. Copies of the tool, when deployed in parallel, onto a high performance cluster will be able to assess many addresses with many criterion and build up a model of how the city supports neighbourhood living and how accessible resources are to households.

Once you have modelled the city you will then go on to apply optimisation techniques to suggest the next round of developments that will improve the quality of life for those who live there, by better locating resources within the city, as well as potentially altering transport networks. You will develop optimisation techniques based on Illumination Algorithms which will suggest possible changes to the planners and highlight the costs and benefits of changes to planners. The techniques employed for optimisation will be based on earlier work described in [Urquhart-2019].

You will be expected to contribute to, and co-author at least one peer-reviewed academic publication as a result of this work.

Academic qualifications

A first degree (at least a 2.1) in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related field.

English Language Requirement:

IELTS score must be at least 6.5 (with no less than 6.0 in each of the four components), Other equivalent English language qualifications will be accepted. Full details of the University’s policy are available online.

Essential Attributes

• Confident software developer
• Excellent communication and writing skills
• Good time management and a willingness to learn new skills

Desirable Attributes

• Python development skills
• An interest in urban development
• Experience of working with geo-spatial data
• Experience of working with high-performance computing clusters

The application must include: 

• Statement no longer than 1 page describing your motivations and fit with the project.
• Recent and complete curriculum vitae. The curriculum must include a declaration regarding the English language qualifications of the candidate.
• Supporting documents will have to be submitted by successful candidates.
• Two academic references (but if you have been out of education for more than three years, you may submit one academic and one professional reference), on the form can be downloaded here.

Applications can be submitted here. To be considered, the application must use:

• the advertised title as project title