Decisions made in designing and changing urban environments have long lasting and far reaching impacts. As urban environments grow and adapt understanding the impact of these decisions becomes increasingly difficult. Decision makers need near-real-time assesments of proposed changes and developments to make informed choices.

Urban Systems Framework

The Urban Systems Framework will enable near-real-time modeling of large urban areas at scale by connecting the many domain specific models that exist or will be developed. These models utilize different data storage methods as well as different spacial and time scales that will need to be overcome. In addition they will need to be coupled in such a way that they can be used as a single tool by decision makers to simulate the effects of proposed developments and changes.

HPC techniques are needed to manage the size and complexity of this modeling framework.

Domain Models

UrbanSim

UrbanSim is developed at the University of Washington (http://urbansim.org) and is used to simulate household and job placements based on factors such as growth, zoning and accessibility.

A parallel version of UrbanSim has been developed at ASU and is being integrated into the overall framework.

TRANSIMS

We use the transportation analysis simulation system developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory to simulate traffic flow and pathways on the Phoenix Metro roadways.

TRANSIMS is a parallel application which is being integrated into the overall framework.

Pathway

Pathway models the water treatment process on the molecular level, allowing us to simulate water quality post-treatment.

Pathway is being developed at ASU, with scalability being designed in from the start.

More Information

For more information contact Nathan Kerr.