Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 5: Focus Session: Big Data

SOE 5.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 26, 2012, 15:00–15:30, HE 101

Cities and Complexity — •Michael Batty — CASA, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

Cities, like many human systems, evolve as the product of a multitude of individual decisions concerning location and movement, generating order that emerges from the bottom up. In the last decade, they have been used as exemplars par excellence of many features that now define the complexity sciences: interacting dynamic systems, far-from-equilibrium, with strong path dependence, and surprising and novel behaviours. Cities are thus the crucibles of innovation in the economy and society and have become ever more central to the way we articulate our understanding of human systems. In parallel to these concerns, cities appear to becoming even more complex. New forms of behaviour are being generated largely through the development of new information technologies which enable individuals to communicate in countless novel ways a for example in the development of social media, while new forms of city-wide data are emerging as ICT is being fashioned into new systems underpinning the wired city. Transport of all kinds if being revolutionized by the import of ICT and in the near future, it is likely that the development of new forms of urban econophysics dealing with urban markets for land, housing as well as specific markets involving the production and consumption of goods at the spatial level will become the subject of the city focus. In this talk, I will summarise three of these developments: cities and the complexity sciences the rise of big data and the city, and smart cities.