Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 15: Focus Session: Cities as complex systems

SOE 15.12: Talk

Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 18:00–18:15, GÖR 226

Tracking urban evolution - a way to investigate allometric scaling over time? — Hendrik Herold, •Robert Hecht, and Martin Behnisch — Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development Dresden, Germany

Studying cities as complex systems requires reliable data on their spatial structure and development. Available remote sensing-based datasets allow for following the urban growth since the 70ies on a global scale. However, most of the urban development in European and most of North American cites has taken place before this era. In this work, we present an approach for delineating the physical structure, in particular the city borders, from digitized historical topographic maps. This includes a generic image analysis part as well as an uncertainty modeling component. Germany is the testbed for this study. The approach enables to track the urban evolution back to the era of the beginning of the trigonometric survey and hence back to the beginning industrialization. This data allows to measure the degree of urbanization and in particular urban sprawling on a long-term perspective. This could also form the basis for investigating the allometric scaling of cities over time.