This is a research site focused around my interests in Geographical Information Science (GIS) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM).
In the past we have written about using Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) like ChatGPT for coding of models and also analyzing images. One advantage we see for MLLMs is that unlike traditional approaches that require extensive expertise in computational analysis, such as computer vision and deep learning, MLLMs leverage pre-trained capabilities that simplify the analytical process. This…
In the past we have written about how we have used social media to study a plethora of topics with respect the the form and function of cities among many other things. But one thing we have not explored is fear and more specifically fear of crime and how this can be mined through geosocial media . This has now changed with a new paper entitled " Exploring Fear in Urban Environments: Place and…
In a previous post we wrote about how one can mine social media to uncover smells and how they shapes peoples perceptions of urban spaces. Building off this work we ( Qingqing Chen , Ate Poorthuis and myself) have a new paper entitled " Connecting senses: The cross-modal associations between smell and vision in understanding urban environments " published in Geographical Analysis . In this paper…
At the AAG Annual meeting this year, two of my students gave talks about their ongoing research. Ying Zhou presented her work with a talk entitled " Exploring the Relationship between Urban Morphology and People’s Emotions . " In this talk, Ying showed how one could mine social media posts to gain a sense of how different emotions are spatially spread around a city using New York city as a case…
In previous posts, we have written about the generation of synthetic populations based on real world locations, and how such populations can have various types of networks associated with them. We have also written about network generation techniques in the past and keeping with this line of research, Boyu Wang , Taylor Anderson , Andreas Züfle and myself have a new paper in the Journal of Open…
Durring times of crisis, shocks to supply chains can propagate through the entire economy (e.g., global shortages of critical goods, such as personal protective equipment during COVID-19). At the same time, criminal organizations may disrupt and manipulate licit supply chains for financial gain or political objectives. Thus there is a strong need for modeling and simulating not only supply chain…
Over the last summer I participated in a research experience for undergraduate at the University at Buffalo (UB) hosted by the Geologic and Climate Hazards Center . In this program students spent several weeks at UB working with faculty on a diverse set of projects ranging from understanding snow events over the great lakes, forest die off to utilizing crowdsourced data to study dust events . One…
In the past we have written how one can use social media or newspapers to study the world around us. Keeping with this theme of using text we ( Xinyu Fu , Catherine Brinkley , Thomas Sanchez , Chaosu Li and myself) have a new editorial entitled " Not just numbers: Understanding cities through their words " which accompanies a special issue in Environment and Planning B entitled " Leveraging…
In the past we have written about how one can use social media to monitor dust storms along with how multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) can be used to analyze images. At the recent A merican Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting we ( Sage Keidel , Stuart Evans and myself ) brought these two strands of research together in a poster entitled " Creating and Assessing an Unconventional Global…
In the past we have written a number of posts on synthetic populations , however, one thing we have not done is compare the various techniques that can be used to create them. This has now changed with a new paper entitled " Quantitative Comparison of Population Synthesis Techniques " which was recently presented at the 2025 Winter Simulation Conference . In this paper, we ( David Han , Samiul…
In the past we have posted about how we can utilize data and models to explore pandemics and peoples reactions to them. And while interest in the COVID might of waned, there will be future pandemics. To this end, at the 53rd Annual Meeting of NAPCRG we ( Laurene Tumiel Berhalter , Sanchit Goel, Dawn Vanderkooi , Bruce Pitman , Yinyin Ye , Jennifer Surtees and myself) had a poster entitled "…
While we have explored disasters in the past through agent-based models and other computational social science approaches, one area we have not explored is how one can use agent-based models to explore evacuations durring a wild fire event. This has now changed with a new paper with Zhongyu Zhou and myself entitled " Modeling Wildfire Evacuation with Embedded Fuzzy Cognitive Maps: An Agent-Based…
Human mobility datasets are essential for investigating human behavior, mobility patterns, and traffic dynamics. In the past we have written about how one can use agent-based models to generate patterns of life trajectories datasets. Building on this work at the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2025 conference , we ( Hossein Amiri , Richard Yang , Shiyang Ruan , Joon-Seok Kim , Hamdi Kavak , Andrew Crooks , Dieter…
As part of the GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium at the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California we have a call for papers for sessions entitled " Geosimulation and Its Emerging Directions with AI " Call for Papers: Simulating past, present, and future events can empower humans to understand the composition and interactions in complex systems and explain their emergence and evolution…
In a previous post we talked about the potential of Generative AI for urban modeling , keeping with this theme at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Na Jiang , Boyu Wang and myself had a poster entitled Agent-based Models with Large Language Models: Two Modeling Examples. In this poster and extended abstract we detail how LLMs can help with many aspects of…
In the past we have written about how one can study urban shrinkage with a specific emphasis on Detroit from both an agent-based modeling perspective and also from analyzing newspapers through natural language processing Keeping with the theme of Detroit and urban shrinkage we ( Xiaoliang Meng , Yichun Xie , Junyi Wu, Heather Khan Welsh , Shi Zeng and myself) have a new paper entitled " Examining…
In the current issue of Environment and Planning B , we ( Boyu Wang , Na Jiang and myself) have a new editorial entitled " Generative AI and Urban Modeling ". The premise of this editorial is that Generative AI (GenAI) is impacting all aspects of our daily lives and as such has we were wondering how will it impact urban modeling? For example, in the editorial we discuss how GenAI could speed up…
I have just gotten back from attending the 19th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) in London and thought I would share the two papers we presented at the conference. The first paper was with Qingqing Chen and Linda See and was entitled " Using New Sources of Data for Urban Climate Modeling Generated through MLLMs on Street View Imagery . "As the…
This is a slightly different post to normal, in the sense its not really about papers but my take on agent-based modeling, urban analytics and the growth of Artificial Intelligence impacting both. First up, while I was in Santa Fe last October for the 2024 International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas I was interviewed by John Cordier from Epistemix for their…
In the past we have explored how social media can be used to delineate earthquakes , study human-wildlife interactions , understand urban morphology , urban smells or locating wildfires among many other things. Keeping with the last topic (i.e., locating things), in a new paper published in GeoJournal entitled " Crowdsourcing dust storms in the United States utilizing social media data ," Stuart…
Readers might of noticed that recently we have been exploring the use of street view images to explore cities or how we can utilize geosocial media to understand the form of function of cities , but one thing we have not explored is the role of smell and how it shapes peoples perceptions of urban spaces. However, in a new paper recently published in the Annals of the American Association of…
As the AAG has just wrapped up I thought I would write brief (well actually quite long) post on the talks that I was involved with at the conference. These talks would not have been possible without the many great students and colleagues who I have been collaborating with over time. Below you will find a brief summary of the talks and if any sound interesting, please reach out and we can give you…
Last year we put out a call for abstracts for presentations for our sessions Geosimulations for Addressing Societal Challenges . The session description is as follows: There is an urgent need for research that promotes sustainability in an era of societal challenges ranging from climate change, population growth, aging and wellbeing to that of pandemics. These need to be directly fed into policy.…
In the past I have blogged about disasters, but mainly from a social media or agent-based modeling perspective. However, after the devastating wildfires that impacted parts of Los Angeles County earlier this year led me to wonder how resilient are cities to such events? Or more generally, what role could urban analytics play on the various stages of disaster management (i.e., preparation,…
We are delighted to announce a special track on “Integrating Large-Language Models and Geospatial Foundation Models to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in ABMs” as part of the Social Simulation Conference 2025 , 25th to 29th August 2025 at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Full conference details can be found at the end of this email. Abstract for the Special Track: Recent developments in…