Resilient Cities and Urban Analytics: The Role of Big Data and High Performance Pervasive Computing

Abstract

Developing practical informatics tools and decision support environments to analyze socio-technical systems that support our cities is complicated and scientifically challenging. The increased urbanization across the globe, specifically in the developing countries poses further challenges. Recent quantitative changes in high performance and pervasive computing, Bigdata and network science have created new opportunities for collecting, integrating, analyzing and accessing information related to coupled urban socio-technical systems. Innovative information systems that leverage this new capability have already proved immensely useful. After a brief overview, I will describe an urban analytics approach rooted in synthetic information, pervasive high performance computing and data analytics to study resilient and sustainable cities. Examples in public health epidemiology and urban transport planning and security will be used to guide the discussion. Computational challenges and directions for future research will be discussed.