PhD Studentships in Computer Simulation of Urban Planning

UK. Cardiff University.

3 Years PhD studentships offered by the university under Cardiff University’s Richard Whipp Studentships Scheme. This project offers an exciting opportunity for a high-calibre PhD student to work on interdisciplinary research in Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning and Cardiff School of Computer Science.

A major challenge in both the developed and the developing worlds is to manage the growth of towns and cities in a manner that meets the economic and social requirements of citizens and of governments, while at the same time maintaining a sustainable environment. The development policies of national and regional levels of government aim to achieve this balance but,in practice, it is necessary to wait some years to find out whether policy objectives are met. There is a long tradition of computer simulations that model the expected growth of population centres with a view to increasing the chances of meeting development objectives.

Many urban simulation methodologies developed to date have proved to be either too simplistic or too complex. The purpose of the proposed research is to develop novel computer simulation methods that take an agent- or call-based approach and improve upon existing methods with regard to computational efficiency, theoretical justification, methodological transparency and representative accuracy. This is likely to involve working with existing extensive data sources of cities and developing calibrated and evaluated models.

Most research to date in the field or urban simulation has been based within geography and planning departments using a relatively limited set of simulation tools. The studentship, and the link between the Schools of Computer Science and City and Regional Planning, has the potential to help move the subject forward by exploiting computer knowledge that can be applied to develop more effective simulation techniques.

The studenships provides funding for three years, commencing session 2006/7. For each of the three years, the University will meet the costs of the National Minimum Doctoral Stipend and the Cardiff fee at the home/EUrate (although non-EU applicants are also welcome to apply).