Quadtrees Hub#3

Tuesday 17th of December, our third Quadtrees Hub will take place – to discuss ongoing research in quantitative methods, urban analytics and spatial data from both the Urban Development and Mobility Dpt of LISER and the Dpt of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg. The aim is to share and discuss research in progress. Quadtrees’hubs are open to anyone interested and somehow familiar with some quantitative techniques and willing to progress with these. Please contact Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth for information.

HUB #3

When? 17th of December 2019 14h-16h.

Where? Map Room (next to GIS room) 1st floor MSH, Belval.

14h-15h : Marlène Boura : Landscape typology of urban forest ecosystem services across European urban areas

In this talk we will present a typology of more that 800 Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). Urban areas are clustered regarding spatial metrics associated to different urban forest ecosystem services (ES) potentials and threats.

Urban areas exhibit a large variety of patterns which may affect differently the potential of ES. ES are essentials to counteract the urban pressure on the environment and its impact on the well-being of its inhabitants. Yet, the effects of the relative spatial arrangement of vegetation, forests and water bodies, with respect to the artificial urban lands on potential ES are still not systematically analysed.

We propose a typology, based on the intra-urban structure of cities and the associated ES potentials coming from the urban forest. More particularly, we investigate the share of different land uses and the distance between human settlements, forests and the other vegetated lands as well as their relative spatial distribution within urban settlements. We then use spatial metrics as proxies for urban ES associated with urban forests – e.g., micro and macro climate regulation, air pollution removal, rainwater runoff, mental and physical health. The typology is created using an unsupervised machine learning approach (clustering) with standardized spatial metrics as input data.

15h-16h : Kaarel Sikk : Model exploration with OpenMole software

In the talk we discuss model exploration techniques and present them using dedicated OpenMole software. The talk focuses on sensitivity analysis and calibration of spatial Agent-based simulation models. Some other model exploration techniques are described. 

To do so we are using an ABM simulation of hunter-gatherer central place foraging model. The model was developed based on traditional aspatial analytical model coming from the domain of human behavioural ecology. Spatial ABM implementation added opportunity of testing the model with heterogeneous environments. With presented examples I am testing models robustness to environment heterogeneity generating random environments with different spatial autocorrelations. 

For robustness testing we present a input space exploration experiment with Sobol sampling over the parameter space. We are also exploring ideas designing an origin search experiment by extending traditional model calibration techniques.