Craig Robson made the trip to Vienna for the 8^th GIScience conference, hosted by the Technical University of Vienna (TU). This four day conference, showcasing some of the leading research in the science of geographic information, consisted of a day of workshops and three days of presentations, a poster session and a panel session. Sessions covered a whole host of topics from work related to landcover/use, use and issues of user generated data, spatial analysis and many other areas (see here for programme). The varied nature of the session themes highlights not only the interdisciplinary aspect to the conference, but also the GI science field in which we find ourselves in.

During the conference a number of talks were of particular interest, including a talk on “Detecting Origin-Destination Mobility Flows From Geotagged Tweets in Greater Los Angeles Area”,  which talked about how using tweets from twitter commuting patterns could be mapped for a large area, such as Los Angeles, similar work to that done by Neil Harris for Tyne and Wear (a precursor to the work Craig was presenting).  As well as this a talk on how we can map population distributions, using mobile phone call data, where it is possible to map the shift between weekdays and weekends as well as during holiday periods of the population distributions. The talk used an area of northern France as an example, including Paris, where significant trends, such as shift away from Paris and towards the coast could be seen for example at weekends during the summer as well an increase around tourist locations such as Disneyland Paris. There are too many talks which were of interest to go through, though tracks of particular note included those on Spatial Analysis as well as the key note sessions, with all three providing insights into a different are of GIScience (speakers were Herbert Edelsbrunner, Renee Sieber and Jason Dykes).

Below, the  location for the conference dinner, the Rathaus (the city town hall), a splendid surround showing off the history and culture of the host city (even if it did have the Roncalli circus outside).

Craig himself presented a poster on research undertaken with Neil Harris (with the supervision of Dr Stuart Barr and Phil James) on the spatial and temporal dynamics of critical infrastructures when exposed to perturbations. The poster, the extended abstract and an example failure video are available at/through the above link, or the video can be found directly here.

This was the first of two conferences Craig was attending in Vienna, the second being the second conference on Next Generation Infrastructure, for which a number of staff and fellow students joined him for. A post on this conference will shortly follow.

Craig Robson attended the SCCS conference (Student Conference on Complex Systems), organised by PhD students from the University of Southampton’s Institute for Complex Systems Simulation, hosted by Sussex University (not to be confused with the University of Brighton just the other side of Falmer railway station!). With a selection of workshops on the Tuesday afternoon to kick the conference off, it started well and continued in the same fashion. Professor Mark Newman began a series of four key note sessions which would run throughout the conference, talking about some of his work on complex networks (providing a good introduction for those who were less than familiar with the field of network science), while providing thoughtful insight into the on complex networks research.

The second day was opened by a key note presentation from Gilbert on ‘Quality in computational modelling’, providing some useful thoughts on ensuring research results are statistically valid. Following this saw the beginning of the student presentations, with four sessions running in parallel offering a wide and varied selection of topics to the 200+ delegates in attendance for the rest of the day. Sessions ranged from ‘Language and Social Dynamics’, to ‘Swarm Robotics’ through to ‘Network Science Applications’. With 48 presentations in total there was no end of choice and from a range of complex systems related fields, with presenters mostly PhD students. The second day was closed by the third keynote, Henrik Jensen, speaking on ‘emergent collective behaviour’ with reference to neuroscience and ecology.

The final academic day of the conference saw the completion of the academic track of the conference with a further 36 presentations and a key note from Eors Szathmary on ‘growth, selection, evolution and learning’. Sandwiched between these were two panel sessions; the first based around careers, and the second the area of complex science and how this will/is evolving. The panels consisted on invited speakers and guests from a range of backgrounds, including academia and business. These provided a wider view of the applicability of complex systems science to the wider world and the future direction which the field may take.

To round the conference of the obligatory conference dinner followed, held at the Grand Hotel, with a SpaceDog chosen to provide the music for evening, something which certainly made the dinner stand out from other such events.

When in Brighton…

And the slightly better one…

While in attendance Craig gave an oral presentation.

From the 18-22 February 2013 the Adaptation Training School (COST Action TU-0902) was held in Bilbao, Spain. The main objective of the training school was to generate basic knowledge for adaptation management in beginner cities. It also aimed to provide an opportunity to identify key policy needs to overcome difficulties for adaptation implementation at local level, helping scientific agents to scope and align their research with those needs.

Each day was split into to three main sections; firstly a group of presentations in the morning, with secondly a practical exercise in the afternoon (outlined before).

On the Monday sessions were led by Efrén Feliu, and some of his colleagues from Tecnalia in which an overview of the week’s timetable, as well as to an introduction to vulnerability assessment. Tuesday consisted of presentation & a practical exercise from Astrid Westerlind Wigström on the Adaptation Management cycle. In addition Birgit Georgi discussed policies, initiatives, tools and upcoming EU Adaptation Strategy. Wednesday Juergen Kropp introduced uncertainty management and Alistair Ford discussing integrated assessment of urban sustainability, including a practical exercise.  Thursday Johannes Flacke outlined co-benefits and trade- and Peter Bosch provided information and a practical on integrating adaptation in land use and urban planning. Friday’s presentations were: green Infrastructures and ecosystem services role in adaptation measures (Kari Oinonen); regeneration of Bilbao; Urban metabolism and industrial ecology (Rolf Bohne); and Economics of adaptation (Graham Floater).

Finally a discussion focusing on both; the key take home messages from the day’s work, and how the scientific community can aid local authorities in initiating such programs. These discussions had familiar themes, such as: practitioners being unaware of the tools that exist; language differences; a lack of expertise to produce maps, etc., required for decision making purposes; a “gap” between scientists and local authorities.

Various ideas to counter these issues were also discussed, with the idea of knowledge mapping of tools and research seen as an important step to allow for beginner cities to start on the road of climate change adaptation, as well as the age old need for science to be presented in a useful form for those who are to apply it. A further suggestion was to address a funding gap which may exist been when a research project is completed and the dissemination of methods to local authorities. It was proposed that funding applications in the future could be adapted to include the resources to allow academics to spend time with practitioners at the end of a project to increase the likelihood of ideas to be implemented.

The training school, in my opinion, was an initial success as it brought representatives of sixteen European cities together (with four early career researchers) to discuss how cities could begin to adapt to climate change. Although, if it is to be seen as a long term success these cities must assimilate what they have learnt and implement it within planning and policy to allow for adaptation to take place.

Shaun Brown