RIDIR: Collaborative Research: Portal to Data and Analysis Tools (P->DAT): Enabling Data-Intensive Research in the Urban Sciences on Linked, Large-Scale Records

该项目将创建一个新的数据、分析工具和研究的在线门户，推动城市科学的发展，提高数字时代城市治理的能力。数据和分析工具门户，或“P？DAT是建立在波士顿地区研究倡议（Boston Area Research Initiative）的基础上的，这是一个大学间的合作伙伴关系，负责开展全面的城市研究议程。该门户将整合大波士顿地区跨时间和空间的大规模行政、社交媒体和移动电话数据；开发分析工具，将数据转化为可供研究的形式；并创建一个交互式上下文，在其中可以浏览、合并、映射、分析和下载数据。在线门户网站将提供一个实时窗口，了解城市的社会、行为和经济动态，从而允许用户解决以前无法解决的城市科学领域的广泛问题。因为像波士顿这样的城市构成了一个舞台，几乎所有的人类行为都在这个舞台上发生，并在构成城市景观的社区和社会背景的多样性中发挥作用，P？data不仅能增进我们对城市的理解，还能更广泛地理解人类行为和社会。将在在线门户网站中统一的数据源包括公民对政府服务的数百万个请求（按类型）、犯罪事件、突发卫生事件、长期以来的人口普查数据、数百万个社交媒体帖子、公共和私人交通工具的使用以及手机使用的GPS跟踪。为了使这些数据可访问，P？DAT将开发分析工具，即“经济计量学”，将原始数据转化为可靠有效的测量方法，以衡量波士顿大都市区生态的物理和社会特征，无论是地址、街道还是社区。自动生成这些度量，然后根据共享的地理参考合并它们的工具将成为门户基础设施和文档的重要组成部分，创建一个累积的知识体系，并促进跨数据源的分析。该项目还将通过解决关于城市进程的社会结构和动态的核心科学问题，展示数据门户的效用。需要研究的理论动机问题包括社区如何在社会和物理上组织的来源和后果，社区之间社会和经济交流的性质（例如，通勤模式和人类活动流动），以及城市机构（例如，警察，学校，卫生机构）如何与当地社区互动。所有分析结果和数据将以可用的形式公开给研究人员和决策者。

This project will produce a new online portal of data, analytic tools, and research studies that will advance the urban sciences and improve the capacity for urban governance in the digital age. The Portal to Data and Analysis Tools, or ¡§P?³DAT,¡¨ builds on the Boston Area Research Initiative, an inter-university partnership that conducts a comprehensive urban research agenda. The portal will integrate large-scale administrative, social media, and mobile phone data across time and space in greater Boston; develop analytic tools that transform the data into research-ready forms; and create an interactive context where the data can be browsed, merged, mapped, analyzed, and downloaded. The online portal will offer a real-time window into the social, behavioral, and economic dynamics of the city, thus permitting users to address a broad range of questions in the urban sciences that previously they could not. Because cities like Boston constitute a stage upon which nearly all aspects of human behavior occur, played out across the diversity of neighborhoods and social contexts that constitute the urban landscape, P?³DAT will not only advance our understanding of the city, but also of human behavior and society more broadly. The data sources that will be united in the online portal include millions of requests by citizens for government services (by type), crime incidents, health emergencies, census data over time, millions of social media posts, both public and private transportation use, and GPS tracking of cell phone use. To make these data accessible, P?³DAT will develop analytic tools, or ¡§ecometrics,¡¨ that will translate the raw data into reliable and valid measures of the physical and social characteristics of the Boston metropolitan area¡¦s ecology, be it an address, street, or neighborhood. Tools that automatically generate these measures and then merge them according to shared geographic referents will be a critical part of the portal¡¦s infrastructure and documentation, creating a cumulative body of knowledge and facilitating analysis across data sources. The project will also demonstrate the utility of the data portal by addressing core scientific questions on the social structure and dynamics of the urban processes. Theoretically motivated questions to be studied include the sources and consequences of how neighborhoods are socially and physically organized, the nature of social and economic exchanges between neighborhoods (e.g., commuting patterns and human activity flows), and how the institutions of a city (e.g., police, schools, health agencies) interact with local neighborhoods. All analysis results and data will be made public in a usable form to both researchers and policymakers.