Digital Connector: integrating hard and soft models to solve urban challenges

未来城市弹射器是一个专注于城市创新挑战的全球卓越中心：城市如何在规划和运营方式上采取更有凝聚力的方法。综合城市建模是实现这一目标的关键能力，它将人类行为（如社会活动和流动性）与建筑环境（街道、建筑物、公用设施和公园）的设计和管理结合起来。在城市系统和政策制定中，决策通常是相互依赖的，然而，这一点很少反映在当今模式的发展和应用方式上。这些模型通常是在学科竖井中创建和应用的，它们使用不同细节级别的数据，在不同的时间来源和以不同的格式存储，是完全不同的和断开的。这导致城市规划、设计和运营效率低下。即使在集成时，它们也是以定制的方式完成的，需要从头开始与其他模型的后续集成。该项目的关键创新将是创建一个开源数字连接器，用于集成硬模型和软模型、数据集和可视化，而不需要对模型进行基本的修改或重构数据输入。将围绕数字连接器构建模块化框架，以促进现有和未来模型的开发和融合。该框架还允许模型在开发后以各种组合进行耦合和解耦，从而确保可扩展性。关键的技术挑战是数据标准框架的识别和规范、不同类型模型的集成以及解决方案的可视化，以识别依赖关系和重用输入和输出。连接器将是一组数据模式、接口和服务，可用于以一致的方式集成模型。我们将在利兹、格林尼治和米尔顿凯恩斯等合作城市和城镇中应用连接器来应对各种挑战。我们将测试和验证技术、流程和软件，以整合不同的数据格式、模型类型和可视化。在交付方面，我们与Space Syntax合作，这是一家提供经济、规划和设计咨询的领先中小企业，他们提供50多个城市和10个地区的空间网络模型，以及22个城市8000多个步行和自行车运动地点。开发的代码将是开源的（OS），知识，建模和数据框架将通过城市建模研究所（UMI）公开发布和管理，该研究所是作为项目一部分创建的组织，以确保开发工作的持续更新和遗产。这将使一个由相关学者、行业专家、软件开发人员和最终用户组成的社区能够指导和进一步开发工具，更重要的是，开发新产品和服务，并围绕它们提供咨询服务。

The Future Cities Catapult is a global centre of excellence focusing on the challenge of urban innovation: how cities can take a more cohesive approach to the way that they plan and operate. Integrated urban modelling is a key capability to achieve this, integrating human behaviours, such as social activity and mobility, with the design and management of the built environment - streets, buildings, utilities and parks. In urban systems and policy-making, decisions are typically dependent on one another, however, this is seldom reflected in the way today’s models are developed and applied. These models are often created and applied in disciplinary silos, they are disparate and disconnected using data at different levels of detail, sourced at different times and stored in different formats. This leads to inefficiencies across city planning, design and operation. Even when integrated, they are done so in a bespoke way, requiring subsequent integration with other models to be started again from scratch. The key innovation to be delivered by the project will be the creation of an open source digital connector for the integration of both hard and soft models, datasets and visualisations without the requirement for fundamental reworking of the models or reconstitution of data inputs. A modular framework will be constructed around the digital connector to facilitate development and fusion of existing and future models. The framework will also allow for models to be coupled and decoupled in various combinations once developed, ensuring extensibility. The key technical challenge is the identification and specification of standard frameworks for data, integration of different types of models and visualisation of solutions to identify dependencies and reuse inputs and outputs. The connector will be a set of data schemas, interfaces and services that can be used to integrate models in a consistent way. We will apply the connector to various challenges in our partner cities and towns, which include Leeds, Greenwich and Milton Keynes. We will test and validate the techniques, processes and software to integrate different data formats, model types and visualisations. For delivery, we are partnering with Space Syntax, a leading SME providing economics, planning, and design consulting, who bring spatial network models of over 50 cities and 10 regions, and more than 8,000 locations of pedestrian and cycle movement in 22 cities. The code developed will be Open Source (OS) and the intellectual, modelling and data frameworks will be openly published and managed via the Urban Modelling Institute (UMI), an organisation created as part of the project to ensure continued updates and legacy of the work developed. This will enable a community of relevant academics, industry experts, software developers and end users to guide and further develop the tools, and importantly, develop new products and services, as well as provide consulting services around them.