PURBA 2013 - The Third International Workshop on Pervasive Urban Applications

The Third International Workshop on Pervasive Urban Applications
Organizers: Francesco Calabrese, Giusy di Lorenzo, Dominik Dahlem, Santi Phithakkitnukoon, and Neal Lathia
Workshop website: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/events/purba2013/
Over the past decade, the development of digital networks and operations has produced an unprecedented wealth of information. Handheld electronics, location devices, telecommunications networks, and a wide assortment of tags and sensors are constantly producing a rich stream of data reflecting various aspects of urban life. This constant stream of 0s and 1s allows unprecedented research opportunities. Through phone calls we can see cities making bold ‘handshakes’ during business hours, and then becoming introverted during the evening. With SMS texts, we can capture crowds cheering and sharing their emotional highs in special events. These digital traces also reveal the migratory magnetism of coastal city hotspots and the drudgery of a gridlocked commute. For urban planners and designers, these accumulations of digital traces are valuable sources of data in capturing the pulse of the city in an astonishing degree of temporal and spatial detail. Yet this condition of the hybrid city ? which operates simultaneously in the digital and physical realms ? also poses difficult questions about privacy, scale, and design, among many others. These questions must be addressed as we move toward achieving an augmented, fine-grained understanding of how the city functions ? socially, economically and yes, even psychologically.