Jayanth Raghothama

Gaming, Urban Planning and Transportation Design Process

In today’s urban planning, two perspectives dominate the discourse: a technical-rational perspective and a communicative rational perspective. Bridging the dichotomy between the two perspectives and situating new planning support methods within the context of complexity theories leads to new structures for planning support systems. The implications of the inherent complex nature of planning when bridging these perspectives should be taken into account for new planning processes and support systems. The development of such methods requires an iterative cycle between methodological and technological aspects of tool development. The chapter presents a technical framework that enables the development of methods integrating both perspectives. The framework derives its requirements from the integration of the two perspectives, and is evaluated in the context of two design case studies in the cities of Stockholm and Paris. The development of the framework and method has implications for the design of tools in urban planning. The tools need to reflect the open nature of the complex systems they represent and operate in. Such methods also expand the boundaries of the design space, allowing for previously unknown configurations.

A review of gaming simulation in transportation

Gaming simulation has proven to be an invaluable method for experimentation and learning and exploring scenarios in various fields of policy making. In this paper, we present a case for the use of gaming simulation in transportation analysis. We also present a review of games and gaming simulation in transportation analysis. We observe that gaming simulation is not widely used in transportation, despite its wide use in associated fields.

Distributed, integrated and interactive traffic simulations

Mainstream discourse in urban planning is in transition, due to shifts from a technical to a communicative perspective, and increased scrutiny and criticism of models and simulations. The cognizance of complexity in urban systems is imposing limitations on modeling. The added benefits of todays data and computational power make simulations harder to validate and understand. Reconciling the movements towards a communicative and exploratory approach as compared to a technical and predictive approach requires new methods for planning process and posits new requirements and functions for simulations. Based on distributed simulation and gaming simulation, the paper presents a framework to support the exploration of simulated and realistic virtual worlds in a participatory fashion, enabling new approaches to urban planning. The development and evaluation of the framework casts simulations in a new perspective and explores the context of use of simulations in planning and design.

Architectures for distributed, interactive and integrated traffic simulations

The rapid development of Intelligent Transport Systems has created new objectives and requirements for traffic simulation models. The development of visualization, procedural modeling, decision support requirements mean that simulation models need to satisfy different requirements. The chapter presents methods and tools to create distribute, integrated and interactive transport simulations, to enable the holistic exploration of complex transport systems, to test different strategies for monitoring and control and for training personnel. The integrated simulation is built leveraging gaming technologies, integrating commercial or off-the-shelf simulations using methods from distributed simulation and procedural modeling techniques.

Analytics on public transport delays with spatial big data

The increasing pervasiveness of location-aware technologies is leading to the rise of large, spatio-temporal datasets and to the opportunity of discovering usable knowledge about the behaviors of people and objects. Applied extensively in transportation, spatial big data and its analytics can deliver useful insights on a number of different issues such as congestion, delays, public transport reliability and so on. Predominantly studied for its use in operational management, spatial big data can be used to provide insight in strategic applications as well, from planning and design to evaluation and management. Such large scale, streaming spatial big data can be used in the improvement of public transport, for example the design of public transport networks and reliability. In this paper, we analyze GTFS data from the cities of Stockholm and Rome to gain insight on the sources and factors influencing public transport delays in the cities. The analysis is performed on a combination of GTFS data with data from other sources. The paper points to key issues in the analysis of real time data, driven by the contextual setting in the two cities.

A Feasibility Study for Gamification in Transport Maintenance: Requirements to Implement Gamification in Heterogeneous Organizations

Gamification has been successfully applied in many domains, but mostly for simple, isolated and operational tasks. The hope for gamification as a method to radically change and improve behavior, to provide incentives for sustained engagement has proven to be more difficult to get right. Applying gamification in large networked organizations with heterogeneous tasks remains a challenge. Applying gamification in such enterprise environments posits different requirements, and a match between these requirements and the institution needs to be investigated before venturing into the design and implementation of gamification. The current paper contributes a study where the authors investigate the feasibility of implementing gamification in Trafikverket, the Swedish transport administration. Through an investigation of the institutional arrangements around data collection, procurement processes and links to institutional structures, the study finds areas within Trafikverket where gamification could be successfully applied, and suggests gaps and methods to apply gamification in other areas.

Indian Food Supply Chains: a Game and Model to Study Economic Behavior

Food supply chains are vital for the societal welfare in India. Given the tremendous issues on food safety and security, more insight in the function of Indian food markets is needed. This paper introduces the multi-agent model on which the Mango Mandi Gaming Simulation is build. The model holds the major roles present in the Indian mango markets, and is in both it structure and processes built upon case studies of these markets. The interaction with human players, who can take over a role in the simulation model, is specified. Applications are identified, and a road map for validation is laid out.

Bridging borders : Integrating data analytics, modeling, simulation, and gaming for interdisciplinary assessment of health aspects in city networks

The health perspective in urban science brings new methodological challenges to planning of city networks. Due to the system of systems nature of healthcare, new methods are needed to facilitate disciplinary integration and management of models and models-of-models. Participation of stakeholders and policy makers demands the uptake of new methods and a new perspective on the use of interfaces and boundary objects. In this chapter, the authors discuss evidence from five projects that use gaming, simulation, modeling, and data analytics in unconventional ways for design of large-scale urban systems to provide a methodological path forward for overcoming traditional engineering approach issues.

ProtoWorld ---A Simulation Based Gaming Environment to Model and Plan Urban Mobility

This workshop will offer the participants the opportunity to explore and test a gaming environment integrating simulation data from different sources. The participants will model and play different mobility options for five European cities. The ProtoWorld solution integrates different simulations and street maps in Unity and allows a playful experience in urban mobility planning. The software will be available for the participants also after the workshop for further experimentation.