Conveners

Dr Ying Jin (Architecture, University of Cambridge)
Dr Tony Hargreaves (Architecture, University of Cambridge)
Co-ordinated by Marion Houston

Scientific Committee

Professor Marcial Echenique (Architecture, University of Cambridge)
Professor Mike Batty (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL)
Professor Michael Wegener (Spiekermann & Wegener Urban and Regional Research, Dortmund)

Conference Summary

AUM2012 is the second of a planned series of annual symposia for discussing applied urban simulation models that offer insight into complex dynamics of urban change and inform practical initiatives. AUM2012 aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines, professional institutions and government agencies in many countries. The cross-fertilisation of ideas is expected to serve as a springboard for innovation in urban modelling at different levels – from conceptual experiments to policy appraisal.

AUM2012 will continue to focus on models of large city regions, especially their applications in addressing grand challenges such as energy and climate change. It is open to all model types and styles, with papers welcomed that assess different pathways towards energy efficient and climate wise cities, where system-level thinking is still hampered by a lack of common understanding of the theories and tools. We have also welcomed papers that report innovations in methods and techniques.

The preceding 2011 symposium showed that the format was effective in facilitating an in-depth understanding of the state of the art across model types and styles, and of possibilities to link and interface the models for tackling policy questions. We hope the discussions will lead to meta-analyses that systematically compare model specifications, mechanisms, scenario inputs and policy assessment outputs. An example of such meta-analyses is Wegener (2010) [click here]. The meta-analyses will run concurrently with the symposium series and we look forward to hearing from urban modellers who wish to contribute to it.