Sir Alan Wilson, Regional Science, Operations Research, and the Future of Cities

I returned last night from Europe where I spent the last 3 weeks at 3 different conferences and transiting between them. During this period I was privy not only to major current events but also history in the making since I was in Greece during the financial crisis (and ultimate bailout)  and even in Vienna where US Secretary of State John Kerry helped in the successful Iran nuclear negotiations.

This past week, I had the pleasure of taking part in the EURO 2015 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which I have blogged about, and, on Tuesday, I was privileged to hear Professor Alan Wilson  of the University College London deliver his keynote talk on the Future of Cities in the beautiful Barony Hall, which was packed. He is the Professor of Urban Regional Systems. His extensive, wide-ranging contributions are both in research as well as in administration.

Sir Wilson began his talk by stating that "he secretly thought that he always was an Operations Researcher," and then stated that he is an Operations Researcher.

Coincidentally,  I know of his work through Regional Science and both Sir Alan Wilson and I were elected Fellows of the RSAI (Regional Science Association International) in the same year - in 2007!

Sir Wilson's passion is cities, since he is concerned with the biggest of big problems.

I so much enjoyed his plenary talk in which in emphasized nonlinearities, complex systems, and the high level of interdependencies in cities (just think of population and infrastructure, for example). He also emphasized the importance of transportation and networks and how infrastructur ties issues of population with the economics of cities.

He stated that his view as a math modeler is "to explore different futures for cities."

In his plenary, he also mentioned the role of engineers in transportation planning in the US so I have to note again the recent book by Professors David Boyce (who is both an INFORMS Fellow and an RSAI Fellow) and Huw Williams, Forecasting Urban Travel, which I have written about on this blog.  You can view Professor Boyce's presentation on 60 years of travel demand forecasting in which he notes the work of Alan Wilson here. 

Those of you who were listening closely to Sir Alan Wilson's plenary lecture, may have heard him mention Professor Suzanne Evans. Back in 2003, at a Regional Science conference, Suzanne Evans, joined me, Professor David Boyce, and Hani S. Mahmassani (well-known in transportation science and OR ) on a panel to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the network classic, Studies in the Economics of Transportation, by Beckmann (who was on my dissertation committee at Brown University), McGuire, and Winsten. You can see photos and presentation if you scroll down on this page.

Sir Wilson, in his ketnte, emphasized 6 challenges of cities in the United Kingdom, and stated that the challenges also apply to other cities and I agree. Specifically, he noted the challenges as being: people (demography), city economcs, the environment and sustainability, urban form (land use and green belts, which I am so passionate about), infrastructure, and governance.  He noted that the UK is very centralized and cities are pushing for more decentralization and autonomy.

As a math modeller, Wilson emphasized the high dimensionality of the problems associated with cities and discussed various scenarios for the future of London with powerful graphical displays. One scenario was what would happen if  "we killed off the car." Since I have done a lot of work on projected dynamical systems, I enjoyed hearing him speak about Lotka-Volterra dynamics (and relationships even to retail and hospitals), path dependence on initial conditions, forecasting challenges, and the importance of capturing uncertainty in dynamics.

And, since I had been in London, just a few days before travelinng to Edinburgh and then Glasgow, I have to include in this post one of my favorite green spaces in a city - Hyde Park in London.

Many thanks to the organizers of the great EURO conference in Glasgow for bringing to us such outstanding plenary speakers and many other presenters. It was an honor and delight to take part in it!

Networks: Energy, Cities and the Control of Complex Systems

Last May, I had the pleasure of speaking in warm and beautiful Erice, Sicily on Sustainable Supply Chain Networks for Sustainable Cities, as part of the Workshop on Energy, Cities, and Control of Complex Systems organized by Drs. Adilson Motter and Robert Schock.

The workshop was the 47th Session of the International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies Energy, Cities, and the Control of Complex Systems,

I posted some photos of the venue at the Ettore Majorana Scientific Centre, the workshop participants, and the sights (and even food)  along with some reflections on this blog.

Now, I am very pleased to share with you that, through the efforts of Dr. Schock and Dr. Motter, the report on the workshop findings is now posted. Also, all the presentations are also posted. Thanks to the organizers of this great workshop as well as to the Energy Permanent Monitoring Panel, which is part of the  World Federation of Scientists, for providing a homebase for our report and all the presentations.

A direct link to my presentation is here.

I guess the audience enjoyed my presentation (and I certainly did theirs) since I was invited to speak on the topic again in Berlin, Germany next month.

We are having discussions on a possible follow on workshop, which is certainly needed, so stayed tuned and stay warm! 

Terrific Energy, Cities, and Complex Systems Workshop in Magical Erice, Sicily

Last week I was in beautiful Erice, Sicily, where I had been once before, back in 2006, also for a workshop.

This time, I was an invited speaker at the Workshop on Energy, Cities, and Control of Complex Systems organized by Drs. Adilson Motter and Robert Schock.  Dr. Motter is a Professor at Northwestern University and Dr. Schock is a Senior Fellow on Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Berkeley.  Dr. Schock, this past week, received an honorary degree from his undergrad alma mater, Colorado College, so congratulations are in order! In the photo above I am standing with Dr. Schock who has a PhD from RPI.

The venue for the workshop was the Ettore Majorana Scientific Center, which was originally 4 monasteries with the bells pealing regularly to remind us of that point.

The workshop convened physicists, engineers, transportation researchers, network scientists, a computer scientist (from IBM), as well as energy researchers, an atmospheric scientist, a statistician, several policy makers (including one from Toronto, Canada), and an operations researcher and network economist (me).

This was a multidisciplinary workshop with talks ranging from those with not a single equation to those with many beautiful equations. Quite a few of the talks were on network themes, which I appreciated very much as well as the emphasis on nonlinear dynamics.

My presentation was on Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities.

The workshop took place in a room with not great acoustics but with frescoes on the walls.

The meals were provided and the food was delicious - with fish caught that morning and with cannolis that we consumed and did not get heart attacks from. Perhaps it was all the oranges that we ate.

We were picked up at the Palermo airport and bussed through the beautiful hills of Sicily covered with poppies and other flowers to historic Erice.

Now I am back in Gothenburg, Sweden, where, interestingly, it is very warm, whereas it was quite cool in Sicily!

For the Love of Networks

When the invitation came from Dr. Adilson Motter to speak at the 2013 Network Frontier Workshop that he was organizing at Northwestern University I was very intrigued, even though the workshop was to take place in early December. Since I live (most of the time) in Massachusetts, I have experience with cold weather but, for some reason, that cold on Lake Michigan is quite unique.

But, since I love researching networks and teaching about the subject and find it one of the most powerful of scientific topics in bridging disciplines, of course, I said "yes!"

This workshop, which was a huge success, and I am still savoring the talks and discussions as well as the people that I met, was a three-day event, that took place last week, December 4-6, highlighting leading-edge research on complex networks. According to the workshop website: Participants working on innovative aspects of complex systems will communicate recent results and ideas relevant to fields as diverse as brain, climate, and socio-technological research. Sessions will include theory and applications of nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics in the context of synchronization, cascades, transportation, control, and failure recovery in complex dynamical systems.

The program, which featured talks on applications ranging from climate science to brain physiology and envisioning the future Internet (my topic) can be downloaded here.  The list of invited speakers can be viewed here.  Invited speakers were from the US, Europe, and Asia, and one industrialist told me that he flew in from China just to hear me speak. I hope that I did not disappoint.

I loved the applications described as well as the methodologies, which included innovations in dynamical systems and control theory applied to networks.

Thanks to Dr. Motter  and his team at the Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems (NICO) for putting this great workshop together. You succeeded in bringing researchers, practitioners, and students together to Evanston in December for the love of networks!

Below are some photos that I managed to take even though, honestly, my digital camera seemed to freeze (although I had charged it before flying out to Chicago).

The lunches and refreshments were delicious!

And, today, UMass Amherst has delayed its opening until noon because of the inclement weather but since we are interviewing a candidate for a faculty position, I will be going in. This afternoon, we are having our annual Isenberg Reindeer Seminar in the Isenberg School of Management atrium, which is a holiday party but first there will be a Personnel Committee meeting to attend. Never a dull moment in academia!