Six Computer Science master students excel and go to Oxford
Six master students of the Computer Science programme will present their papers on future cities at the NetMob conference in Oxford. The six papers were part of the international Future Cities Challenge and made it to the top 10 of all entries.
Competition
The students of Leiden University participated in the Future Cities Challenge, a competition in which participants use data to design a future city as efficiently as possible. Participation in the contest was part of the master course Urban Computing, given by Assistant Professor Mitra Baratchi with the assistance of Daniela Gahwehns. The six selected students are Laurens Arp, Dyon van Vreumingen, Jan van Staalduinen, Jaco Tetteroo, Jeroen Rook and Brent Verpaalen.
Efficient cities
In the Future Cities Challenge, the students researched datasets containing information from the world’s top cities such as New York, Tokyo, Istanbul and London. These datasets consist of check-in data of people who check in at venues with their mobile phones, describing the mobility of people in the cities. The six students used this dataset to optimize spatial planning for future cities. In their papers they present their ideas for 'intelligent tree planning', 'optimal store placement' and 'traffic flow optimization' for future cities.
More information about the challenge can be found on the Future Cities Challenge website.
This year's NetMob biennial conference will take place from 8 to 10 July at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. In this edition of the conference, the organization collaborates with Foursquare, a location data and technology platform. They introduced a unique data challenge by providing access to mobility data from the world’s top cities and provided the unique opportunity to present the results at the conference. More information about NetMob can be found on their website.