The iCity urban transport project focuses on the development of data analytics transportation and transit planning tools that could increase individual and community participation in the development, planning, and design of transportation systems interfaces.

This ongoing project is a collaboration between multiple institutions, led by the University of Toronto, and includes OCAD University, University of Waterloo, and IBM Canada. OCAD's role is the third theme of this multi-year project and focuses on developing a visualization and visual analytics tools that can interpret the vast amount of quantitative data gathered from the socio-technical and technological systems that are embedded in urban life. 

The OCAD U iCity team employed a user-centered process for design, exploring visualization techniques based on user interaction with urban transportation applications. A taxonomy was developed that considered user tasks, level of engagement, and type of data input or output. Researchers also interviewed experts from within the urban transportation sector to identify their visualization needs and challenges. This project has delivered many open source research projects including Betaville, StoryFacets, Compara, and more. The current stage of the project for OCAD University and the visualization theme works directly with the recent development of the Toronto Waterfront in partnership with Waterfront TO, ESRI, and Sidewalk Labs.

As an interactive system resource, iCity sets out the conditions for individuals and groups to highlight their needs/wants/values and to particpate in strategic planning opportunities, facilitating a more democratic and participatory urban design process.

Additional resources:
Read "Analyzing student travel patterns with augmented data visualizations"[1], available through OCAD's Open Research Repository, here.
iCity at the University of Toronto

 

 

1. Skelton, Carl and Juneja, Manpreet Kaur and Dunne, Cody and Bowes, Jeremy and Szigeti, Steve and Zheng, Minsheng and Gordon, Marcus A. and Diamond, Sara (2017) Analyzing student travel patterns with augmented data visualizations. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 10-14 Jun 2017. Available at http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1868/

 2D map with interactive 3D infographics representing StudentMoveTO data generated using Betaville
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 10:15am