GIS and Agent-Based Modeling

When Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics (EPB) turned 50 we wrote a short commentary about how the topics in the journal have evolved over the years.

In the past we have written about large language models (LLMs) and how these can be used in agent-based modeling.

In the past we have written about disasters and how one can model peoples reactions to them or how one can mine social media or mobility data to explore people's responses to them.

In the past we have written about using Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) like ChatGPT for coding of models and also analyzing images.

In the past we have written about how we have used social media to study a plethora of topics with respect the the form and function of cities among many other things.

In a previous post we wrote about how one can mine social media to uncover smells and how they shapes peoples perceptions of urban spaces.

At the AAG Annual meeting this year, two of my students gave talks about their ongoing research.

In previous posts, we have written about the generation of synthetic populations based on real world locations, and how such populations can have various types of networks associated with them.

Durring times of crisis, shocks to supply chains can propagate through the entire economy (e.g., global shortages of critical goods, such as personal protective equipment during COVID-19).

Over the last summer I participated in a research experience for undergraduate at the University at Buffalo (UB) hosted by the Geologic and Climate Hazards Center.

In the past we have written how one can use social media or newspapers to study the world around us.

In the past we have written about how one can use social media to monitor dust storms along with how multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) can be used to analyze images.

In the past we have written a number of posts on synthetic populations, however, one thing we have not done is compare the various techniques that can be used to create them.

In the past we have posted about how we can utilize data and models to explore pandemics and peoples reactions to them.

While we have explored disasters in the past through agent-based models and other computational social science approaches, one area we have not explored is how one can use agent-based models to explore evacuations durring a wild fire event.

Human mobility datasets are essential for investigating human behavior, mobility patterns, and traffic dynamics.

As part of the GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium at the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California we have a call for papers for sessions entitled "Geosimulation and Its Emerging Directions with AI" Call for Papers: Simulating past, present, and…

In a previous post we talked about the potential of Generative AI for urban modeling, keeping with this theme at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Na Jiang, Boyu Wang and myself had a poster entitled Agent-based Mo…

In the past we have written about how one can study urban shrinkage with a specific emphasis on Detroit from both an agent-based modeling perspective and also from analyzing newspapers through natural language processing Keeping with the theme of Detroit…

In the current issue of Environment and Planning B, we (Boyu Wang, Na Jiang and myself) have a new editorial entitled "Generative AI and Urban Modeling".

I have just gotten back from attending the 19th International Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) in London and thought I would share the two papers we presented at the conference.

This is a slightly different post to normal, in the sense its not really about papers but my take on agent-based modeling, urban analytics and the growth of Artificial Intelligence impacting both.

In the past we have explored how social media can be used to delineate earthquakes, study human-wildlife interactions, understand urban morphology, urban smells or locating wildfires among many other things.

Readers might of noticed that recently we have been exploring the use of street view images to explore cities or how we can utilize geosocial media to understand the form of function of cities, but one thing we have not explored is the role of smell and h…

As the AAG has just wrapped up I thought I would write brief (well actually quite long) post on the talks that I was involved with at the conference.