N.Y.U. Center Develops a ‘Science of Cities’ – NYTimes.com

“I’d like to create SimCity for real,” Dr. Koonin says, referring to the classic computer simulation game.

The 10-member project team includes music professors, computer scientists and graduate students. The group will use the city’s 311 data, but also plans to employ wireless sensors — tiny ones outside windows, noise meters on traffic lights and street corners, perhaps a smartphone app for crowdsourced data gathering. To inform policy choices, data on noise limits for vehicles and muffler costs might be added to the street-level noise readings. Then, computer simulations could predict the likely effect of enforcement steps, charges or incentives to buy properly working mufflers for vehicles without them.

“People live in cities,” Dr. Paraszczak says. “So much of the equation is not just the data but how you encourage people to change their behavior.”

via N.Y.U. Center Develops a ‘Science of Cities’ – NYTimes.com.

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