IOC Sponsors Open Access Research

In partnership with the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, the Initiative on Cities is excited to fund open access research by Boston University Earth & Environment Professors Sucharita Gopal and Nathan Phillips.

Professors Gopal and Phillips used a data driven approach to define sustainability, resiliency and metabolism metrics that will provide cities across the globe with better ways to use data to address real urban challenges.

Their approach to urban mapping enables users to dynamically define their own scheme of urban characterization based on rules combining different environmental, economic, and social inputs. Professors Gopal and Phillips adopt a fuzzy sets concept to define the classes of inputs and rules of urban characterization since fuzzy sets relate to classes of object with imprecise boundaries in which membership is a matter of degree.

Plans are underway to apply this methodology to characterize urban risk for infectious diseases such as Zika, dengue, and malaria in Cambodia and Belize.

Professors Gopal and Phillips’ article, Characterizing Urban Landscapes Using Fuzzy Sets, is available for download here.