LakeSim

Information on the LakeSim computational project - - big-data comes to the 600-acre Chicago Lakeside Development, a minacity sited on a former U.S. Steel complex on Lake Michigan, 10 miles south of downtown.

From their website (Link):

"Planning for Chicago Lakeside will necessitate augmenting traditional tools with data and scientific computation, allowing developers to model the complex interplay between energy, waste and water infrastructures. To address this need, a collaboration between the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, the Computation Institute, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and McCaffery Interests will develop a prototype computational framework for Chicago Lakeside Development, called LakeSim.

"Urban designers, architects, and developers have ample experience and tools optimized for single buildings or developments in the 20 to 30 acre range. But these do not scale to the 600 acres of a site such as Chicago Lakeside," said Charlie Catlett, director of the Urban Center for Computation and Data and co-investigator on the LakeSim project. "The need to deliver sustainable and financially viable urban plans requires a science-based approach, bringing the power of computational models to city design."

LakeSim will connect existing urban design tools with scientific computer models to create detailed simulations relevant to large-scale development. Instead of planning separately for different pieces of the infrastructure, the framework will allow developers to simulate how various designs influence the environment, transportation, and business spheres in Chicago Lakeside under a range of possible scenarios, over hundreds of acres and decades of time.

"As it stands right now, urban development is often looked at as individual components that make up a whole," said Leah Guzowski, energy policy scientist at Argonne and LakeSim co-investigator. "But when you get to a site the size of Lakeside, the interdependencies of the various components are less understood, and the consequences of decision-making are much more significant. We are focused on developing more efficient and effective ways of making decisions informed by science."

LakeSim will also allow planners and developers to explore a wider range of designs more quickly, without the lengthy periods of re-analysis currently required for each aspect of the development when a new strategy is proposed. An urban planner would make changes to their plan - for example, changing a residential block to commercial - triggering the execution of computational models that rapidly predict the effects of those adjustments across multiple complex systems, such as energy supply or storm water management."