On April 13th UCL - CASA organized a one day conference on “Advances in Spatial Analysis & e-social science”. During this conference some very good results of the Metronamica land use model applied to west London were presented by Kiril Stanilov. The application is especially interesting as it uses high resolution land use data (25 meter resolution) and covers a very long period of urban development (over 100 years). The presentation can be found here (20mb).

• Jasper van Vliet

Today RIKS has launched a dedicated website for our flagship product Metronamica. On www.metronamica.nl you can read in plain English what Metronamica is and how it can be used in practice. There are examples and links to relevant projects to show what is possible. The website contains plenty of new interesting information, whether you are already familiar with Metronamica or not. Have a look!

• Jelle Hurkens

In preparation for the State Of the Environment Outlook 2010 (SOER 2010) RIKS has collected and compared a series of land use outlooks for Europe in 2020 / 2030, including several policy scenarios. This comparison will be used by the EEA as input to the thematic chapters of SOER 2010.

• Jasper van Vliet

Last week a consortium consisting of ITC, the University of Wuhan, the Wuhan urban planning bureau and RIKS presented a proposal to the World Bank China office. This proposal, which is now granted, aims at doing a scenario study on urban growth for the city of Wuhan. In this project RIKS will apply Metronamica to Wuhan to explore future land dynamics, the results of which will be used for further assessment in terms of the city’s accessibility.

• Jasper van Vliet

On June 1st and 2nd, RIKS organizes a "Land use modelling with Metronamica" training course. For more information, please visit this webpage.

• Roel Vanhout

In November 2009 the Creating Futures project team organised a series of training sessions to present, discuss and evaluate the first full prototype of the Waikato Integrated Scenario Explorer (WISE), which is being developed as part of the Creating Futures project. Based on these comments an enhanced version of WISE will be delivered to the regional council Environment Waikato in the fall of 2010.

• Hedwig van Delden

RIKS recently participated in a consortium which assessed the integration of Natura 2000 into the wider countryside.

The project was commissioned for by the EC DG Environment in the context of the EU biodiversity policy. As part of this study RIKS did an assessment of the trends in land use changes, which helps to understand the processes that create the present and develop scenarios for the future.

• Jasper van Vliet

A new version of the Map Comparison Kit (3.2) is available for download from the MCK Website.

This version includes the result of software developments that facilitate comparisons of maps with a large number of cells. This extension was commissioned for by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, PBL). In addition a few bugs were fixed.

• Jasper van Vliet

All staff at RIKS wish you all the best for 2010.

• Roel Vanhout

We are happy to announce the release and immediate availability of the latest version 4.1 of our flagship product Metronamica, the premier land use modeling package for planners and researchers.

In addition to the many new features already found in version 4.0 of Metronamica such as an all-new redesigned user interface, extensive scenario management functionality and a broad range of analysis tools, this new version adds support for a regional interaction model to more accurately capture the complex effects of the competion between areas for resources such as jobs and inhabitants on a spatial scale above the local level.

For more information on Metronamica, land use modeling in general or a demonstration version of Metronamica, don't hesitate to contact RIKS's managing director Hedwig van Delden at hvdelden@riks.nl.

• Roel Vanhout

On the 8th of July, Bernardo Furtado successfully defended his PhD thesis titled 'Modeling social heterogeneity, neighborhoods and local influences on urban real estate prices: spatial dynamic analyses in the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, Brazil' at the University of Utrecht. Bernardo used RIKS' product Metronamica to come to the conclusion that social and spatial heterogenuity have a large influence on urban development. As part of his research, Bernardo spend time at RIKS and worked in close cooperation with modelers and programmers to adapt Metronamica for his specific needs. We congratulate Bernardo on his accomplishment and wish him will at his new job in Brasilia.

• Roel Vanhout

The following paper has been published in Environment and Planning B:
Kok, K. and H. van Delden (2009) Combining two approaches of integrated scenario development to combat desertification in the Guadalentin watershed, Spain, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 36, p.49-66
For more RIKS publications, visit our publications page.

• Alex Hagen-Zanker

In the Springer GeoJournal Library series the new title: "Planning Support Systems Best Practice and New Methods" Geertman, Stan; Stillwell, John (Eds.) is now available. RIKS has authored two chapters in this book: (6) Elbe DSS: a planning support system for strategic river basin planning: Bernhard M. Hahn et. al. and (17) New ways of supporting decision making: linking qualitative storylines with quantitative modelling: Hedwig van Delden and Alex Hagen-Zanker. More information, table of contents and order form can be found here: Springer. An online version of the book, where individual chapters can be ordered, is available at SpringerLink.

• Bernhard Hahn

Today Alex Hagen-Zanker successfully defended his PhD dissertation at Maastricht University. His dissertation, titled " Measuring the performance of geosimulation models by map comparison", contains many of the map comparison methods that are now widely used both within RIKS and in the wider research community and was received very well by the committee. We congratulate him and his promotors, Prof. Dr. Pim Martens and Prof Dr. Roger White with this result.

• Jasper van Vliet

Our journal article "From Design to Application of a Decision-support System for Integrated River-basin Management" has been published electronically in Water Resources Management.

You can access this publication at: SpringerLink

• Bernhard Hahn

The international congress on environmental modelling and software (iEMSs 2008) (iEMSs 2008) was held in Barcelona from July 7 to 10. RIKS presented six papers here which are all published in the conference proceedings that can be downloaded from the conference website.

• Jasper van Vliet

RIKS is happy to anounce the following new publications:

Hagen-Zanker, A.(2008). Sensititivity analysis of a cellular automata land use model through multiple metrics of goodness-of-fit. In: Timmermans, H.J.P. and De Vries, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Design & Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning, p.1-15 Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Hagen-Zanker, A. & Martens, P. (2008). Map comparison methods for comprehensive assessment of geosimulation models, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA 2008), p.194-209. Springer, Berlin, Germany

Hagen-Zanker, A. & Lajoie, G. (2008). Neutral models of landscape change as benchmarks in the assessment of model performance, Landscape and Urban Planning, volume 86, issue 3-4, p.284-296

Hagen-Zanker, A. and H.J.P. Timmermans (in Press). A metric of compactness of urban change illustrated to 22 European countries,
In: Bernard, L. , Friis-Christensen, A. and Pundt, H. (eds.) Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography: The European Information Society, Taking Geoinformation Science One Step Further, p.181-200 Springer, Berlin, Germany

• Jasper van Vliet

The international conference on Impact Assessment of Land Use Changes (IALUC 2008) took place on April 6th to 9th 2008 in Berlin. Three RIKS presentations were given and one poster was presented. All abstracts are available in the book of abstracts (for RIKS abstracts, see pages 18, 38, 63 and 100), which can be downloaded below. Also the presentations can be downloaded here:

Book of abstracts

J. Hurkens and B. Hahn; The GEONAMICA® software environment for dynamic spatial modeling

H. van Delden et al; The LUMOCAP PSS, impact assessment of agricultural policies in an integrative context

J van Vliet, J Hurkens and R White; An activity based CA model for population dynamics

H van Delden; Xplorah, Support for integrated spatial planning in Puerto Rico (poster)

• Jasper van Vliet

In recent years RIKS has developed Xplorah!, an integrated spatial decision support tool for the island of Puerto Rico. In january the implementation phase of Xplorah! has entered into a new phase. Executives and technical staff of the Puerto Rico National Planning Board are, through a number of worskhops in January, May and June, being trained in using Xplorah! In the meantime, other countries in the region have shown great interest in the Xplorah! tool.

• Rob Hermans

Panama is very interested in developing and implementing RIKS Integrated Spatial Decision Support Systems in order to manage the many planning challenges the country faces as a result of the expansion of the Panama Canal. Panama is looking for tools that can support their decision making processes in this area and is currently negotiating the start of several RIKS projects in the country. This generates a lot of publicity. Recently interviews with RIKS-management have been broadcasted on national Panamanian television Channel 5 and printed in La Prensa, the biggest Panamanian newspaper.
The article in La Prensa can be downloaded: http://www.martesfinanciero.com/history/2008/01/08/Columnas/tecnologia.html

• Rob Hermans