[GeoIT.org] CFP - Advances in Portable Sensing Methodologies for Urban Environments, CEUS

[Helbich, M. (Marco)]

Call for Papers

Advances in portable sensing methodologies for urban environments:
Understanding cities from a mobility perspective

To be published as a Special Issue of Computers, Environment, and Urban 
Systems (CEUS)

Special issue editors:
Amit Birenboim (Tel Aviv University),
Marco Helbich (Utrecht University),
Mei-Po Kwan (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Recent years saw a surge in the development of lightweight and 
relatively cheap portable sensors of various kinds that can be carried 
by people or vehicles. The resulting continuous stream of fine grained 
data in space-time that these sensors generate brings new opportunities 
for understanding urban environments and urban living. In particular, 
these sensors allow capturing the behaviors and status of mobile humans 
and non-human objects in cities and their continuous interaction with 
physical, built, and social environments. The new type of sensor-based 
in situ information facilitates the development of new methodological 
approaches and analytical frameworks that can help address old and new 
urban issues.

Portable sensors include various types of devices that may record the 
behavior and status of the people or objects that carry them (e.g., 
intensity of activity, physical status) and characteristics of their 
surrounding environment (e.g., noise, temperature). While portable 
sensors are part of the data-intensive science paradigm and big data 
era, the technology and the data that it generates require special 
attention for at least the following reasons. First, in order to be 
useful for urban analytics, it is necessary to record the mobility 
patterns of moving agents along with other sensor information. 
Therefore, relevant data will rely on the integration of location 
tracking technologies such as GPS and RFID. Second, the collected 
information is of high temporal and spatial resolution. Consequently, a 
central advantage of the technology is that it allows the dynamic 
representations and analysis of urban environments and their 
inhabitants. Third, compared to stationary sensors, portable sensors 
tend to have lower data integrity. This is a limitation that needs to be 
addressed.

This special issue seeks to attract papers that examine the recent 
developments in the methodologies, analytical frameworks, and 
applications of state-of-the-art portable sensor technology in the 
context of urban research, management, and planning. It considers 
portable sensing in a broad sense, which includes both ‘classical’ 
passive sensing (i.e., opportunistic sensing) and more active sensing 
approaches that require input from users (i.e., participatory sensing). 
The special issue emphasizes the usage of these novel methodologies, 
analytical frameworks or applications to the understanding of the 
dynamism of cities and the mobile agents that comprise it. We encourage 
submissions from a broad range of disciplines as long as they show clear 
relation to urban issues. Topics of interest include, but are not 
limited to:
-	Implementation of emerging portable sensing technologies for studying 
mobile human and non-human objects in urban environments
-	The use of portable sensor information in urban analytics and modeling
-	Smartphone sensing techniques for a better understanding of cities and 
their inhabitants
-	The usage of portable sensing techniques to the study of urban 
mobility and transportation
-	The use of ambulatory sensing technologies in health and exposure 
research in cities
-	Portable sensors and urban citizen science
-	The relation between portable sensors and notions of smart cities
-	Real-time city management (e.g., of transportations, mega events, 
disasters)

Submission procedure:
Interested authors should submit titles and 250-word abstract to Amit 
Birenboim (abirenboim at tauex.tau.ac.il) by April 22, 2019. Invitation to 
submit full manuscript will be sent to chosen abstracts by May 8, 2019. 
Deadline for submission of full length manuscript is January 13, 2020. 
Submissions must conform to CEUS submission guidelines and should be 
submitted through the journal's EVISE system. Manuscripts will undergo 
the standard CEUS review process.

Important dates:
April 22, 2019: Proposals (title and 250 words abstract) submission deadline
May 8, 2019: Invitation notification to submit full manuscript
January 13, 2020: Final manuscript submission deadline through the EVISE 
system
July 2020: Publication of special issue in CEUS

For more information please contact one of the special issue editors:
Amit Birenboim (abirenboim at tauex.tau.ac.il)
Marco Helbich (M.Helbich at uu.nl)
Mei-Po Kwan (mpk654 at gmail.com)

-- 
Marco Helbich | Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning | 
Faculty of Geosciences | Utrecht University | Vening Meineszgebouw A, 
Room 6.16, Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB Utrecht, Netherlands | WWW: 
http://www.uu.nl/staff/mhelbich | Tel: (0031) 30 253 2017 | Email: 
m.helbich at uu.nl | NEEDS: http://www.needs.sites.uu.nl/