communities can grow in a vertical city, as it will be the only way to comply with the vastly increasing density needed. Thus, the CS Group is working in a tool that allows to both design and evaluate vertical urban scenarios and possible urban interventions, a reinvention of the City Scope platform. This tool will be useful to perform quick iterations and design urban areas that address great challenges humans are facing (e.g., public health, global warming, equity).
The proposed tool, which can be applied to any urban area, is composed by various parts: (1) a study of the amenities needed, (2) the creation of the CAD file outlining a design that contains those amenities, (3) a link & nodes structure built to analyze that CAD file, (4) a proximity analysis run on the data structure created, (5) a generative tool to inspire urban planners in the creation and optimization of their models, and (6) a visualization of the results of both the proximity analysis and the generative tool.
This master’s thesis has contributed with two of those parts, (3) and (5):
(3) For the links & nodes structure, a pipeline has been built in Python. As an input, it reads a design in a CAD file which contains those amenities defined as necessary when studying the urban area. Then, a data structure with all the amenities and their connections (distances) is generated. With this data structure, the proximity analysis has been performed, showing the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed design. Moreover, the analysis proves the right functionning of the data structure creation.
(5) This generative tool constitutes the second version of the one developed as well in this master’s thesis. This new version of a generative tool needs of more land uses and objectives, being more representative of reality. This adds more complexity, for which state-of-the-art algorithms are needed, and need to be fine-tuned to give meaningful results. The structure of the problem has been defined, and a Python library has been proposed, outlining the steps to proceed.
work, such as the one in which vehicles cluster to share energy while moving, evaluating the operational performance of a system like the one proposed in section 4.1.3.
Other current and future works in the CS Group mobility line of research are related to the aforementioned multi-functionality of vehicles. There are some studies being performed about how transportation of people and goods can be combined and performed by the same vehicles, and its impact in the community.
Regarding urban planning, the proposed tool to inspire urban planners in the creation and optimization of urban developments can be further developed. On the 2D version, implementing state-of-the art algorithms can help for a faster and more robust optimization. Moreover, refining the objective functions would be necessary for a more realistic result. On the 3D version, there is work to be done to realize how urban designs can be improved by urban planners in a decent period of time. This is difficult as the amount and complexity of data involved in the process will need of various iterations until a solid generative tool is achieved. This iterations can make use of the proposed algorithm, Python library and problem definition, or come with other proposals that build on top of this one.
Besides, the whole urban planning process needs of future work to deal with the current chal- lenges (e.g., people growth, sustainability, etc.). More tools are needed to design and evaluate high-performing urban scenarios, which will be most probable high-dense vertical urban areas.
The CS Group will continue the development of the outlined vertical tool, but work from other researchers will be needed as such a tool is already needed in the world.
7 PROJECT PLANNING & BUDGET
7.1 Project Planning - Gantt Diagram
The project started in september 2020, when the author was granted with the opportunity to spend six months doing research as a Visiting Student in the MIT Media Lab City Science Group. However, due to the COVID pandemic, this opportunity had to be postponed with no defined date. The City Science Group, being a research laboratory where most of the work is open-source, offered the author possibility to collaborate remotely as an open-source researcher.
Being this an unique opportunity to learn from such an innovative environment and contribute in solving some of the greatest challenges society is facing, the author saw an opportunity to do a master’s thesis with this work.
The work started understanding the way of working in the MIT Media Lab. The way of working in the MIT Media Lab is special as researchers are taken out of their comfort zones, by quickly iterating in very futuristic fields, often performing tasks not directly related to their expertise (e.g. architects programming or computer scientists designing).
Thus, the work began with a very quick iteration to allow the MIT Autonomous Bicycle follow lanes. This iteration served as a first contact with the group way of working, as well as the mobility line of research. Since then, the author would be collaborating remotely with the group until February 2022, when the author finally went to Cambridge (MA) to start a 6 month period as a Visiting Student.
During this remote collaboration, contributions were made with a framework for future mobil-
ity, necessary to understand how mobility needs in the 15 minutes high-performing walkable city could be met. This framework introduced the concept of vehicle clustering, defining how collaboration between vehicles can happen. A very interesting way of collaboration would be battery sharing, which was studied more in depth and solution was proposed. Moreover a proof of concept prototype was built. This prototype could be developed thanks to the Centro de Electr´onica Insdustrial (CEI-UPM), which provided the author with a space, prototyping tools and even some necessary components to create a fully working prototype.
In parallel, studies were performed on how the bio-inspired framework could perform from an operational perspective. Thus, an agent-based simulation platform was created, which would continue being developed during the period and even after this master’s thesis was finished.
When the author had the opportunity to go on-site as a Visiting Student, research on the urban planning line of research began. Then, the author identified the necessity to democratize even more the decision making process, and to help both experienced and non-experienced stakeholders in the creation of valid data-driven urban interventions. Thus, the author developed a tool to facilitate that process, the so called generative tool, shown in members week (when the funding companies came to see the projects) with a proof of concept that received a very positive feedback. Then the author worked on a more ambitious and complex concept, vertical urbanism, in which various members of the group got involved. Contributions were made until the end of this masters thesis, both in a tool to extract the data from CAD designs coming from architects and urban planners, and a second version of the generative tool.
The project planning can be easily visualized with a Gantt Diagram in the following pages.
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Total duration
Previous Work MIT City Science Understanding Collaboration Definition Research in mobility Future mobility framework Research swarm robotics vehicle platooning Key ingredients definition Application to mobility needs Lane Following Algorithm V2V charging solution Review of EVs Charging V2V charging prototype Agent-based simulation Study of previous simulations Rebalancing scenario development Testing and analysis of results
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Research in Urbanism
2D Genetic City Review of urban planning tools Tool development Testing and results Vertical urban planning tool Historical Review Existing Examples Challenges Network Structure Generative 3D tool
7.2 Project budget
The budget of the project will consider both those costs associated to the people involved in the project (measured in hours and cost/hour) and those material costs, prorated considering the amortization and the project duration.
The project budget will be split in (1) labor cost (related to people involved in the project), (2) hardware cost and (3) software cost.
7.2.1 Hardware Cost
Table 7.1 contains the Hardware cost for this project. The cost for the MIT Autonomous Bicycle was extracted from the master’s thesis developed for that project [11], which is not public. The cost for the prefabricated table, projector, monitor, speakers, copper cable and electronic components, have been estimated, as they were provided.
Hardware
Component Quantity Cost [USD]
Dell Precision 5560 1 1790
Logitech Pro C920 2 120
MIT Autonomous Bicycle (w/ NVIDIA Jetson Nano and Logitech Pro C920) 1 13965
Arduino Nano 1 20
2WD car 2 32
E Type Ferrite Core 4 10
Copper cable 2 meters 6
9DC battery 2 4
Electronic components - 20
Prefabricated Table CityScope w/ personal computer 1 1500
Lego bricks - 25
Projector 1 170
Monitor 1 110
Speaker 2 16
Total 17787USD
Table 7.1: Hardware cost for the realization of this master’s thesis
7.2.2 Software Cost
Table 7.2 contains the software costs for this project. The rest of the licenses involved in this work have been open source, and so did not involve any expense.
Software
License Cost[USD]
Microsoft Office 365 144
Windows 10 119
TOTAL 263USD
Table 7.2: Software cost for the realization of this master’s thesis
7.2.3 Labor Cost
This section shows the labor work for a research assistant (the author), 40h of work of a MIT research scientist, 20h of work of a MIT principal investigator, 40h of work of an UPM professor.
For the work as a research assistant, there will be considered an average of 10h/week for the period the author worked as a research collaborator from Spain (16 months) and a full-time research assistant for the period the author worked at the MIT Media Lab (5 months). Thus, 9 months of work in total as a full-time Research Assistant will be considered.
The salary for a research assistant at the MIT Media Lab has been estimated as 32kUSD/year, for a research scientist has been estimated as 87kUSD/year and for the principal investigator at 160USD/year. The salary for the UPM supervisor has been estimated as 40 USD/hour. Table 7.3 contains these labor costs.
Labor costs
Concept Cost [USD]
Research Assistant 22154 Principal Investigator 1539 Research Scientist 1673
UPM Professor 1600
TOTAL 26966 USD
Table 7.3: Labor costs for the realization of this master’s thesis
7.2.4 Indirect Costs
In this section are included those costs associated to the development of this project but not directly included in the aforementioned expenses, such as administrative costs or operating expenses.
Examples of operating expenses are electricity costs, usage of laboratories at the Technical University of Madrid, usage of laboratories at the MIT Media Lab, etc.
Table 7.4 contains these indirect costs.
Indirect costs
Concept Cost [USD]
Operating Expenses 1000 Administrative Costs 200
TOTAL 1200 USD
Table 7.4: Indirect costs for the realization of this master’s thesis
7.2.5 Global budget
Table 7.5 contains the sum of all the costs included in the realization of this mater’s thesis, giving an overall budget.
Global costs Concept Cost [USD]
Hardware 17787 Software 263
Labor 26966
Indirect 1200
TOTAL 46216 USD
Table 7.5: Global budget for the realization of this master’s thesis