We are pleased to announce and invite you to participate in the 14th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) which will be held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, July 7-10, 2015.  The CUPUM 2015 website is here: http://cupum2015.mit.edu and CUPUM 2015 registration and hotel room infromation are here: http://regonline.com/cupum2015_reg

For more than twenty years, CUPUM has been one of the premier international conferences for the exchange of ideas and applications of computing technologies to address a diverse range of social, managerial, and environmental problems impacting urban planning and development. Recent innovations in information and communication technologies have thrust this topic into the public spotlight:

• Big Data collected from transit systems, telephone networks, social media, and other sources have created new information sources about cities, but have also raised important  technical, ethical, and analysis questions;
• Visualization technologies have helped uncover new patterns and insights about urban phenomena;
• Planning Support Systems continue to evolve as researchers test new interfaces and hardware, develop novel indicators and applications, and explore sociotechnical aspects of their adoption and use;
• Urban Modeling leverages new data and theory to build a richer understanding of urban systems and to develop improved tools for planning and policymaking;
• Smart City efforts have become a major area of research and implementation as more and more cities experiment with new uses of urban sensing and communication technologies.

The central theme of the 14th CUPUM Conference is “Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities.” Submissions on this theme are particularly welcome. In addition, the conference welcomes all papers and posters appropriate to one or more of the tracks and topics listed below.

Submission of book chapter, paper, and poster abstracts is done using EasyChair software via links from this Conference website. You will need to register as an author with EasyChair to make a submission. Book chapter drafts and conference paper abstracts are currently under review.  Authors of submitted chapters and abstracts may update their author information and submissions via the Submission webpage: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cupum2015

Tracks and Topics

• Urban Modeling
  • Land use, transportation, and environmental interactions
  • Agent-based modeling
  • Cellular automata
  • Social networks
• Urban Analytics
  • Big data
  • Spatial analysis
  • Urban performance indicators
  • Visualization and animation
  • Machine learning
• Public Engagement
  • Participatory planning processes
  • Volunteered geographic information
  • Social media
  • Electronic democracy
• Urban Information Infrastructure
  • Open data and open source
  • Intelligent middleware
  • Locational privacy and data sharing
  • Urban sensing and geoprocessing
• Urban Planning and Decision Support
  • Planning support system applications and adoption
  • Geodesign applications and techniques
  • Sustainable development and urbanization
  • Disaster risk reduction and resilience
  • Social welfare and distributional impacts of urban development
  • Application areas including land-use planning, permitting, transportation, and health

Submission Options: 

Participants have a choice of three submission options:

• Option 1: Book Chapter
• Option 2: Conference Paper
• Option 3: Conference Poster

In all cases, at least one co-author must register for and present the chapter, paper, or poster at the conference.  All submissions of proposed book chapters, conference papers, or conference posters should be written in English and include an abstract of 400 – 800 words that contains a title together with a short description of the proposed topic, methods used, key results, and some discussion of the research implications for urban planning and urban management. The abstract submission should also indicate keywords identifying the area of research, key data sources, and primary references.  All contributions should also be accompanied by the name, affiliation, address, telephone number, and email address of each author.  For co-authored papers, one individual should be identified as the corresponding author.

Option 1: Book Chapter:

Approximately twenty-five abstract submissions, which fit well together around the central conference theme of “Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities,” will be selected for inclusion in a book, published by Springer Publishers, just in time for the conference. These twenty-five chapters will be selected, based on the outcomes of a double-blind peer review process of the 400-800 word abstract submissions overseen by the book co-editors.  Authors of selected abstracts will then have a few months to complete the full chapters running 4,000 to 6,000 words in length, including notes, figures, tables, references, et cetera. All full chapters will also be peer reviewed and will need an abbreviated abstract (max 150 words) covering the introduction, methodology, major conclusions, and recommendations.  The abbreviated abstracts of the selected papers will also be included in the Conference Proceedings. Inclusion of the paper as a chapter in the book implies acceptance of a publishing agreement which requires transfer of copyright to Springer Publishers.

Option 2: Conference Paper:

Papers not included in the Springer book can be selected for presentation at the conference and possible inclusion in the Conference Proceedings. The Program Committee of the CUPUM Conference will select the conference presentations after a double blind peer review of the 400-800 word abstract submissions. Authors of selected abstracts will then have a few months to finalize their papers and submit them for double-blind peer review for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings.  The full papers should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length, including notes, figures, tables, references, et cetera. They should begin with an abbreviated abstract (max. 150 words) covering the introduction, methodology, major conclusions, and recommendations.  The Conference Proceedings will be available online as well as distributed on flash drives at the Conference. The proceedings will include abstracts of all conference presentations plus full papers screened by the peer review process.

Several CUPUM participants have suggested special interest topics around which to organize a few of the conference sessions within various tracks.  Here is the list:

Peter Hall: The late Sir Peter Hall was a most influential academic in urban planning and geography, and also a good friend of CUPUM and MIT.  A session in his honor will enable some of his associates to draw insight from his works that suggest research questions and methods to inspire the CUPUM audience.  

Modeling Urban Dynamics:  This session is focused on improvements in the modeling of urban dynamics and activity patterns that are enabled by big data, econometric advances, and improved microsimulation techniques.

Model Integration:  This session is focused on novel model integration techniques that assist in the practical - and conceptually defensible - integration of various models, including but not limited to land use, land cover, transportation, economic, environmental impact and climate change models.

WCTRS-SIG-F1:  The ‘Transport and Spatial Development’ special interest group (F1) of the World Congress on Transport Research Society will assist in organizing a session of CUPUM paper submissions that overlap the interests of this SIG.

If you would like your conference paper abstract to be considered for inclusion in one of these sessions, then include the bold-letter abbreviation of the session topic at the beginning or end of your paper title.  If you have already submitted your conference paper abstract, you may edit your submission to add the abbreviation to your title at any time during December (that is, before we begin constructing conference sessions). 

Option 3: Conference Poster:

Posters may also be selected for presentation at the conference and, optionally, for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings. The Program Committee will select these conference posters based on a peer review of the 400-800 word abstract submissions. Each table and figure included in the abstract should be counted as 250 words toward the 800-word limit.  At the conference, the poster sessions will accommodate display of posters up to A0 in size (841 x 1189 mm, or 33.1 x 46.8 inches). 

Page Layout Template

Conference papers, book chapter abstracts, and poster abstracts will all be included in the electronic proceedings which will be published online at this URL after the conference. Authors should use the template file which has been distributed, and available online here.

Key Dates:

All Deadlines (except where noted) are Fridays, and the deadline is 23:59 pm, at the international dateline – that is, the last possible moment of that day (UTC-12). This time is generally 6:59 am (Eastern Standard Time) the following day at the conference venue in Boston, MA, USA.

[ver. 4, 2015-04-19]