Thanks to Maxi, Ralph and everyone for a great set of discussions last week. I strongly believe that urban systems is a terrific domain in which to apply GSS thinking.

I do feel that a source of confusion in our discussions was over the need for different methods and data for conducting the scientific study of GSS for urban systems on the one hand and other other hand the kinds of tools that would be deployed in practice and the data that they would need. For the science we may need to use very detailed representations of urban systems and very large amounts of data (Big Data). From the science though, I hope we would extract the key patterns and principles that govern urban systems that will enable us to design simpler, pattern-based representations that can work with sufficient accuracy on the limited amounts of data likely to be available in realistic situations.

colin Harrison