Keynote speakers
Registered conference attendees can watch high-quality recordings of the keynote speakers until 27 June, 2021. Recordings are found on the digital conference platform.
Kirsi Virrantaus
Wednesday 9 June 10.00-10.30 EEST
Graduated as Architect (MSc Tech) in 1977, Licentiate of Technology (Cartography) in 1982 and Doctor of Technology (Cartography) in 1984. Specialized in spatial applications of computer science, applied mathematics and computational methods; special focus on computational applications of crisis and emergency management and situational awareness in them. Spent one academic year (1979-1980) in Delft TU as research fellow. Worked in private and public sector (1984-1987) and appointed to a professorship (Digital Cartography) in 1988. Worked since that at Technical University of Helsinki/Aalto University as professor and since 2013 as vice dean on education in the School of Engineering.
Stan Geertman
Wednesday 9 June 10.30-11.00 EEST
Stan Geertman is Professor of Planning Support Science and Chair of Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He has published widely in both national and international journals and has published a range of (editorial) books. He is member of the editorial board of several scientific journals (e.g., CEUS). He has been member of a range of international conference organizations (EGIS; JECC; AGILE; DDSS) and was chair of the Board of Directors of CUPUM (Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management) from 2011 up till 2019. His current research interests:
Planning and Decision Support Systems (PSS / DSS) in planning practice
Smart City and Smart Governance
Socio-spatial analysis for sustainable urbanization, notably in Chinese and Western contexts
Planning theory and its implications for practice.
Adam Dennett
Wednesday 9 June 14.00-14.30 EEST
Dr Adam Dennett is Associate Professor and Director and Head of Department at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London. Founded in 1995 by Professor Mike Batty, CASA has gained a global reputation as a leading centre researching and teaching the science of cities. A truly interdisciplinary centre with staff coming from backgrounds as diverse as Planning, Geography, Transport Studies, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Statistics, Architecture, the Humanities and the Social Sciences, CASA’s research combines theory with novel data, sensors, computational models, analysis and cutting edge visualisation to generate new knowledge and insights, addressing problems with a spatial dimension and an urban and regional focus. CASA’s work is inherently applied and looks to influence urban planning, policy and design in both the public and private spheres.
Adam is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy and his own research has spanned a number of themes, touching on topics including population and migration, beer and brewing geographies, synthetic data, crowd sourcing and the built environment, and he has ongoing research interests in areas as diverse as gentrification and neighbourhood change, residential mobilities, urban health and inequalities and housing analysis. Tying all of these themes together are common methods such as spatial interaction models applied to novel datasets in urban settings.
Filip Biljecki
Wednesday 9 June 14.30-15.00 EEST
Dr Filip Biljecki is appointed as presidential young professor in geoinformatics at the National University of Singapore. At NUS he established the Urban Analytics Lab (https://ual.sg), a multidisciplinary research group advancing geospatial technologies and urban informatics. His background is in Geomatic engineering amplified with computational and data science skills. He received both an MSc and a PhD degree (top 5%) from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, specialising in 3D city modelling/digital twins. Filip's current work is at the intersection of 3D GIS, computer science, data science, and geomatics, supported by past work in the geospatial industry. He was awarded the Young Researcher Award in GIScience by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and by EuroSDR (association of European government agencies in mapping, and universities) for the best doctoral research in GIS in Europe. Filip has been involved in the Open Geospatial Consortium as Co-Chair, World Economic Forum as Council Fellow, and PLOS ONE as Academic Editor.
Gesa Ziemer
Thursday 10 June 10.00-10.30 EEST
Gesa Ziemer (Prof. Dr. phil.) is professor for cultural theory and was vice president research at HafenCity University Hamburg until 2020. She is the director of the City Science Lab, a cooperation with MIT Media Lab. She is currently a fellow of the Humboldt Foundation (Feodor-Lynen Program) at the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA. Her research focusses on digitalisation of cities, new forms of collaboration and the interface between artistic practice and society. She is member of the Scientific Councel of Germany and reviewer for different foundations and academic research funds and a regular guest lecturer at Lucerne School of Art and Design in Switzerland. Currently she is setting up a technology and innovation lab for the United Nations (UNITAC Hamburg).
Hrishikesh Ballal
Thursday 10 June 10.30-11.00 EEST
Hrishikesh Ballal is the Founder and Lead Developer of Geodesignhub. Over the last few years, he has experience in organizing and participating in 130+ geodesign studies of different scales and character.
In 2015, he completed his PhD in geodesign from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Prior to his work in geodesign, he worked at different leadership positions at Microsoft Corporation. His mechanical engineering background includes advanced degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA and a Bachelor’s Degree from Nagpur University, India. More information on www.hrishikeshballal.net
Marketta Kyttä
Thursday 10 June 14.00-14.30 EEST
Prof. Marketta Kyttä, the professor in Land use planning in Aalto University, has her background in environmental psychology and participatory planning. Her research covers various topics: child-, and human friendly environments, environments that promote wellbeing and health, urban lifestyles, perceived safety and new methods for public participation.
Currently, her multidisciplinary research team concentrates on the place-based person-environment research with public participation GIS methodology. The team has worked with numerous real life public participation projects of cities in Finland and abroad. These include a large scale public participation project related to Helsinki Master plan process.
Marketta Kyttä works in the School of Engineering in Aalto University’s Department of Built Environment where she leads the research group and Master’s programme in Spatial Planning and Transportation Engineering that integrates the fields of land use and transportation planning without forgetting the human focus.
Maarit Kahila-Tani
Thursday 10 June 14.00-14.30 EEST
Maarit Kahila-Tani has her background in planning geography from University of Helsinki and urban planning from Aalto University. Her research focused on new methods for enabling and encouraging wider public participation. In her dissertation, she studied the opportunities for urban planners to take advantage of map-based PPGIS tools like Maptionnaire to get ideas and insights from residents. Currently she is the CEO and co-founder of Mapita, the company behind Maptionnaire. She continues to work in the domain of community engagement tools for urban planners and city developers.
Ying Long
Thursday 10 June 14.30-15.00 EEST
Ying Long, Ph.D. is now working in the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China as a research professor. His research focuses urban science, including applied urban modeling, urban big data analytics & visualization, quantitative urban studies, planning support systems, data augmented design and future cities. He has an education background in both environmental engineering and city planning. Before joining Tsinghua University, he has worked for Beijing Institute of City Planning as a senior planner for eleven years. Familiar with planning practices in China and versed in international literature, Dr. Long’s academic studies creatively integrate international methods and experiences with local planning practices. He has published almost two hundred papers and led over twenty research/planning projects. His funded projects range from international organizations like World Bank, World Health Organization, World Resource Institute and NRDC, and Wellcome Trust, internet companies like Alibaba, Baidu, Jingdong, Tencent, Didi, Mobike and Gudong, local governments like Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Hefei, Zunyi, Rongcheng and Laizhou, to central governments like NDRC and MOHURD, and the NSFC. Dr. Long is also the founder of Beijing City Lab (BCL www.beijingcitylab.com), an open research network for quantitative urban studies. More information is available at http://www.beijingcitylab.com/longy.
Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
Friday 11 June 10.00-10.30 EEST
Adrienne Grêt-Regamey is an environmental scientist and landscape planner. She has been Professor at the Chair of Planning Landscape and Urban Systems at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, ETH Zürich (Switzerland) since 2008. Her research focuses on understanding how the interactions and/or actions of humans shape landscapes at various temporal and spatial scales using different land-use decision models in forecasting and backcasting modes. For fostering participatory landscape planning, she investigates how people perceive the landscape in her AudioVisual Lab, where state-of-the-art 3D visualizations and auralizations of landscape changes are generated and decision support tools developed. She also explores how an iterative process between design and science can allow co-creating place specific responses satisfying human needs and demands for well-being in a sustainable manner. For one of her recent research projects, the consortium was awarded the Swiss National Science Foundation Transdisciplinary Award. In 2017, she received an ERC Starting Grant for the project GLOBESCAPE linking design and land system science to foster place-making in peri-urban landscapes. In 2018 she was finalist for the ETH ALEA Art of Leadership.
Tuuli Toivonen
Friday 11 June 10.30-11.00 EEST
Tuuli Toivonen is a geographer and professor of geoinformatics based at the Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki. She leads the interdisciplinary Digital Geography Lab with 10+ researchers interested in spatial analyses for sustainable spatial planning and decision-making. Currently, she also lead the Geography Degree Programmes at the University of Helsinki.
Her research focuses on understanding dynamics of people and places, in both urban and natural areas, mostly using open/big data, spatial analytics and machine learning approaches. Much of her work examines the mobility and accessibility of people from different perspectives and in different environments, using user-generated data (social media, mobile phone, sports apps, etc.) combined with traditional data sources. Her work contributes to urban geography, land use and transport planning, sustainability science and conservation geography.
Luca Mora
Friday 11 June 13.00-13.30 EEST
Dr Luca Mora is Associate Professor of Urban Innovation and Head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Subject Group at The Business School of Edinburgh Napier University. In addition, he has also been appointed Professor of Urban Innovation at the Academy of Architecture of Urban Studies of Tallinn University of technology, where he is collaborating in delivering the €32 million Horizon 2020 smart city project FinEst Twins and the €1.3 million smart city pilot project GreenTwins. Over the course of his professional career, Luca has committed himself to improving our understanding of urban and regional innovation management processes in the digital era, with a particular focus on sustainable smart city transitions. With multi-disciplinary research connecting urban studies, computer science, and innovation studies, Luca has been contributing to advancing theory and practice in the smart city domain through the sustained production of peer-reviewed publications and funded research projects. His work has been published in top academic journals, such as Journal of Urban Technology, Journal of Cleaner Production, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Land Use Policy. Luca has also contributed to obtaining approximately 16 million Euro of University income through research and consultancy projects, mainly supported via EU funding schemes (7FP, H2020, EAFRD). In addition, Luca serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Urban Technology and IET Smart Cities, and he has been invited to edit Special Issues on smart city development for Organization Studies, Regional Studies, Journal of Urban Technology, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal.
Chris Pettit
Friday 11 June 13.30-14.00 EEST
Chris Pettit is the Director of the City Futures Research Centre, inaugural professor of Urban Science, and Plus Alliance Fellow at UNSW Sydney. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors for CUPUM (Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management). He is a member of the Planning Institute of Australia’s National Plantech Working Group, the advisory board for the Centre for Data Leadership, the Committee for Sydney’s Smart Cities Taskforce and the NSW Government Expert Advisory Group for Planning Evidence and Insights.
Prof Pettit established the City Analytics Lab (CAL), a dedicated space designed to support collaborative city planning and user-centred design. He Chief investigator on a number of ARC, CRC and Industry projects including: The Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer (RAISE) Toolkit which has been the recepient of the NSW Planning Institute of Australia’s Award for Research Excellence and the Committee for Sydney’s award for Smart Cities – Industry partnership.
Prof Pettit’s expertise is in the convergence of the fields of city planning and digital technologies including Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Planning Support Systems (PSS). He has given numerous keynote addresses at conferences around the world, is on the editorial board for a number of journals including Computer Environment and Urban Sciences, and has published over 200 academic papers. For the last 25 years, he has been undertaking research and development in the use of digital tools to support evidenced-based spatial planning.