Urban Emotions II: Identifying Emotion Hot-Spots in the City

Based on the scientific findings of the highly successful first phase of the Urban Emotions project, its second phase, funded by DFG and FWF, is just being kicked off.

The promising transdisciplinary approach bridging the fields of Urban Planning and Geoinformatics will be developed further to address new scientific goals.

In close cooperation with emotion psychologists, the project aims to leverage wearable sensors to support the extraction of emotion information in the urban context. Urban Emotions will analyse diverse spatial and temporal data from calibrated technical sensors, as well as subjective human observations and social media to identify and classify emotion hot-spots in the city.

Therefore, a comprehensive "Privacy by Design" guideline will be established to account for ethnic, legal and social implications.
Several field studies (Boston, Sao Paolo, Salzburg) aim to reveal hidden insights into urban processes by coupling tests in real-world cities with virtual reality environments.

The project is led by Ass.-Prof. Dr. Bernd Resch (University of Salzburg, Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS) and Dr. Peter Zeile (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Planning), and carried out in cooperation with the Centre for Geographic Analysis – CGA (Harvard University).

Contact: Bernd Resch