From Systems to Patterns and Back: Exploring the role of dynamic patterns in the area of regional planning

The master thesis presents a data-driven framework to explore the role of dynamic time and direction patterns in the area of Finnish Lapland  and Arctic Ocean railway in order to improve decision-making in complex urban and landscape planning and design tasks. In an era marked by dramatic environmental, political and societal changes, the Arctic region becomes more global and complex. In order to cope with the increasing complexity in regional challenges, Systems Thinking, dynamic patterns, modelling and use of simulation are researched to open up a novel ways for complex regional planning methods. 

The project presents a dynamic, evidence-based planning and decision support tool called CityScope Lapland. The main goal of CityScope Lapland is to use digital technologies to incorporate dynamic variables in urban and landscape spatial analysis and methodology; secondly, to improve the accessibility of the decision-making process for non-experts through a tangible user interface, and third, to help users evaluate their decisions by creating a feedback through real-time visualization of urban simulation results. 

This is achieved by designing an agent-based model and using different representation and abstraction features for different dynamic data packages. The project is integrated within the GAMA simulation platform and embedded in the MIT City-Scope framework - a medium for both, analyzing agent’s behavioral patterns and displaying them to the stakeholders.