Dr. Mark Fox, Distinguished Professor of Urban Systems Engineering, Professor of Industrial Engineering and Computer Science, and Associate Director (Research) in the School of Cities, gave a fascinating talk about the importance of representation of City data in four storieson February 15, 2019. His presentation was received with rapt attention by a large audience.
After giving a brief overview of his background in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and his previous works incorporating AI research, Mark explained the importance of the interoperability of data. Some level of precision in data representation is essential so that computer systems may exchange data with shared meaning. Data with unambiguous, clear definitions is most easily shared.
He expanded this to city data representation by pointing out that it is important to find core concepts and properties, as well as distinctions, in the city’s data.
Mark walked through four stories including City indicators, transportation planning, social enterprise performance, and social needs marketplace to further explain the challenge of the city data representation.
He concluded that our ability to reason about a problem and find solutions depends on the richness and completeness of the underlying data.
These are just a few points from Mark’s presentation. For the full seminar, please consult the UT-ITE website for links to his presentation slides and/or a videorecording of his talk.
Abstract
This presentation will tell four stories of how an Artificial Intelligence approach to knowledge representation has enabled more intelligent analysis in the domains of cities, transportation and social services.
Speaker
Mark Fox is a Distinguished Professor of Urban Systems Engineering, and a Professor of Industrial Engineering and Computer Science where his current research applies Artificial Intelligence to Smart Cities. He is the Associate Director (Research) in the School of Cities. He received his BSc in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1975 and his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983, where he was an Associate Professor (tenured) of Computer Science and Robotics. He was a founding member of Carnegie-Mellon’s Robotics Institute. From 1981 through 1987 he founded and led the Robotics Institute’s Intelligent Systems Laboratory, and from 1987 through 1991 he co-founded and led the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Decision Systems. In 1993 Dr. Fox co-founded Novator Systems Ltd., a pioneer in out-sourced eRetail services and software. In 1984 he co-founded Carnegie Group Inc., one of the first companies to apply Artificial Intelligence to solving engineering, manufacturing, and telecommunications problems. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Engineering Institute of Canada.
This seminar was presented by the University of Toronto Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter.