Visualizing Future 3-Dimensional Neighbourhoods in Phoenix: An Application Incorporating Empirical Methods with Computational Graphics

Sophisticated simulation models are now extensively used in urban planning for estimating future population and job distributions to measure the impact of planning decisions on future urban environments. Simulated population projections usually result in large, macro-scale, and multivariate geospatial data sets. Millions of records have to be processed, stored, and visualized to help planners explore and analyze complex population patterns. This paper introduces a database driven framework for visualizing geospatial multivariate simulation data from UrbanSim, a software-based simulation model for the analysis of future household and building types. The designed framework is extendable and aims at integrating empirical-stochastic methods with multi-dimensional visualization techniques developed for information visualization and cartography.