Manhattan's Densities ~ Rise & Fall 1800-2010

Nice timelapse animation of Manhattan's Densities changing over two centuries based on data collected by Shlomo Angel and Patrick Lamson-Hall of the NYU Stern Urbanization Project!

Mega Tsunami Happen ~ Simulation of Past &...

Given the recent Indonesian disaster with Krakatoa Junior collapsing with consequent tsunami, it's worth looking at other examples of the same, including this simulation of Fogo in Cabo Verde several tens of thousands of years ago... And, of course, Krakatoa Senior some ~150 years ago was a whopper... But let's not stop there, here's the most likely thing (other than another Hurricane Sandy) to clobber the US Eastern Seaboard, La Palma in the Canarys going...

Earth's Ocean ~ Driver of Weather & Climate...

Fall 2016 @ MIT ~ Ventures, Places, Futures!

I'm co-teaching a very cool folio of MIT class offerings this Fall 2016 and hope you'll either consider joining us or spreading the word about particularly relevant offerings to great students and colleagues who you think might appreciate them! These cluster into three big categories: Transformational Ventures, Creative Places, and Emergent Futures. Details below & online...  

• Development Ventures ~ Thu 10a-12n E14-633 ~ 15.375/EC.731/MAS.665 ~ http://developmentventures.org ~ Towards the entrepreneurial deployment of emerging market innovations solving problems faced by at least a Billion people worldwide in developing countries and underserved communities. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Revolutionary Ventures ~ Thu 2-4p E15-341 ~ 9.455/15.128/20.454/MAS.883 ~ http://revolutionaryventures.org ~ Exploring personal entrepreneurial strategies and envisioning and building transformative ideas and organizations to initiate and/or accelerate bold engineering revolutions. Email reven@media.mit.edu ASAP if interested. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Future Commerce (H1) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s71/15.s73 ~ http://mitfuturecommerce.org ~ New Media meets Markets & Finance. First class: Tue 9/13 (Half Semester offering)  
• Future Health (H2) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s72/15.s74 ~ http://mitfuturehealth.org ~ New Media meets Medicine & Wellness. First class: Tue 11/1 (Second Half of semester)  
• Understanding MIT ~ Tue 4-6p 9-450A ~ 11.s941 ~ http://understandingmit.org ~ Special seminar on the challenges of designing and building research universities and crafting conditions for a supportive, vibrant, and entrepreneurial learning community. First class: Tue 9/13  
• Model Cities ~ Wed 2-5p E15-359 ~ MAS.552/4.557 ~ http://mitmodelcities.org ~ Simulating & Visualizing Entrepreneurial, Innovative, & Creative Urban Hotspots. First class: Wed 9/7  
• SciFab 2050 ~ Tue 7-9p E15-359 ~ MAS.s60 ~ http://scifab2050.org/ ~ An informal seminar using Science Fiction, extrapolation, simulation, and imagination to envision what our world might be like in 2050. Email jpbonsen@alum.mit.edu if interested. First session: Tue 9/13

Future Climate ~ Köppen-Geiger A1FI Scenario...

Future A1FI Köppen-Geiger climate scenario...

CO2 Portrait ~ NASA Simulates Atmosphere...

I'm particularly interested in long-term, humanity-scale global dynamics. Remembering Jay Forrester's World Dynamics and economic modeling. Nice example here by NASA's Goddard Global Modeling and Assimilation Office...

Educational Games ~ SimCityEdu by GlassLab

BBC Future asks Can games create an education fit for the future? and teach systems thinking and more...

"Video games usually get in the way of homework. GlassLab, however, is a collaboration between educators and technologists. Uniting commercial game studios and educational groups the aim is to embrace gaming technology to transform the learning process and make it more relevant to the demands of the 21st Century."

Tsunami 2004 ~ Recalling Boxing Day Disaster...

The Boxing Day 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean -- ten years ago today, December 26th -- was one of the biggest natural disasters in modern memory, killing over a quarter-million people without (much) warning within 4-6 hours in at least a dozen countries -- and triggering unprecedented humanitarian relief efforts. There are several retrospective documentaries of note, but here's a sampling... For those interested in quantifying the catastrophe, first note this NOAA simulation of the tsunami wavefront... Second, look at this seismographic plot from around the world showing the Earth literally ringing from the rupture of the Sunda megathrust off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia...

We're learning ever more about quakes and tsunamis and NOAA's research and warning system is on the frontline... Nevertheless, the colossal power of plate tectonics is only one of the deadly natural perils mankind faces. Just one modest-sized asteroid hit, say like Eltanin or Chicxulub, would create quakes and tsunamis that make the Boxing Day disaster seem like ripples in a puddle. Simulate this for yourself via ImpactEarth! For civilizational survival, we need to figure out how to move humanity well beyond our cradle, ASAP.

Flood Simulations ~ Modeling Disaster Dynamics!

Steven Ward hosts the ingomar200 YouTube page where he posts great simulations of various historical flood and related disasters. These really help visualize historical and physical dynamics of major incidents. He's got many, but here's a few I particularly like: First, Pennsylvania's Johnstown Flood (1889)... France's Malpasset Dam Disaster (1959)... Alaska's Lituya Bay Tsunami (1959)... Historic breaching at Gibraltar and Med flood... Asteroid Eltanin hitting South Pacific... Finally, simulating Las Palmas again triggering megatsunami...

Illustris ~ First Realistic Universe Simulation...

DailyGalaxy spotlights the first realistic universe simulation Illustris...

"A set of large-scale cosmological simulations, including the most ambitious simulation of galaxy formation yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion or "hydrodynamics" of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe."

Birdly ~ Oculus Rift VR Flight Simulator...

MIT's Jonas Brunschwig pointed me to Birdly...

Titanic Disaster ~ CGI Simulation of Sinking...

NatGeo shares Titanic: The Final Word With James Cameron who with his team craft CGI of how Titanic hit berg, took on water, and ultimately sank and hit the ocean floor... And here's NatGeo's Seconds from Disaster story...

SimCity E3 ~ Latest Urban Planning Game Soon!

Nice piece by Ariel Schwartz in Fast Co.Exist noting that The New SimCity Will Turn You Into An Urban Planning Nut...

"SimCity, a city-building simulation series that was first released in 1989, has always been a virtual sandbox for aspiring urban planners, with a seemingly endless array of options -- you could lay down roads; zone houses, industrial complexes, and commercial real estate; put up nuclear power plants; adjust taxation; and more. In the end, you could destroy your whole empire with a UFO or a well-placed asteroid strike. The newest version of SimCity, set to be released in February 2013, retains most of the game’s previous elements (including its addictive quality) while bringing a whole new level of complexity to the tilt-shift inspired world."

Sea Surface Temperature ~ NOAA Simulation!

DailyMail spots NOAA's Sea Surface Temperature simulations from their Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL)...

Perpetual Ocean ~ Visualizing Global Currents!

Thanks to Neatorama for spotting Perpetual Ocean...

"This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. [It] produced using NASA/JPL's computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II or ECCO2."

Ancient Climate Change ~ Modeling Mayan Times

LiveScience spotlights NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies climatologist Benjamin Cook whose team computer modeled forest-clearing by ancient Mayans and its effect on climate...

Future of Games ~ Will Wright @ UCSC IFOG'11

SimCity creator Will Wright on Future of Games at UCSC IFOG'11...

Cataclysmic Events ~ Beyond Magnitude 10.0

While the recent Sendai 2011 quake of magnitude 9.0 and tsunami aftermath loom large in recorded history, it's worth keeping in mind the truly cataclysmic probabilities which await us. (And that's not including man-made terrors including nuclear war, bioengineered plague, or grey goo.) There's a long list, which I won't belabor here. But I do want to spotlight terrestrial impact events, i.e. asteroid and comet hits... Recall that only a few years ago our solar systemic neighbor Jupiter got whacked by the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet... If that happened again on Earth, we'd have magnitude 10.0-plus shockwaves -- some estimate the Chicxulub asteroid strike in Yucatán being between magnitude 11 and 12.5 (!) -- and most likely megatsunami too, since odds are 7:3 it hits ocean. And if you're especially curious what the damage would be like, go visit the convenient DIY ImpactEarth! simulator...

Sendai Japan Quake ~ Images & Visualizations...

Ongoing post about Sendai quake, Japan, and aftermath. Here's how quake was covered in realtime on TV and the alarms were spread... Brent Kooi captured realtime ground cracking dynamics (!) Tokyo skyscrapers swaying (but not breaking, thankfully)... The tsunami warnings and practiced-population did work... But tsunami's are unstoppable... Here's NOAA tsunami simulation... Tsunami intensity forecast... Aftermath on The Big Picture... WSJ's survey of coastal damages... Google serves Post-earthquake imagery of Japan... And this ABC Before & After visualizer is especially good. Here's NASA Terra satellite's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of pre- and post-view of northeastern Japan shows massive flooding along the coast centered on Sendai city...