Urban Tomography

This work describes several pilot fieldwork applications in the use of Urban Tomography, providing insight into designing a system and protocols for conducting field documentation and discusses background, philosophy, and the technology of the system.

Abstract

Abstract Urban Tomography is a novel application of mobile smartphone technology, designed to enable pervasive dense documentation of city life by many smartphone users at the same time and provide an automatically-archived historical record of places in time. Besides social-scientific inquiry and research, the system might enable community residents to document their own lives. We describe several pilot fieldwork applications in the use of Urban Tomography, providing insight into designing a system and protocols for conducting field documentation. We then discuss background, philosophy, and the technology of our system. Our website is: http://tomography.usc.edu. Acknowledgments Our research was supported in part by a grant from the University of Southern California-California State University at Long Beach METRANS Project, by the Annenberg Fellowship Program of the Office of the Provost at USC, by the financial support of the Office of the Provost at USC through an Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences award, and by a grant from Google Research.