Effective Geometry of Urban Travel Patterns

by

Poster Session Link

Iain McLaren
Iain McLaren

Iain (pronounced the same way as Ian) McLaren is a rising Sophomore from Larchmont, a town that’s a bit outside of New York City. He graduated from Mamaroneck High School and is a prospective Computer Science and Physics double major. Outside of academics, he is interested in theater and was a part of the Slabber performance last year. He also spends too much time playing volleyball and chess and is in the clubs for both. Once he graduates from Wesleyan, he hopes to begin working in tech, likely as a software developer, and he hopes to eventually start his own company!

Abstract: The speed and scale of urbanization brings tremendous challenges to the development of sustainable cities. We hope that our research will yield novel mathematical and computational tools to address major issues in urban planning such as traffic congestions and accessibility. To that end, we are studying the routes that Google Maps provides as the fastest traversal paths through various major cities, including Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Boston. By analyzing and comparing these routes the shortest distance paths, as well as describing certain properties common to the routes, we aim to define the effective geometry of the cities.

Video:

Iain McLaren (Math and Computer Science)
Iain_McLaren-QAC-Poster

Live Poster Session:
Thursday, July 29th 1:45-2:45pm EDT