About CityZoom

At its current development stage, CityZoom is a Decision Support System for urban planning. It provides an environment where different performance models can operate interactively, seeking to optimize the urban planning process. Each of these models corresponds to a module that implements them in the computational environment.

Its main difference and strength if compared to CAD or GIS is that a specific city model was designed. Data is represented in a object-oriented model representing the urban structure (city, blocks, roads, plots, buildings, etc) so that information can be obtained at any required level. Each performance model in the CityZoom environment operates within its correspondent part of the computational structure, affecting all the related objects and models. Model integration is possible, since the correlation between any given part is determined by the model (e.g., the building is contained by a plot, and a set of plots is contained in a block).

The CityZoom system is divided in the following modules:

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BlockMagic

BlockMagic is the model for simulation of the building potential of urban plots, based on Urban Regulations. It can swiftly generate large sets of buildings in the most different urban scenarios, or validate user-built edifications.

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AxiMagic

AxiMagic is a space syntax analyzer with features similar to Axman. It operates over axial data, and uses a variety of Space Syntax and Graph Theory techniques to predict the behavior of certain variables involved in urban traffic simulation, such as special integration (or its inverse, relative asymmetry) of any given road in relation to the remaining ones.

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Mosaic

Mosaic is a model correlation tool, built inside CityZoom. This tool converts data from the city structure (vector) to a grid of cells (bitmap). This data can be a result of a simulation or inserted by the user. The obtained grid is a regular mesh over the city. The grid itself becomes an image that can have a pixel resolution of arbitrary size, and image processing techniques can be used.