Planetary Cities: Fluid Rock Foundations of Civilization

Foundations for Smarter Cities

C. Harrison B. Eckman R. Hamilton P. Hartswick J. Kalagnanam J. Paraszczak P. Williams This paper describes the information technology (IT) foundation and principles for Smarter Citiesi. Smarter Cities are urban areas that exploit operational data, such as that arising from traff ic congestion, power consumption statistics, and public safety events, to optimize the operation of city services. T...

Characterization of Rock Populations on Planetary Surfaces

Characteristics of rock populations on the surfaces of Mars and Venus can be derived from analyses of rock morphology and morphometry data. We present measurements of rock sizes and sphericifies made from Viking lander images using an interactive digital image display system. The rocks considered are in the gravel size range (16-256 mm in diameter). Mean sphericities, form ratios, and roundness...

Emergent Cities: Micro-Foundations of Zipf’s Lawt

Emergent Cities: Micro-foundations of Zipf’s Law†

The tendency for human beings, economic firms and social institutions to locate together has been the subject of intellectual inquiry for centuries. People and firms are not spread ubiquitously across the globe but have a powerful tendency to organize in well-defined geographic units, cities. First Auerbach (1913) and then Zipf (1941; 1949) observed a striking regularity in this process, noting...

Fluid dynamics of planetary ices

The role of water ice in the solar system is reviewed from a fluid-dynamical point of view. On Earth and Mars, water ice forms ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers at the surface, which show glacial flow under their own weight. By contrast, water ice is a major constituent of the bulk volume of the icy satellites in the outer solar system, and ice flow can occur as thermal convection. The rheology...