Call for Papers: THE 44th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE MID-CONTIENT REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION. May 29-31, KANSAS CITY MISSOURI

The MCRSA will hold its 44th Annual Conference May 29-31, 2013 at the Intercontinental Kansas City at the Plaza. Our meeting hotel is located at the Country Club Plaza.

Please join us for the 44th annual conference of the Mid-Continent Regional Science Association to be held at the Intercontinental Kansas City at the Plaza hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. The program committee welcomes papers on a wide range of topics relating to applied economics, planning, geography, business, public administration and political science.

Organized sessions and papers are invited in any topic pertaining to urban areas and regions including Regional Modeling, Rural Development, Regional Trade, Location of Economic Activity, Labor; Housing, Public Sector Issues, Transportation, Tourism and Recreation, Natural Resources, Zoning and Land Use Controls, Environmental Quality. Impact Analysis, Migration, Business Cycles, Industry Analysis, Benefit-cost Analysis, Education Finance, Growth Management, Investment Theory, Structure of Government, Education and Training Issues, Regional and Urban Planning, Comparative Country Studies, Local and Regional Development, Taxation and Government Finance, Regional Indicators and Forecasting, and Input/Output Theory and Applications.

Participants are encouraged to organize a session in an area of interest. Those authors wishing to present a paper should submit an abstract and complete author contact information (including specification of attending and non-attending co-authors) electronically via email to jleather@k-state.edu. The deadline for submission is April 1, 2013. For more information about paper submission, MCRSA membership, conference registration, or local arrangements contact:

John Leatherman – Executive Director, MCRSA

Kansas State University

Department of Agricultural Economics

331 Waters Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506

Phone: (785) 532-4492

Email: jleather@k-state.edu

Hotel Information: The Intercontinental Kansas City at the Plaza http://www.kansascityic.com/index.php  is located at 401 Ward Parkway, 816-756-1500 / 866-856-9717. The Country Club Plaza is Kansas City’s premier shopping, dining & entertainment district. Shuttle service from the airport is available. The conference rate is $149/night single and double. To receive this rate, reservations must be made before April 29, 2013. The group rate will be available from three days prior to the conference until three days after. Onsite parking is available free. Participants should contact the hotel directly and indicate participation in the MCRSA conference.

Additional information about MCRSA and the annual conference can be found at www.mcrsa.org.

Call for Papers: THE 23RD PACIFIC CONFERENCE OF THE REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL (RSAI), 2-4 JULY 2013, BANDUNG, INDONESIA

THE 23RD PACIFIC CONFERENCE OF THE REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL (RSAI) & THE 4TH INDONESIAN REGIONAL SCIENCE (IRSA) INSTITUTE
2-4 JULY 2013, BANDUNG, INDONESIA

Green Growth and Global Recovery: A Regional Perspective
The Pacific Regional Science Conference Organization (PRSCO) and Indonesian Regional Science Association (IRSA) invites regional scientists and researchers of relevant disciplines to submit abstracts to be presented at the 23rd Pacific Conference of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) and the 4th IRSA Institute. The conference will be hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Padjadjaran and to be held in Bandung, Indonesia, 2-4 July 2013.

Topics of the abstracts may include regional development issues in Asia and The Pacific, financing regional development, global crisis and recovery, trade and regional integration, infrastructure and social capital, industrial development, regional labor market dynamics, inter-regional disparity, city planning, climate change, green growth and sustainable development, disaster management, methods and models in regional sciences, transports and connectivity, and new perspectives of regional science.
The abstract (max 1,000 words) must include the motivation for this research, the research questions, the methodology used and the research findings. Abstracts submission is now open. Abstracts can only be submitted electronically through the online platform via congress website at www.prsco2013.org.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 28 February 2013. Those whose abstracts accepted should submit their full papers and register to attend the conference by 30 April, 2013 in order for their paper to be included in the final program.

The conference will be attended by more than 300 participants from Pacific region and beyond, in their capacities as researchers, professionals, policy makers, as well as international organization representatives. Surrounded by fresh mountainous region, Bandung, Indonesia, has been the top destination in the region since the colonial era. Known to the world as the host of the 1955 Asian African Conference, and full of cultural heritages including its art-deco architecture, Bandung has been long well known also as the Paris van Java. Your visit will also be a memorable one.
We look forward to seeing you in Bandung, Indonesia.

The Local Organizing Committee e: info@prsco2013.org

IMPORTANT DATES
15 December 2012 Abstract Submission Open

28 February 2013 Abstract Submission Due

1 March 2013 Early Bird Registration Open

31 March 2013 Notification of Abstract Acceptance

30 April 2013 Full Paper Submission Due

30 April 2013 Early Bird Registration Due

20 May 2013 Paper Presenter Registration Due

2-4 July 2013 Conference Dates

Announcement: RRI Summer Courses In Spatial Econometrics

The Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University announces its third series of four summer courses in Spatial Econometrics for 2013.  The courses are organized into a format that includes morning (theoretical) lectures and afternoon computer labs.  The course objectives are to provide a comprehensive treatment of various spatial econometrics techniques for use in applied research.

Announcement : 2014 GLOBAL LAND PROJECT OPEN SCIENCE MEETING, March 2014, Berlin, Germany

1. Rethinking land change transitions
2. Local land users in a tele-connected world
3. Impacts and responses
4. Land governance

• Research Presentation Session: 5 oral presentations on related topics
• Round-table Discussion: 3-5 speed talks followed by discussion
• World Cafe Workshop: discussion format around 2-3 open statements or questions
• Short Training Session: short training course on a specific topic
• Open Format: new innovative session formats are welcome

Call for Abstracts: Conference on Agent-Based Modeling in Transportation Planning and Operations, September 30-October 2, 2013

Conference on Agent-Based Modeling in Transportation Planning and Operations

September 30-October 2, 2013

The Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Center

Conference Website: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/abmconf/index.html

-Call for Abstracts-

(Qualified papers will be published in a special issue of Transportation Journal: Part C)

General Information

The Conference on Agent-Based Modeling in Transportation Planning and Operations provides an international forum on the latest technical developments and research in the field of transportation planning and operations using agent-based approaches. Researchers, academicians, practitioners, and industry and government agencies are invited to this conference to discuss their research and applications pertaining to agent-based modeling in transportation planning and operations. The conference is supported by the Mid-Atlantic University Transportation Center Program and by Virginia Tech.

Conference Objectives

The conference has the following objectives:

• Present the current state of the art/science in agent-based modeling in transportation.
• Provide the lessons learned from the current research efforts in this field.
• Define where the future lies in this type of modeling effort and what steps and research agendas need to be taken to ensure its success.

Conference Topics

Topics of interest in agent-based modeling include but are not limited to:

• Developing the daily activities of travelers
• Spatial markets simulations (housing, demographics, firm-graphics)
• Routing of travelers in a dynamic traffic simulation
• Large scale microscopic traffic simulations
• Impact of hybrid and plug-in-electric vehicles on mode choice and transportation system performance.
• Integrated Transportation Planning and Operations Applications
• Traveler willingness to pay for toll roads/HOT lanes
• Evacuation planning and emergency management
• Acceleration and braking behaviors of individual drivers
• Car following and lane changing behaviors in traffic models
• Aggressive vs. defensive drivers in the context of eco-driving
• Driver behavior in the environment of co-operative vehicle-highway systems
• Modeling heterogeneous vehicle to vehicle networks including driverless fleets
• Applications in freight transportation modeling

Submission Guidelines, Important dates, and Registration

The submitted abstracts should be between 1,000 words and 2,500 words in length. Authors should submit their contributions electronically in PDF format at:

http://www.manager.cpe.vt.edu/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5

Technical questions regarding abstracts should be directed to

Dr. Antoine Hobeika, Conference Chair

Email: Hobeika@vt.edu

Phone: 540-231-7407

Submission process and registration questions should be directed to:

Holly Williams

Continuing and Professional Education

Email: hmccall@vt.edu

Phone: 540-231-2188

The important dates for submission are:

•  Abstract submission is due on :  March 8, 2013
• Notification of acceptance :        May 24, 2013
• Final revised submission :          August 2, 2013

Please visit the following website to register: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/abmconf/registration.html

Proceedings and Publications

All abstracts accepted for the conference will be included in the conference proceedings that will be compiled on a flash drive and be given to all participants at the time of registration.

Authors of selective outstanding abstracts will be asked to submit full papers to be considered for publication in the special issue of Transportation Research: Part C dedicated for this conference. In preparing their final manuscript, invited authors should follow the paper submittal guidelines for the Transportation Research: Part C.

The chief editor of this special issue of Transportation Research-C is Lei Zhang from University of Maryland. The co-editors are: Hesham Rakha from Virginia Tech, Monty Abbas from Virginia Tech, and Eric Miller from University of Toronto.

Conference Organization

I) Conference Chairmen:

Antoine G. Hobeika, Dept. of CEE, Virginia Tech

Hesham Rakha, Dept. of CEE/VTTI, Virginia Tech

II) Organizing Committee

Ihab El-Shawarby, Virginia Tech

David Roden, AECOM Inc.

Hubert Ley, Argonne National Laboratory

Lei Zhang, University of Maryland

Brian Park, University of Virginia

Mansoureh Jehani, Morgan State University

Venky Shankar, Penn State University

Laurence R. Rilett, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Eric J. Miller, University of Toronto, Canada

Kai Nagel, Technical University of Berlin, Germany

Announcement: 2014 World Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research (WSTLUR), Delft, The Netherlands

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 It is our pleasure to announce that the 2014 World Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research (WSTLUR) will be held in fabulous Delft, the Netherlands, from Tuesday, June 24, 2014, through Friday, June 27, 2014. Please mark your calendars!

 Deadlines for full-paper submissions (with double-blind review) will be announced in early 2013.  Selected articles from the symposium will appear in the Journal of Transport and Land Use in 2015. More information regarding the symposium will be posted in the future on the WSTLUR website, at http://www.cts.umn.edu/events/wstlur/

We also would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Kees Maat from Delft University of Technology and Professor Karst Geurs from the University of Twente for their excellent proposal, which won the bid. We appreciate all the institutions that indicated interest in organizing WSTLUR 2014.

Looking forward to seeing you in Delft, in June 2014,

Kara Kockelman, Kelly Clifton, Ahmed El-Geneidy & the rest of the WSTLUR Gang ==========================================

Job Opening: Assistant Professor, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences is recruiting a tenure-track, assistant professor in urban economic geography for appointment on August 15, 2013 with primary specialization in the processes of globalization, global and globalizing cities, urban regions, and their interactions. The candidate should have secondary interests complementary to existing departmental programs including, but not limited to international trade, industrial location, urban sustainability, migration, geographies of consumption, and/or a regional specialization (e.g. Latin America, Asia). Required qualifications: 1) a doctoral degree in geography or closely related field at the time of appointment; 2) ability to contribute to graduate-level programming in their primary area of expertise through teaching, research and service; 3) teach undergraduate courses consistent with departmental needs; 4) ability to develop and maintain an externally funded research program; 5) ability to contribute to the department’s interdisciplinary mission. The Assistant Professor of Geography position is one of two new positions at UNC Charlotte that support its emerging foci on globalization and sustainability, a prominent initiative of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS).  UNC Charlotte is an AA/EOE and ADVANCE institution. Applications from women, minorities and other underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.  A full description of the position and application details can be found at http://jobs.uncc.edu.  Review of applications will begin December 15, 2012 and continue until the position is filled.  For more information, contact Dr. Harrison Campbell at 704-687-5997, or hscampbe@uncc.edu, or view our department website at http://www.geoearth.uncc.edu/.

ICA Workshop on Street Networks and Transport, August 23-24, 2013, Dresden, Germany

ICA Workshop on Street Networks and Transport, August 23-24, 2013, Dresden, Germany

Street networks, as one of the oldest infrastructure of transport in the world, play a significant role in modernization, sustainable development, and human daily activities in both ancient and modern times. Although street networks have been well studied in a variety of engineering and scientific disciplines including for instance transport, geography, urban planning, economics and even physics, our understanding of street networks in terms of their structure and dynamics is still very limited to deal with real world problems such as traffic jams, pollution, and human evacuations in case of disaster management. Thanks to the rapid development of geographic information science and related technologies, abundant data of street networks have been collected for better understanding the networks’ behavior, and human activities constrained by the networks. This ICA workshop is intended to gather researchers together to present the state of the art research and studies, in an interdisciplinary setting, on street networks and transport. Suggested topics include, but not limited to as long as they address issues related to street networks and/or transport:

Spatial statistics and spatial analysis along networks
Topological analysis and space syntax
Pattern recognition with street networks
Map generalization on street networks
Complexity measurement of street networks
Human evacuations and simulations
Transport modeling based on street networks
Geospatial analysis of the OpenStreetMap data

Submission:
All manuscripts in a length of 6000-7000 words should be in English, single column, single-spaced with figures and tables within the text. The manuscripts in MS Word 2003 format should contain authors’ affiliation and email, abstract (no longer than 200 words), and up to five keywords. To submit, please use EasyChair athttp://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icaworkshop2013

Important dates:
Deadline for receiving papers: April 25, 2013
Acceptance notification: May 25, 2013
Workshop: August 23-24, 2013

Publication:
The papers selected for the workshop will follow a peer-review process for publication as a theme issue of the international journal Geographical Analysis

Program committee:
Sonit Bafna
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Marc Barthelemy
Institut de Physique Theorique, France
Mike Batty
University College London, UK
Itzhak Benenson
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Tao Cheng
University College London, UK
Daniel A. Griffith
University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Andrea De Montis
Università di Sassari, Italy
Seungjae Lee
University of Seoul, South Korea
Harvey Miller
University of Utah, USA
Itzhak Omer
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Toshihiro Osaragi
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Yukio Sadahiro
University of Tokyo, Japan
Monika Sester
Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
Jean-Claude Thill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Stephan Winter
University of Melbourne, Australia
Bisheng Yang
Wuhan University, China
Xiaobai Yao
University of Georgia, USA

Workshop organizers:
Bin Jiang
University of Gävle, Sweden
Email: bin.jiang@hig.se
Web:http://fromto.hig.se/~bjg/

Atsuyuki Okabe
Aoyama Gakuin University
Email: atsu_okabe@sccs.aoyama.ac.jp
Web:http://home.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~atsu/

NECTAR in the Azores! – NECTAR 2013 International Conference – First Call for Papers

NECTAR (Network on European Communications and Transport Activities Research) 2013 International Conference

St. Miguel, Azores Islands (Portugal), 16-18 June 2013

It is our pleasure to announce the XII NECTAR International Conference, to be held at the University of the Azores, St. Miguel, Azores Islands (Portugal), from 16 to 18 June 2013.

Theme of the Conference:
Dynamics of Global and Local Networks

The Conference is aimed at developing a better understanding of the way in which transport and communications networks are evolving in a rapidly changing world. It will consider the complex and diverse challenges facing providers of transport and communications services and those responsible
for establishing the associated institutional structures. Attention will be paid to the role and evolution of transport and communication networks, global and transatlantic as well as regional and local, with an emphasis on the context of peripheral territories and related local networks. The island of St. Miguel in the Azores Islands (Portugal), located between Europe and United States, will serve as the ideal platform for discussing these topics. The meeting will provide a plenary session for keynote speakers, sessions with presentations of submitted papers, and NECTAR Cluster Meetings/Sessions.

Papers are welcome from the field of transport, communications and mobility at large. In addition to the Main Theme of the Conference, themes of specific interest are:
· Network vulnerability
· Policy and environment
· Logistics and freight
· Commuting, migration and the labour market
· Accessibility
· Transport security

Deadline for submissions: 30 November 2012. Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the form available on the Conference website:

http://www.apdr.pt/NECTAR2013conference/index.html

Criteria for acceptance: the scientific quality of the abstract and NECTAR membership. The number of participants will be limited to 100.
Notification of acceptance: 15 December 2012.

Venue: University of the Azores, Island of St Miguel, Azores, Portugal
Airport: Ponta Delgada (PDL)
Registration, meals and accommodation for 2 nights (16-17/6/2013) will be offered to NECTAR members, for only one author per paper. All practical details will be communicated through the Conference Website.
In order to participate in the Conference, a consecutive two-year NECTAR membership (2012–2013 or 2013–2014) is necessary. Non-members can find details of how to join the association on the “Membership” page of NECTAR’s website: www.nectar-eu.org

Job Opportunity: Regional Economist / Analyst

MIG, Inc. is recruiting a Mid-level Regional Economist/Analyst to build spatial interaction models of inter-regional trade using information from MIG’s Social Accounting (SAM) data warehouse of regional and national economic accounts. The successful candidate will be primarily responsible for implementing and enhancing MIG’s Trade Modeling System (TMS), a module of the IMPLAN system. TMS is a collection of individual trade models for specific commodities and factors of production. These models depict the trade behavior of commodities and factors of production within the context of I-O and CGE modeling frameworks. The work involves using various econometric and data transformation methods to design, revise, and implement theoretically sound models of regional trade flows to add to the TMS collection. The work also involves extracting and manipulating the data necessary to build TMS models, drawing data from MIG’s SAM data warehouse using complex “Extraction-Transforma!
tion-Load” (ETL) work processes in a database environment.

Duties

Plans, schedules, and builds TMS trade models using generally accepted and sometimes fairly complex economic or statistical techniques.

Using conventional ETL methods, obtains data from MIG’s SAM data warehouse and other sources for constructing TMS models.

Using conventional ETL methods, obtains new data pertinent to building TMS models from extant sources and loads the data into MIG’s SAM data warehouse.

Evaluates all TMS-related data and makes adjustments to ensure reliability and comparability.

Evaluates all TMS component trade models and makes enhancements and revisions to ensure reliability and comparability.

Assists the MIG team in developing new methods and products.

Knowledge and Skills

PhD in Economics or Applied Economics preferred, Masters with experience will also be considered.

Applied knowledge and experience in modeling the spatial interactions that constitute regional economic trade.

Applied knowledge and experience with regional social accounting systems, regional economic modeling techniques (including input-output analysis, computable general equilibrium modeling) and econometric analysis of regional economic behaviors.

Demonstrated experience in ETL tools and methods applied to large databases of economic information.

Demonstrated experience with a wide array of analysis systems and tools such as SQL and GIS database modeling, MATLAB, GAMS, and programming languages like Python.

Quantitative skills and experience in using statistical software packages such as SPSS or SAS useful. Knowledge and experience with economic analysis programs such as IMPLAN or REMI are desirable.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, resume to Ambrose Alward at jobs@implan.com or to MIG Inc., PO Box 837. Hudson, WI 54016. The position will remain open until filled. MIG is a AA/EEO company. Please see www.IMPLAN.com for more information about MIG Inc.