Scientific profile:

Christoph obtained a diploma degree in geography – with a particular emphasis on cartography and geoinformation – from the University of Vienna in 2011. During his time at the University of Vienna he worked as a teaching assistant („Tutor“) and research assistant („Studienassistent“) for several years, and was also involved in the local Hyperglobe Research Group.

Christoph’s foremost interests lie in the overlapping area of cartography/GIS and social sciences. This includes him employing a Critical Theory to advance the theoretic foundations of cartography as well as applying GIS to research questions of a contemporary social geography.
Besides his studies, Christoph has been working at a map publishers’, and was able to gain expert knowledge in web mapping technologies while devising, developing and consulting the company’s respective infrastructure.

Currently, Christoph is researching in the general direction of modelling urban processes, with a focus on social segregation and the application of quantitative methods in researching postmodern societies.

Curriculum Vitae

Research Cluster: Time and Process

PhD Thesis Topic: Making modelling spatially and socially explicit

Abstract: Social segregation as a consequence of moving decisions is a topic which deems interesting both from a societal and from a sociological and social geographical point of view. Especially the role of social images of space is not yet fully researched.

Agent-Based Simulations seem like an appropriate method to take a closer look. However, a few pitfalls have to be mastered: For a long time, the development of simulation tools was dominated by technological constraints. Research therefore concentrated not so much on the adoption of sociological theory, or on embedding the simulations into accompanying field work. Similarly, the spatial dimension of examined processes was most of the time reduced to topological relations.

The proposed research aims at bringing together contemporary social geographical theory, the methods and tools offered by the highly active social simulation community, and the knowledge about computationally handling spatiality GIScience can provide.

To accomplish this, parts of Werlen’s theory of “everyday regionalization” will be formalized into algorithms usable as transition rules for an Agent-Based Simulation. A reference implementation will be developed, using OGR/GDAL as a geospatial backend. Finally, a methodically sound workflow, which embeds social simulation into adequate accompanying research and field work, will be conceived and evaluated.

Main Supervisor: Andreas Koch, Universität Salzburg

Other Supervisor: Flaminio Squazzoni, Università degli studi di Brescia

Recent Publications: