Urban computing / spatial systems / quantitative research
Shubhankar Sharma
I build interactive maps, simulation models, dashboards, and quantitative research tools for understanding complex spatial and financial systems.
Modeling urban behavior through simulation.
I develop simulation models that examine how changes in infrastructure, policy, and human behavior influence movement, accessibility, and urban performance.
Designing interfaces that reveal spatial patterns.
A good map or dashboard makes complex systems easier to understand by revealing where access breaks, where risk clusters, how movement flows, and which assumptions shape the outcome.
Applying systematic research to financial markets.
Every strategy is developed through iterative research, combining hypothesis testing, validation, failure analysis, and continuous improvement.
About
Urban systems, spatial interfaces, simulation, and quantitative research.
My work began in urban planning and urban computing: route-finding tools, accessibility models, mobility simulations, policy games, 3D geographic visualizations, and spatial dashboards. I now apply the same research discipline to quantitative equity work: signal design, portfolio simulation, execution-aware testing, regime analysis, path behavior, and trade diagnostics.
Focus areas
The work sits between planning, computation, and research.
Urban computing
Interactive systems for route-finding, land use, traffic, walkability, policy choices, and city data.
Spatial data systems
Maps, dashboards, network analysis, accessibility models, and 3D geographic visualizations.
Simulation
Mobility, traffic, housing, evacuation, policy, and agent-based scenarios built as explorable prototypes.
Quantitative research
Signal design, backtesting, portfolio simulation, robustness checks, and trade-level diagnostics.
Research
Evidence-led work across city systems and financial markets.
In urban computing, I have built prototypes for pathfinding across city networks, dead-end street analysis, green-space accessibility, land-use and traffic patterns, school access, parking supply, policy decision games, public safety, and emergency response.
In market research, I build systematic workflows for signal design, walk-forward testing, leakage audits, portfolio simulation, execution-aware replay, failure detection, path similarity, open-position risk, and hold/exit decision support.
Network access
Network access
Route-finding, accessibility, street connectivity, and service-area analysis.
Multi-City A* Route-Finding System
Developed an interactive route-planning system that applies the A* search algorithm to real urban street networks in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and New York. The project visualizes both the shortest path and the algorithm’s search behavior, making route optimization, graph traversal, and urban network structure easier to interpret.
Dead-End Street Network Analysis
Built a comparative street-network analysis of dead-end road patterns in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru to study urban permeability, local accessibility, and circulation constraints. The project examines how fragmented street layouts affect neighborhood movement, route choice, and connectivity.
Walkability and Walk Score Simulation
Designed a walkability scoring model using street networks, amenities, land use, pedestrian infrastructure, safety conditions, and urban design factors. The project evaluates how accessible, connected, and pedestrian-friendly different urban areas are.
Shibuya School Accessibility Mapping
Analyzed school accessibility in Shibuya, Japan by evaluating walking access, school locations, street networks, and safe-route conditions. The project studies how easily children and families can reach schools within the neighborhood environment.
Walmart Retail Access and Isochrone Analysis
Developed a retail accessibility analysis evaluating travel-time access to Walmart locations. The project uses isochrone-based spatial analysis to show how easily people can reach retail services from different areas.
Urban Wayfinding and City Navigation Prototype
Developed an urban wayfinding prototype grounded in city legibility, pedestrian navigation, and behavioral movement theory. The project connects urban design literature with interactive visual explanation of how people understand and navigate cities.
Spatial dashboards
Spatial dashboards
Interactive maps, dashboards, globes, and visual systems for reading urban data.
Green Space Accessibility and Park Usability Index
Designed a green-space accessibility framework to evaluate parks not just by location, but by practical usability, service area, size, coverage, and surrounding urban context. The project developed a Park Usability Index to compare how effectively different green spaces serve nearby populations.
Land Use and Traffic Pattern Analysis
Developed an interactive land-use and traffic analysis project to examine how building functions, urban density, and spatial clustering relate to movement patterns. The project connects apartments, commercial activity, and mixed-use areas with traffic and accessibility conditions.
Global Air Pollution Globe
Developed a 3D global air-pollution visualization to compare city-level PM2.5 patterns across the world. The project turns environmental pollution data into an interactive geographic interface for identifying spatial differences in air-quality exposure.
Migration Flow Globe
Created a 3D migration-flow globe to visualize movement between places through animated spatial flows. The project represents migration as a dynamic geographic system, helping communicate direction, scale, and connectivity between regions.
Global Energy Production and Consumption Map
Developed an interactive energy visualization comparing production and consumption patterns across countries. The project explains differences in energy resources, infrastructure, supply, and demand through spatial comparison.
Reusable 3D Globe Visualization System
Built a reusable 3D globe visualization system for global spatial analysis and interactive data presentation. The system supports multiple themes, including migration, pollution, climate, and country-level data overlays.
Transparent Country Boundary Globe
Created a transparent country-boundary globe to explore alternative ways of representing world geography. The project focuses on global boundary visualization, spatial form, and interactive geographic design beyond conventional flat maps.
Temperature and Climate Globe Visualization
Built a climate and temperature globe visualization to communicate environmental change across time and geography. The project uses a global interface to show temporal climate patterns and spatial differences in temperature-related data.
Meteorite Landings Geospatial Map
Built an interactive geospatial map of meteorite landings to practice spatial visualization, point clustering, and geographic data exploration. Although outside core urban planning, the project demonstrates transferable mapping and geographic analysis skills.
Migration Data and Globe Conversion System
Developed a migration-focused globe visualization system for representing world geography and movement flows. The project supports interactive global mapping and migration-flow analysis through a 3D spatial interface.
City Pulse Urban Data Dashboard
Developed a city-pulse dashboard prototype using NYC building and spatial data to represent urban geometry, grid structure, and city attributes. The project explores how raw spatial information can be converted into an interactive dashboard for reading city activity.
Mobility systems
Mobility systems
Traffic behavior, transport demand, parking, vehicle movement, and travel patterns.
Manhattan Event Congestion Analysis
Analyzed how major event venues in Manhattan influence nearby traffic pressure and street-level congestion. The project focuses on high-activity locations such as Madison Square Garden and evaluates how event demand can reshape movement patterns around surrounding road networks.
Ambulance Dispatch and Emergency Vehicle Simulation
Built an emergency vehicle dispatch simulation to evaluate ambulance movement, signal response, departure timing, and traffic-priority scenarios. The project compares how different signal-priority distances affect emergency vehicle flow and response behavior in urban traffic conditions.
Global Parking Supply and CBD Parking Analysis
Built a multi-city parking analysis project to compare parking supply across central business districts and wider urban areas. The project examines how parking availability, land consumption, and CBD structure differ across global cities and influence urban form.
Autonomous Taxi and Parking Demand Simulation
Designed a shared autonomous taxi simulation comparing roaming autonomous taxis with conventional taxis that require parking between trips. The project evaluates how autonomous mobility could affect parking demand, vehicle circulation, waiting time, and transport efficiency.
Congestion Pricing and Road Pricing Study
Conducted a comparative congestion-pricing study across Manhattan, Singapore, London, and Stockholm. The project examines cordon pricing, peak/off-peak pricing, road-use charges, and demand- management logic to understand how pricing can influence urban traffic behavior.
Taxi and Commercial Center Simulation
Built a taxi and commercial-center simulation to study how transport demand interacts with business districts and activity nodes. The project examines how movement, waiting, and commercial concentration shape urban mobility patterns.
Taxi Trajectory Data Exploration
Explored taxi trajectory data to analyze vehicle movement over time using location traces. The project focuses on transforming raw mobility traces into interpretable urban movement patterns.
Uber Pickup Location Mapping
Built Uber pickup-location visualizations to analyze ride-hailing demand patterns across New York City. The project identifies where demand concentrates and how pickup activity varies spatially across the city.
Vehicle Waiting Time Visualization
Built a vehicle waiting-time visualization to show how delay, queueing, and movement evolve in traffic and congestion scenarios. The project communicates operational traffic behavior through animated visual analysis.
Aircraft Movement Visualization
Built an aircraft movement visualization to represent spatial movement, density, and clustering patterns. The project compares different visual methods for communicating aircraft location and movement behavior across space.
Housing and development
Housing and development
Housing dynamics, neighborhood change, land-use regulation, and development workflows.
Housing Dynamics and Affordability Simulation
Designed a housing dynamics simulation to model affordability, rent pressure, income groups, neighborhood desirability, migration, and district-level housing change. The project compares planning scenarios such as affordable housing allocation, density, sprawl, workplace proximity, and income inequality.
Gentrification and Neighborhood Change Model
Developed a neighborhood-change model to study gentrification through housing, income, education, demographic composition, and neighborhood transition variables. The project translates urban theory into a simulation framework for analyzing how neighborhoods evolve under economic and social pressure.
Central Business District Activity Analysis
Built a CBD activity analysis project comparing downtown intensity and central business district performance across global cities. The project evaluates urban-center strength, activity concentration, and differences in how CBDs function across city contexts.
Craft Beverage Zoning and Planning Report
Prepared a formal planning report on craft beverage and brewery zoning strategies. The project analyzes land-use regulation, zoning constraints, local economic development, and planning considerations for brewery-related development.
Sustainable Neighborhood Design Framework
Developed a sustainable neighborhood design framework using international case studies such as Vauban, Freiburg and Hammarby Sjostad, Stockholm. The project connects car-free design, mixed use, green infrastructure, and energy systems with algorithmic planning concepts.
Real Estate and District Movement Simulation
Designed a real-estate and district movement simulation to study how population density, district attractiveness, and development conditions influence movement between urban areas. The project models how people, investment, and urban activity can shift across changing districts.
URPAC Planning and Development Advisory Web Concept
Developed a planning advisory web concept focused on zoning navigation, site plan approvals, environmental review, development guidance, and urban project support. The project frames planning services around the practical workflow from regulation to project implementation.
Safety and risk
Safety and risk
Public safety, emergency movement, road risk, and urban vulnerability analysis.
Child-Friendly City Safety Analysis
Developed a child-friendly city safety analysis combining crime exposure, traffic risk, collision patterns, pedestrian safety, and safe-zone mapping. The project evaluates how urban conditions affect children’s ability to move safely through neighborhoods and public spaces.
Bicycle Safety Simulation Framework
Researched and designed a bicycle safety simulation framework focused on cyclist-vehicle interaction, near-miss events, conflict points, and road-risk behavior. The project studies how safety risks emerge from traffic movement, speed, proximity, and interaction patterns.
Manhattan Crime and Arrest Visualization
Analyzed Manhattan public-safety patterns using crime and arrest data to identify offense categories, spatial hotspots, and neighborhood-level risk patterns. The project translates public-safety data into interactive geographic analysis.
Metro Crowd Evacuation Simulation
Designed a metro-station crowd evacuation simulation modeling passenger flows, platform crowding, stair bottlenecks, boarding, exiting, and train movement. The project evaluates how people move through high-density transit environments during normal and emergency scenarios.
Alcohol-Impaired Driving Safety Analysis
Analyzed alcohol-impaired driving patterns using traffic-safety data to study crash risk, fatality patterns, and BAC-related variables. The project examines how impaired driving contributes to road-safety outcomes.
Disaster-Oriented 3D City and Evacuation Visualization
Prototyped a disaster-oriented 3D city visualization focused on evacuation planning, hazard awareness, and emergency preparedness. The project communicates urban vulnerability and evacuation logic through an interactive city environment.
Honking Behavior and Urban Traffic Noise Simulation
Developed an urban traffic-noise simulation to study how congestion, vehicle flow, and driver behavior affect honking frequency. The project models junction-level sound behavior and evaluates how traffic conditions can contribute to urban noise stress.
Autonomous Vehicle and Pedestrian Interaction Study
Designed autonomous vehicle and pedestrian interaction scenarios for crosswalks, jaywalking, pedestrian-heavy areas, and mixed-traffic environments. The project examines how vehicle reaction time, braking, speed, and pedestrian movement affect safety outcomes.
Policy and social systems
Policy and social systems
Scenario tools for governance, resource allocation, public goods, and collective behavior.
Interactive Urban Policy Game
Designed an interactive urban policy game that converts planning decisions into scenario-based tradeoffs and consequences. The project models policy choices across housing, traffic, crime prevention, green space, disaster management, budgets, stakeholders, equity, and governance constraints.
District Funding and Resource Allocation Visualization
Built an interactive resource-allocation visualization to show how public funding can be distributed across urban districts. The project examines inequality, funding priorities, and spatial tradeoffs in public resource planning.
Social Belonging Simulation
Built a social belonging simulation to model how individuals shift between groups such as friends, workplace, local community, religion, and other social categories. The project represents belonging as a dynamic system shaped by social connection, group identity, and movement between communities.
Echo Chamber and Polarization Simulation
Developed a social-network simulation showing how echo chambers and polarization emerge from ideology, income, education, identity, preference scores, and connection strength. The project models how individual similarity and social links can produce clustered belief systems.
Free Bus Ride and Public Goods Simulation
Built a public-goods simulation using a free-bus-ride scenario to model cooperators, defectors, and loners in a shared urban service system. The project explains collective-action problems in public transport funding through an interactive simulation.
Social Unrest and Dissent Simulation
Developed a social unrest simulation modeling transitions between government supporters, dissidents, and insurgents. The project examines how group behavior, social pressure, and changing conditions can influence conflict dynamics.
Misinformation Spread Simulation
Built a misinformation-spread simulation to model how information travels through a network based on susceptibility, connection strength, and node behavior. The project shows how misinformation can be accepted, resisted, or transmitted across social systems.
Simulation prototypes
Simulation prototypes
Agent-based models, synthetic cities, procedural environments, and experimental urban interfaces.
3D Synthetic City Simulation
Prototyped a 3D synthetic city environment with buildings, lighting, vehicles, and animated urban movement. The project explores how interactive 3D environments can be used to represent city form, mobility, and urban activity.
Cellular Automata and Urban Segregation Simulation
Built a suite of cellular automata simulations covering city growth, segregation, taxi movement, commercial centers, and airport-style movement systems. The project uses agent-based rules to show how simple local decisions can generate larger urban and social patterns.
Green City Generator
Built a green city generator that combines roads, buildings, houses, and green-space elements into a procedural urban environment. The project explores how sustainable city form and environmental design ideas can be represented visually.
3D Vehicle Movement Prototypes
Built 3D vehicle movement prototypes for cars, trucks, and transport simulation environments. The project created reusable visual assets and motion logic for mobility, traffic, and autonomous-vehicle scenario development.
City Image Classification and Urban Identity
Developed an image-based city analysis project to study how urban places are visually represented through scene categories and visual features. The project uses classification outputs, charts, and image galleries to compare the visual identity of different cities.
Coffee Shop Density and Location Analysis
Developed a coffee shop location analysis to study amenity density, urban retail distribution, and state- level location patterns. The project connects retail geography with neighborhood character, accessibility, and real-estate context.
Los Angeles Business Network Visualization
Developed a Los Angeles business-location visualization to study urban economic activity and spatial business distribution. The project represents businesses as part of a broader urban network shaped by location, clustering, and commercial concentration.
Experience
Work history
2020-Present
URPAC
Founder / Planning and development advisory
Founded and managed an urban planning and development advisory practice focused on planning approvals, zoning interpretation, real estate development workflows, site planning, feasibility, and project coordination across multiple cities.
2022–Present
URPAC Fund
Systematic Quantitative Research
Built reusable research workflows covering signal design, data engineering, execution-aware testing, walk-forward validation, leakage audits, portfolio simulation, regime analysis, and post-trade failure diagnostics.
2019-2020
Graduate Teaching Assistant
School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
Supported courses in transdisciplinary problem solving, environmental policy, and planning.
2018-2019
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
Contributed to a renewable energy facility siting project through web development, mapping, and research support.
2019-2020
Communications Manager
Community Change Collaborative, Virginia Tech
Managed publicity, advertising, and social channels for weekly meetings, forums, and annual events.
2019-2020
GSA Representative
Urban Affairs and Planning Department, Virginia Tech
Represented UAP students in governance discussions and departmental engagement.
2016-2018
Planning Consultant / Project Planner
PB Estate, Rajasthan
Worked on land development projects across plan formulation, construction monitoring, 3D site animation, GIS analysis, and surveying.
Education
Academic background
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Master of Urban and Regional Planning, 2018-2020
Capstone: zoning ordinance strategies for craft breweries in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Sushant School of Art and Architecture, New Delhi
Bachelor in Planning, Gold Medalist, 2014-2018
Sir Padampat Singhania School, Rajasthan
School Education
Toolkit
Tools I use for maps, simulations, and research
Analysis
Python, pandas, NumPy, SQL, notebooks, data pipelines, experiment design
Mapping
GIS, OSMnx, GeoPandas, NetworkX, PostGIS, OpenStreetMap, Leaflet, MapLibre
Simulation
JavaScript, Three.js, D3.js, SUMO, agent behavior, routing, scenario tools
Markets
Backtesting, signal design, portfolio simulation, leakage audits, trade diagnostics