New Assistant Professor of Location Intelligence - Achilleas Psyllidis

Location, location, location. Estate agents and large IT organisations have long realised the value of place. But what about designers? According to Achilleas Psyllidis, a recent addition to Gerd Kortuem’s Knowledge Intelligence and Design Group (KInD), location analytics should be a core consideration in the design process. And the tools which he develops through his research will help designers realise this goal.

Born in Athens, Greece, Achilleas is one of those rare internationals who came to the Netherlands able to converse in Dutch. But his calling was less linguistic and more location. He had come to Delft to pursue a PhD in spatial data science at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, followed by post-doctoral research in the Web Information Systems group.

With a background in architectural engineering and spatial planning, Achilleas was intrigued by the potential for data to provide insights into the way we live. Until a decade ago, decisions about location and the built environment were most often based on limited census data or questionnaires with small sample sizes. But with the advent of social media and GPS trackers on smartphones, huge volumes of rich user-generated data started to be produced, offering the possibility of better understanding the meaning of place. The challenge, however, was – and still is -  unlocking the complexity of the vast volumes of location data.

Achilleas recognised the gap and set about building the tools that can give stakeholders - including designers, city planners and policy makers - the insights they need to create better products, services and systems.

Seven years on and with some success stories under his belt, including the Social Glass project he developed with IDE’s Alessandro Bozzon, Achilleas is looking forward to getting to work on the € 12 million Horizon 2020 Project, Equal-Life. The research will tackle the topic of urban exposomes – the total environmental exposures a person experiences in their lifetime and their impact on mental health. Led by the Netherland’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and the University of Gothenburg, the project involves 20 international partners. Achilleas, together with the two PhDs he is currently recruiting, will lead the design and data work packages.

Alongside his work at IDE, Achilleas is also the Head of the Social Urban Data Lab (SUDL) at AMS Institute and research affiliate of the Centre for BOLD Cities.