Aplicamos una metodología emergente con teoría de la percolación y dimensión fractal a la red nacional de caminos mexicana para determinar límites de ciudades de manera más automatizada y menos subjetiva. La red percolada a la distancia, donde ocurre la máxima dimensión fractal, corresponde bien con datos del medio construido de diferentes fuentes. La relación entre el punto crítico del sistema y lo definido como urbano parece prometedora para delimitar ciudades, áreas urbanas metropolitanas o funcionales y dinámicas relacionadas con la concentración de personas en las geografías.

By considering public safety as a relevant component of a smart city framework, the development and use of city dashboards that explore the spatio-temporal monitoring of crime incidence to help local governments base their decision-making process on evidence is becoming more relevant. This research deals with the case study of the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, whose capital hosts the annual San Marcos Fair, considered the most important fair in the country. By developing an online dynamic platform consisting of several different modules that rely on the use of geovisual analytics for dynamic and interactive data display and exploration, authorities can gain insights about the times and locations of the impact of criminal incidence, detect patterns over space and time, and look into what actions could be put in place. This becomes useful in advancing a circular model of the smart city in which urban processes are observed, data is collected and analyzed, management and decision actions occur, and more data is collected to measure their effectiveness. By comparing statistics for the three year period of 2016–2018, it is found that the second year of the study had a significant decrease in pedestrian crime incidence during the Fair, supporting the use of city dashboards with geovisual analytics to help monitor urban processes and aid authorities in making decisions. Further research is needed to uncover more efficient practices to achieve inter-institutional collaboration and data sharing schemes that adhere to and boost the principles of the smart city.

This paper presents the findings derived from the design, implementation, and use of a geovisual analytics platform to explore the use of spatiotemporal data to study the evolution of urban sprawl using remotely sensed data. The ambitious project within which this research was developed aimed at using optical imagery to analyze the evolution of distinct features on the surface of a rapidly urbanizing area in central Mexico. Remotely sensed data were properly processed using Google Earth Engine to estimate the time of urbanization and results are displayed in a platform developed using open source tools and software. Its main goal is to seamlessly integrate both the spatial and temporal components of data to be able to follow the evolution of distinct features through both space and time, while presenting useful visualizations to help the viewer have a more complete understanding of the context of this evolution. Results from this case study show that subpixel mapping of urban coverage is possible using optical imagery, that time of urbanization can be estimated, and that its coupling with geovisual analytics is useful in finding trends and patterns over space and time.

Objetivo: averiguar si en México el ritmo del crecimiento del suelo edificado y del suelo urbano edificado ha ido a la par del aumento de la población en general y de la población urbana en particular, y si en verdad las ciudades han crecido de manera dispersa. Metodología: se presenta una estimación del aumento de la población y de la expansión urbana en México —tanto del suelo no urbano edificado como del suelo urbano edificado— entre 1975 y 2020, utilizando sobre todo fuentes de percepción remota. Además, se calculan métricas de estructura espacial urbana para evaluar las tendencias de determinados principios de sustentabilidad. Resultados: se concluye que mientras que el suelo edificado total creció tres veces en cuarenta años, la población tan solo se duplicó. Valor: la presente investigación matiza resultados oficiales previos, lo cual podría tener consecuencias importantes en materia de política pública territorial. Limitaciones: la estimación de la expansión urbana mediante percepción remota tiene un margen de error dependiente de la resolución de la fuente de información. Conclusiones: se confirma que hay una tendencia generalizada a la expansión urbana dispersa.