Presentation describing how slime mould inspired urban city planning.

1. Slime Mould Inspired
Urban Planning

2. Introduction
 Aslime mould is a simple organism containing a mass of ameboid cells.
Slime moulds are saprophytic i.e. they feed on dead and decaying organic
matter.
 The name slime comes from the gelatinous or jelly like appearance of
macroscopic slime moulds.
 Slime moulds form networks and channels as a part of its adaptive
foraging strategy.

3. Slime mould forms networks for the following reasons:
 To explore the environment for potential food sources.
 Transportation of signals.
 Survival and Reproduction.
 Efficient nutrition distribution.
 Adaptation to environmental conditions: When resources are scarce or
faced with adverse conditions, the slime mould can retract portions of its
network to conserve energy and resources.

4. The research paper referred is: Stepwise slime mould growth as a template for
urban design.
This research paper is authored by Raphael Kay,Anthony Mattacchione,
Charlie Katrycz and Benjamin D. Hatton
The aim of this research was to develop an urban design as the traditional
urban planning focuses on centralized networking system and this approach
fails to address the complexity of systems and needs of local communities.
Slime mould Physarum Polycephalum, a biological model for an adaptive and
intelligent network design focuses on a decentralized growth network which
has proven to be highly efficient.

5. How does a slime mould form networks ?
(Literature Review)

6. Slime mould works in two phases:
Biased meshing: Physarum moves selectively towards nutrition
and first forms a mesh like structure around the nutritional
matter. The mesh like structure is rather simpler.
Network refining: The mesh formed is later refined in complex
networks and channels.

8. How was slime mould used in urban
infrastructure?
Anetwork was generated which was 80% less vulnerable and 10% less time
consuming than the traditional network system.
Compared to the traditional system, Physarum inspired model focuses on a
multi objective (cost effective, less vulnerable, less time consuming)
network design which is independent of preliminary growth.

9. The Critical Eye
Although Physarum inspired network model has a superior performance
(Canada’s wonderland in Toronto) according to experiments conducted by
researchers, it performed less favorably compared conventional
transportation system for e.g. Toronto’s underground subway network. For
an equivalent cost a network that was identically vulnerable to fault but
almost 10% more time-consuming than the existing subway system.

10. Conclusion
Slime mould Physarum polycephalum emphasizes on decentralized decision
making and bottom up planning. This approach has the potential to address
complex urban issue in a more efficient, cost effective and sustainable way.
It can serve as an urban design tool that offers biologically-informed rules
for network construction.

11. Bibliography
1. Adamatzky,Andrew. (2010). Slime mould computing. World Scientific.
2. Tero,Atsushi, et al. (2010). Rules for biologically inspired adaptive network design.
Science, 327(5964), 439-442.
3. Bonabeau, Eric. (1998). Flexible buildings, and other slime molds. Swarm Intelligence,
1(2), 115-116.
4. Reid, Chris R., et al. (2012). Slime mold uses an externalized spatial “memory” to
navigate in complex environments. Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences,
109(43), 17490-17494.
5. Adamatzky,Andrew. (2016). Slime mould in arts and architecture. Springer.

12. Acknowledgment
 1. Takamatsu, A., Takaba, E. & Takizawa, G. Environment-dependent
morphology in plasmodium of true slime mold Physarum polycephalum and a
network growth model. J. Theor. Biol. 256, 29–
44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.09.010 (2009).
 2. Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H. & Hara, M. Smart network solutions in an
amoeboid organism. Biophys. Chem. 107, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0301-
4622(03)00189-3 (2004).
 3. Zhu, L., Aono, M., Kim, S. J. & Hara, M. Amoeba-based computing for
traveling salesman problem: Long-term correlations between spatially
separated individual cells of Physarum polycephalum. Biosystems 112, 1–
10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2013.01.008 (2013).

13. Contributions
 Thanks to Vishakha for introducing us to this topic and for helping in
finding papers for this topic.
 Thanks to Om for contribution in making of presentation and explaining
the topic.
 Slides 1-4 , 11-12 - Om
Slides 5-10 – Vishakha

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