Information dissipation time/length in urban data

We have estimated the information dissipation length and information dissipation time using data of financial derivatives and found an intriguing correspondence between historical events and spikes in IDL. The idea is that (critical) transitions of an entire system should be accompanied by an increase of IDL, because how else can all system components synchronously change their state? In this project you will apply the tools of information processing on urban data, i.e., data of how cities evolve and interact, which is in many cases freely available and extensive. For inspiration, see http://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7301.short .