Category Archives: Etusivu

Kalle Numminen’s and Joona Repo’s master’s theses are done!

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Our project members Kalle Numminen ja Joona Repo have both finished their theses, which have now been examined.

KALLE’S EXCELLENT WORK, which title was “The effect of transport pricing on retail accessibility – examining public transport fare reform” examined accessibility of the major shopping centers in the Helsinki region from the cost perspective. He compared the cost-accessibility between car and public transport and analyzed the effect of the coming public transport fare reform.

According to the results, there are clear differences by travel mode in cost-accessibility in the Helsinki region. The shopping centers in the city center have poor accessibility by car encouraging to out-of-town shopping. The fare reform will change cost-accessibility particularly near municipality borders but taken all together the reform will not have a dramatic effect on the balance of modal accessibility in the region.

Link to the work: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/175829

JOONA’S LIKEWISE EXCELLENT WORK titled “Long-Term Accessibility Change of Services: Public Library Network in Helsinki Region as a Case Study” studied long term accessibility by travel mode in the Helsinki region taking into account changes in the urban structure. The study focused on accessibility of library services and modelled how it will change by 2050.

The results show that the accessibility of the library services is relatively good in the region and the effect of the changes in the urban structure that were modelled in the study will have a rather small effect. The forecasted change in population would increase the number of people accessing the nearest library in half an hour, but the proportion of this group to the total population in the area would be smaller than before. Even though excluding some of the smallest libraries from the service network would have relatively small effects on accessibility in the aggregate, could the effects be on the individual level and for sustainable accessibility significant. Based on the study results more significant than the changes in the transport system or the attraction of the facilities seem to be how the population and the services are linked.

Link to the work: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/221337

Congratulations for both once again!

Introducing the Digital Geography Lab (new webpages out!)

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Our interdisciplinary research group has established new webpages at helsinki.fi/digital-geography. This blog (blogs.helsinki.fi/accessibility) will continue to serve as a channel for distributing news about our mobility & accessibility research and the tools and data developed in the MetropAccess projects.

The Digital Geography Lab, based at the Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, includes researchers working around the themes of mobility, accessibility, nature conservation and the development of novel data and methods for spatio-temporal analysis. Read more from helsinki.fi/digital-geography and @digigeolab Twitter account!

New paper out!

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Enhancing spatial accuracy of mobile phone data using multi-temporal dasymetric interpolation paper by Olle Järv, Henrikki Tenkanen and Tuuli Toivonen has been published in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Check it out!

This is how Olle summarized the paper:

In brief, the paper highlights the need to give more attention to the uneven spatial resolution of mobile phone data which is one potential source of bias influencing research findings. To solve this, we are the first ones to apply an advanced dasymetric interpolation approach. Thus, we propose a generic multi-temporal function-based dasymetric interpolation method for mobile phone data, and demonstrate how it improves the spatial accuracy of mobile phone data as a proxy for people. The proposed method contributes also to the development of population modelling, at large.

Conceptual framework of the interpolation method for enhancing the accuracy of mobile phone data (Fig 2, Järv et al 2017)

Interactive travel-time map Mapple!

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The Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix can now be observed via an interactive web map http://www.mapple.fi !

The interface allows you to inspect travel times in different modes of transport (public transport, car and walking) at different times of the day (rush-hour, noon) to and from locations of your own choise within the Helsinki Region.

The application was developed by Joona Repo, Rami Piiroinen and Henrikki Tenkanen, good job guys!

New course starting: Analysing accessibility and mobility using novel data sources

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We are organizing a special course on accessibility and mobility issues, staring on November 1st. The course is entitled: “Analysing accessibility and mobility using novel data sources” and it will familiarize the students with current theory of accessibility and mobility research, as well as practical tools and data developed by our group. Looking forward to meeting the students and hearing their thoughts on these topics!

Henrikki and Maria in NECTAR-workshop in Warsaw

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We participated in a NECTAR worshop (Network on European Communications and Transport Activities Research) in Warsaw between 20.-21.10.2016. The workshop was entitled “Transport Infrastructures for better Accessibility, Equity and Territorial Cohesion” and there were nearly 30 interesting and inspiring accessibility-related presentations from all over Europe. Henrikki presented our recent paper on grocery store accessibility (published in International Journal of Health Geographics) and Maria presented our ongoing work on dynamic accessibility modelling.

Olle at RC33 Conference 2016 on social science methodology

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RC33 Conference 2016 – 9th International Conference on Social Science Methodology was held in 11.-16. September 2016 in Leicester, UK. One of the emerging issues was the impact of new research skills and the big data revolution on teaching and research in social sciences. Olle in collaboration with an Estonian sociologist Dr. Anu Masso from ETH Zurich presented their ongoing research on evaluating big data approach (mobile phone data-based methodology) against conventional questionnaire survey method for investigating individual human mobility in space-time. Case study is about language group differences in individual activity space in Estonia.

RC33 Conference 2016

Hosting researchers from Japan

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Thanks to WCTR 2016, Olle had a chance to meet with professor Makoto Tsukai from Hiroshima University. This led to a short-noticed meeting at our department on August 5th. With a special focus on implementing novel (big) data sources in transport research Accessibility Research Group presented past and current work to five Japanese professors from the University of Hiroshima, Tottori and Miyazaki. In turn, guests introduced their current work in this field.

We kindly thank our guests for the presents from Hiroshima and already looking forward to join our research!

Group photo with our Japanese quests

Group photo with our Japanese quests after our exciting meeting.