Digital Geography Lab blog

Our work on cycling-related topics, accessibility-stuff and green areas & social media was presented at Geoinformatics research days and at Kaupunkisuunnittelumessut. 

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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 5^th. 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!

Accessibility Research Group was present at 14^th World Conference on Transport Research in Shanghai, China, 10. – 15.07.2016. Olle presented a poster of our ongoing work about dynamic accessibility modelling and mobile phone-based data. Thank you WCTR and Shanghai for the great opportunity to receive encouraging feedback from our work and new exciting contacts for a future collaboration!