Digital Geography Lab blog

Kuntaliitto has published a report on the use and impact of the Finnish libraries. Chapter 8 with the title “Kirjaston vaikuttavuuden ulottuvuuksia lainausdatan ja kyselytutkimusten valossa” presents results by Jaani Lahtinen and Jouni Juntumaa, featuring also our data. See the full report (in Finnish) from here.

The Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix for 2015 is now ready thanks to the efforts of Henrikki and Vuokko in particular! We are still testing the data and will make the official release in January 2016. If you need the data urgently during the holiday season, please contact Vuokko!

Our group got, in collaboration with conservation scientists Enrico Di Minin and Anna Hausmann, a considerable funding to study the potential of social media data in spatial planning, mobility research and conservation science. With this funding we can hire one PhD student and one post-doc for 3-4 years. We are grateful and happy!

Helsinki Metropolitan Region Urban Research Program granted us continuation for our MetropAccess project for 2016. With this continuation we are able to advance our accessibility and mobility research in the Helsinki region. PhD Maria Salonen and PhD Olle Järv will be working with the funding during 2016.

We are grateful for the funding!

ProGIS foundation awarded the best theses of the year and Maria Salonen got the price for her PhD “Analysing spatial accessibility patterns with travel time and distance measures: novel approaches for rural and urban contexts“! Congratulations!

The Accessibility Research Group is currently working on updating the MetropAccess-Travel Time Matrix dataset! The matrix consists of travel time and travel distance information across the Helsinki Metropolitan Region by walking, public transportion and car. The dataset will be updated to represent the current time tables and transportation network (for example including the Ring Rail Line).

The updated matrix will be distributed on the project website later this fall. In the meanwhile, have a look at the original Travel Time Matrix available in the Data-section.

Stay tuned!

In our new joint article with Aalto University (Department of Real Estate, Planning and Geoinformatics) we examine access to aquatic environments from the environmental justice perspective. Participation GIS (PPGIS) method was used to provide multifaceted knowledge on the person-based accessibility patterns related to aquatic environments. Our accessibility tools were used to model the accessibility to water areas with different travel modes.

Article was published in Landscape and Urban Planning. Read the full article here:
Comparing conventional and PPGIS approaches in measuring equality of access to urban aquatic environments

Presentations from the Accessibility Summer Seminar featuring the visiting SNAMUTS (Spatial Network Analysis for Multi-modal Urban Transport Systems) -group from Australia can be found in the seminar page.

The seminar was held on Friday the 10th of June at the University of Helsinki, Kumpula Campus.

 

In our new article we demonstrate how seasonality and direction of movement affect the navigation of vessels and spatio-temporal accessibility patterns in Western Amazonia.

Article was published in Applied Geography. Read the full article here:
http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1RPzc_3G-whzu8

Bike is the fastest travel mode for short journeys in Helsinki. Our group’s work and methods are featured in Helsingin Sanomat where we compared different travel modes to each other in terms of travel time in Helsinki Metropolitan Region.

Read the whole story here (in Finnish only): http://www.hs.fi/tiede/a1434851577009

(C). Juhani Niiranen, HS