Geographic Data Science for Urban Analytics

Introduction

This course provides an introduction to the study of cities through new forms of data; additionally giving participants a grounding in basic geographic data science that will be employed to create a profile exploring the structure and function of a selected city or urban region.

Instructors:

• Professor Alex Singleton, University of Liverpool
• Dr Dani Arribas-Bel, University of Liverpool

Download

You can download all the files needed for this course here: https://github.com/alexsingleton/GDS_UA_2017/archive/master.zip

Schedule

Monday 23rd January 2017 (DAY 1)

• 09:20 - 10:40 - Student Software Preparation for the Course
• 10:40 - 12:10 Public Seminar
  • Urban Analytics: City Structure and Function - Alex Singleton
  • Bringing New Forms of Data to the Analysis of Cities - Dani Arribas-Bel
• 12.10 - 13.10 - LUNCH
• 13.10 - 14.00 - Lecture - Introduction to Geographic Data Science for Urban Analytics
• 14.00 - 15.30 - Practical - Introduction to R
• 15.30 - 17.30 - Practical - Data Manipulation in R

Tuesday 24 January 2017 (DAY 2)

• 09:20 - 10:50 - Practical - Descriptive Statistics
• 10:50 - 12:10 - Practical - Data Viz 1 - Charts and Graphs
• 12:10 - 13:10 - LUNCH
• 13:10 - 14:00 - Lecture - Reproducible Research
• 14:00 - 15:30 - Practical - Data Viz 2 - Mapping Areas and Context
• 15:30 - 17:00 - Practical - Data Viz 3 - Visualizing Point Patterns

Wednesday 25 January 2017 (DAY 3)

• 09:20 - 10:50 - Lecture / Independent - Introduction to the Group Project
• 10:50 - 12:10 - Student Project Planning - Stage 1 / Student Project Brief Review - Stage 2
• 12:10 - 13:10 - LUNCH
• 13:10 - 14:00 - Student Project Brief Review - Stage 2
• 14:45 - 15:30 - Independent - Student Led Analysis - Stage 3
• 15:30 - 17:00 - Independent - Student Led Analysis - Stage 3

Thursday 26 January 2017 (DAY 4)

• 09:20 - 10:50 - Independent - Student Led Analysis - Stage 3
• 10:50 - 12:40 - Presentation - Groups Talks and Prizes

Optional extra practical

• Practical - Data Viz 4 - Mapping Flows

Group Project Assignment

The group project will be introduced at 09.20 on Day 3. The projects is designed so that you can implement those skills developed during the practical sessions within an applied context. The projects are to be conducted in groups, and the assessment will be a 10-12 minute presentation in the final session on Thursday 26th January.

Assignment

For a city anywhere in the world; utilize those skills acquired during this course to create a data driven profile that describes:

1. Some aspects of population structure
2. An attribute that varies over both space and time
3. The spatial distribution of a social outcome

The project will run in two stages:

• Stage 1 - You will work individually or within your groups to identify a city and associated data necessary to create a series of outputs that meet the three criteria above. You will then outline the type of outputs that you will create for your project - e.g. maps or graphs and the attributes used to create them. For each output you will need to create a flow chart of how you will implement this analysis.

• Stage 2 - A session has been allocated where you can discuss your proposed analysis with Dani Arribas-Bel and Alex Singleton who will give you feedback / suggestions.

• Stage 3 - Three sessions have been allocated that will enable you to complete your independent analysis and create a presentation.

If you would like to create a document of your code, then we would suggest using the class markdown template: download. If you add this to a new directory for your assignment, it would also be sensible to store any data that you use in a sub folder called “data”.

Looking for inspiration….

Evaluation

You will be evaluated on the quality of your city profiles and in particular the supporting visual materials that you create. Extra marks will be given for presentations where the choice of analysis techniques are justified.

Prizes

Extra special prizes will be awarded during the final session!