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
- Mr Patrick Ballantyne, University of Liverpool
Materials
All the materials for this course are stored on the GitHub repo alexsingleton/Japan_GDS_for_UA.
We recommend you download a local copy of the repo yourselves as this will give you access to the relevant data and R code for each practical. You can download the repo by selecting the green code button on the repository and click download ZIP, as in the image below. This will take a few minutes as there are some large data files in here.
Once you have this downloaded you are all set to go!
Schedule
Monday 5th September (Day 1)
- 13.00-14:30 (90 mins) - Public Lecture Urban Analytics: City Structure and Function - Alex Singleton
- 14:40-16:10 (90 mins) - Student Software Preparation for the Course
- 16:20-17:50 - (90 mins) Lecture - Introduction to Geographic Data Science for Urban Analytics - Alex Singleton
Tuesday 6th September (Day 2)
- 13.00-13:45 - Lecture - New Forms of Data and the Analysis of Cities - Patrick Ballantyne
- 13:45-14:30 - Practical 1 - Introduction to R
- 10 Mins Break
- 14:40-16:10 - Practical 2 - Data Manipulation in R
- 10 Mins Break
- 16:20-17:50 - Practical 3 - Descriptive Statistics
Wednesday 7th September (Day 3)
- 13.00-14:30 - Practical 4 - Data Viz 1 - Charts and Graphs
- 10 Mins Break
- 14:40-16:10 - Practical 5 - Data Viz 2 - Mapping Areas and Context
- 10 Mins Break
- 16:20-17:50 - Lecture - Geodemographic Analysis of Cities - Alex Singleton
Thursday 8th September (Day 4)
- 13.00-14:30 - Practical 6 - Data Viz 3 - Visualizing Point Patterns
- 10 Mins Break
- 14:40-16:10 - Lecture / Independent - Introduction to the Group Project ; Student Project Planning - Stage 1
- 10 Mins Break
- 16:20-17:50 - Student Project Planning Continued- Stage 1 / Student Project Brief Review - Stage 2
Friday 9th September (Day 5)
- 13.00-14:30 - Independent - Student Led Analysis - Stage 3
- 10 Mins Break
- 14:40-16:10 - Independent - Student Led Analysis - Stage 3
- 10 Mins Break
- 16:20-17:50 - Presentation - Groups Talks and Prizes
Project Assignment
The project will be introduced at 14:40 on Day 4. The projects is designed so that you can implement those skills developed during the practical sessions within an applied context. The assessment will be a 10-12 minute presentation in the final session on Friday 9th September.
Assignment
For a city anywhere in the world; utilize those skills acquired during this course to create a data driven profile that describes:
- Some aspects of population structure
- An attribute that varies over both space and time
- The spatial distribution of a social outcome
The project will run in three 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 Alex Singleton and Patrick Ballantyne 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.
Looking for inspiration….
Open Data Inception - 2000+ Open Data Portals from across the world….
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!