Home » Archives for January 2017

GIS in Japan

Our Deputy Director, Professor Alex Singleton, dedicated a week to running a workshop at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan.

Covering the basics of Geographic Data Science (GIS) and Urban Analytics with particular emphasis upon the study of cities through new forms of data, the final day included presentations of independent student projects that focused upon a range of different application areas. Winning projects were awarded with CDRC branded prizes, including a printed 2017 calendar featuring top maps from our mapping portal, maps.cdrc.ac.uk.

Alex’s workshop was received extremely well and proved to be an useful illustration of code based teaching of GIS  to new users of R.

Course Materials.

Alex Singleton along with his co-presenter Dr Daniel Arribas-Bel.

The CDRC and UK Data Service have enlisted Dr Daniel Arribas-Bel to host a webinar titled ‘Bringing new forms of data to the study of cities’. For more and to book a place.

 

Training Review – Smartphone Application Development for Data Collection Purposes

 

I recently completed a half-day course at LIDA on Smartphone Application Development for Data Collection purposes, the course was perfectly pitched so that those without a computer science background (most of us) were able to jump straight in. The course was introductory in nature but with enough expertise to give a sense of what you can expect down the line should you be able to develop your own native application. The course itself covered the different types apps from the more technical native apps to some of the more user-friendly app building tools. The technical details such as coding languages and the software packages you’ll need were explained and we were even given brief demonstrations of.

The course was invaluable for giving me the understanding how these applications could be be used in research. The course covered the important aspects of how data could be collected and stored through smartphone applications, and importantly what considerations you need to make given the different functions an app can have. This level of information and detail allowed me to think about how apps could be used in my own research which is looking at how incentives could be used in travel behavior. To this end it has developed a line of thinking in my research methods which might not have been possible without the opportunity to attend this course.

Connor Walsh, PhD Student, University of Leeds

We are currently confirming the details for the next Smartphone Application Development for Data Collection Purposes course.  To register your interest, please contact e.a.pound@leeds.ac.uk

Analysing conversations on Twitter: Do e-petitions help to increase public engagement with politics?

 

CDRC Data Science Intern, Molly Asher, is currently conducting a pilot study on the effectiveness of the UK Parliament’s e-petitions system with the goal to determine whether e-petitions have led to a rise in trust in parliament, the development of new engagement with parliament and/or policy changes.

The full project will develop a comprehensive analysis of a parliamentary e-petitioning system, which integrates the views of petitioners, the actual processes dealing with petitions, the public debate surrounding the petitions, the views from policy-makers and the outcomes of petitions. The project adopts a mixed-methods and inter-disciplinary approach, incl. Data Science analysis of all petitions (incl. themes, success probability, geographical representation, timing of signatures, nature of the petition & partisanship) and the petition debates on Twitter (incl. themes, sentiment analysis, nature of the debate, e.g. the level of polarization and partisanship, geographical representation, social network analysis of those involved in the debate).

Molly is currently conducting a pilot study on the petition debates on Twitter and potentially linking them in an analysis of the e-petition data.  She presented her findings at a recent LIDA Seminar:

 

Data

Molly is currently using the following data for the pilot study project:

  • Twitter data collected via the Twitter Streaming API
  • UK parliament e-petition where JSON data files are available for download with each petition.