Home » Archives for March 2017

CDRC Maps London’s Daily Commute

Oliver O’Brien, CDRC Data Scientist and Senior Research Associate at UCL Dept of Geography, has published a visualisation of Department for Transport traffic counts by mode, for the morning rush hour for London, at http://vis.oobrien.com/trafficcounts/. Viewers can access raw counts data over the last 15 years, for several thousand measuring sites in the capital, and see how volumes and mode share have changed, on a street-by-street basis, as the capital’s commuting patterns continue to evolve.  A detailed description of the interactive map is at http://oobrien.com/2017/03/evolution-of-londons-rush-hour-traffic-mix/. The CDRC is looking to expand its coverage and work of transport-related consumer datasets, and is working with local councils to help analyse and visualise their transport-related datasets. The work was featured in a recent article published by Wired: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/london-traffic-map-busy-congestion has has already led to expressions of interest from other potential data providers.

The online tool that can track, monitor and analyse nutritional intake

Janet Cade, University of Leeds

We all know that most people could improve the quality of their diet. Most of us do not eat the recommended five-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables – let alone seven or even ten, as some have suggested. Nor do we consume adequate amounts of oily fish. Instead, intakes are often too high in saturated fats and sugars added to foods and fruit juice, and too low in fibre and some key vitamins and minerals, including vitamin A and iron. A significant proportion of adults in both the UK and the US are obese or overweight. Intake of red and processed meat is too high, and meat consumption continues to rise in the US, the European Union and the developed world. Despite a shift toward higher poultry consumption, the largest proportion of meat consumed in the US is still red meat (58%).

There are serious implications for long-term health as a result of this disordered way of eating. To improve the situation we need to know how much energy and nutrients are being provided by our food. To help do this, we developed myfood24, an online dietary assessment tool that can support accurate, detailed recording of food and nutrient intake by researchers, but which can also support patients with diet-related conditions, sports enthusiasts, families with “picky” eaters and others. With data on 40,000 nutrients, it includes the largest and most complete food composition table in the UK, and possibly the world.

Monitoring intake

The size of portions and packaging has increased over the past 50 years, as has the number of products on supermarket shelves. This variety of choice makes it hard for consumers to even start to estimate how many calories or nutrients they might be consuming.

A new generation of smartphone apps offer users a chance to monitor their intake. However, there isn’t strong evidence that most of these are effective. Twenty-eight of the top 200 rated health and fitness category apps from Google Play and iTunes focused on both weight management and self-monitoring diets. When these apps were compared to people using a standard record of weighed food that they ate, the apps over- or underestimated energy intake by 10-14%.

But it’s not just consumers who are affected by inaccurate monitoring. Researchers, who base their studies on this kind of data, also encounter problems.

A major limitation of nutrition research is getting an objective measure of dietary intake. Misreporting is a big problem when people self-report their diet and is particularly common in overweight or obese people. Misreporting generally tends towards under-reporting of unhealthy foods and over-reporting of fruits and vegetables.

Metabolic profiling, which involves testing urine for the hundreds of metabolites that provide chemical signatures of food and nutrient intakes, doesn’t require self-reporting and may be a useful addition to self-reporting. A highly controlled study of 19 people fed four different diets found differences in metabolite concentrations. While this approach cannot replace the need to determine what actual food and nutrients have been consumed, it could be used as an objective measure to validate self-reports.

Understanding what nutrients are in the food we eat also relies on having comprehensive and up-to-date food composition tables – standardised national databases with accurate measures of many nutrients in typical foods. Standard food composition tables in the UK list around 3,000 food items, the majority of which are generic rather than branded (which more of us are likely to consume). While they include the full range of nutrients, they only include a limited selection of foods which are available for purchase.

Useful data.
Shutterstock

Pre-packed foods legally have labels with nutritional values. These include values for energy (kJ and kcal), and amounts of fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt. Further information can be included but is not compulsory for mono and polyunsaturated fats, starch, fibre, vitamins or minerals. If a nutrition or health claim is made on the packaging then the amount of that nutrient must also be stated.

Real time feedback

Developed with funding from the Medical Research Council, myfood24 combines the convenience of new technologies with an enhanced food composition table. Covering a wide range of generic and branded foods, it’s a quick and easy tool to help researchers, and potentially also clinicians, to track, monitor and analyse nutritional intake. We mapped the 40,000 nutrients from food label information and generic food data. To get an idea of the scale of this, the number of products on supermarket shelves is around 50,000 items.

The tool replaces the need for time consuming and costly coding of paper records that researchers and clinicians use. It means that people can record their dietary intake by selecting foods and portion sizes and adding them to their food diary. We hope this will support more accurate self-reporting, especially as users can be less self-conscious than when reporting to an interviewer. Researchers can then use results from this to find out in detail what foods and nutrients are being eaten. This data can then be linked to health outcomes or matched against recommendations.

Real time feedback of nutrients in foods could help us choose a more appropriately balanced diet over the week. Much as we have come to rely on regular visits to the dentist to ensure our teeth are healthy, the regular use of dietary monitoring could help us to ensure that our food and nutrient intakes are also healthy.

Janet Cade, Professor of Nutritional Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Leeds

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Hiscox University Data Challenge

Lawrence Ning Lu, CDRC PhD Student, is leading a team from the University of Leeds in the Hiscox University Data Challenge.

The ‘Hiscox University Data Challenge’ sees three teams from LSE, York and Leeds Universities compete to solve real world problems, giving Hiscox the opportunity to tap into creative and analytical minds with a different viewpoint to those currently working in the industry. For the students, they get to experience real world problem solving, access to industry experts, networking opportunities with current graduates on the scheme and potential Hiscox sponsorship.

The Challenges

The team have completed the first challenge, which saw them modelling the causes of railroad accidents in America and identifying factors that may increase liability.

They have now moved on to the second challenge which asks them to consider  what factors of success would look like for a start-up company.  For instance, ‘is there a ‘Silicon Valley effect?’  Does the age of the CEO influence a start-up’s success and how?

The Experience

The team, which includes four students from our MSc Consumer Analytics and Marketing Strategy, recently visited Hiscox offices in York, to present the results of their first challenge to a senior team and also had the opportunity to network with the underwriters and analysts.

It’s not all hard work though, there was time for team bonding at Five Guys too.

Good luck to the team, we look forward to seeing their progress in the competition.

To find out more about Leeds Data Science Society, visit their website or follow them on Twitter.

CDRC’s Deputy Director James Cheshire wins National Travel Publishing Prize

CDRC’s Deputy Director James Cheshire has won the London Book Fair Innovation in Travel Publishing Prize in the 2016 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for his publication ‘Where the Animals Go’
co-written with Oliver Uberti.

The book demonstrates how data and technology have changed our understanding of animal movement, and showcases the latest research and data visualisation techniques.

The scientific content, and focus on animals rather than humans, make the book very different from what readers may think of as travel writing, so it was a real surprise to James and Oliver that they were nominated for the prize in a shortlist of six.  Well done James!

Commenting on the winners, Tony Maher, Managing Director of Edward Stanford Limited, writes:

“As the world grows smaller and in many cases more dangerous, travel writing in all its forms keeps us in touch with our global family. These disparate shortlists have one unifying feature – they are all marvellous examples of what travel writing and publishing does best, which is to show the reader a world far from our own doorsteps, made reachable by these glorious, powerful and unforgettable books.”

CDRC’s Dr James Cheshire will be speaking at Data Science Festival

Dr James Cheshire will be speaking about Spatial Analysis at this years Data Science Festival on 29th April.

The Data Science Festival is a free, week long, annual, celebration of all things data science. The festival consists of lectures, workshops, demos, code sprints, panel discussions and social events, spread across London and runs from 24 to 30 April 2017

Further details here:    http://www.datasciencefestival.com/speaker/london/2017/james-cheshire/

The Meetup page:  https://www.meetup.com/Data-Science-Festival-London/events/237959852/

UCL will be hosting the next London R workshop and networking event

The timings for the 28 March event will be:

  • 2.30pm – 3pm – Registration of workshop attendees
  • 3pm – 5.30pm – Workshop in DLT
  • 5.30pm – 6.20pm – Registration for evening meeting and arrival networking drinks in rooms B05 and B15
  • 6.20pm – 8.00pm – Presentations in DLT
  • 8.00-9.30pm – Networking drinks in rooms B05 and B15

This workshop is free but spaces are limited; please request a place in advance via email to londonR@mango-solutions.com