Home » Archives for January 2018

Tube Creature – an interactive data map

CDRC researcher Oliver O’Brien recently launched ‘Tube Creature‘. This interactive map is based around London’s tube network. Having proved extremely popular across social media channels, we have republished Oliver’s blog post below, detailing the nuances of the map. Read on for a unique insight into ‘Tube Creature’!

Railway Station Numbers

The ORR publishes station entry/exit numbers on an annual basis, on a “best guess” basis, using ticket sales, gate information and modelling. The data is split by ticket type – full fare, reduced fare (off-peak tickets, tickets bought with railcards, advance tickets, child tickets etc) and season tickets. They make this data available as an Excel spreadsheet, so I’ve crunched it and have produced a couple of maps based on this data. I have also consolidated the total counts and ticket type counts data on CDRC Data.

The first shows the total numbers of entries/exits across the last year that the data is available for (2016-7), with a blended colour, with different red/green/blue strengths proportional to the % numbers for season tickets (red), full fare (blue) and reduced fare (green) entering/exiting National Rail services at that station. The area of the circle is proportional to the total numbers, combined across the ticket types. I’m using a minimum circle size, as otherwise some stations would be practically invisible on the map, as they can see days go by without any passengers – or trains.

Some interesting patterns – blues for many of the airport stations, where off peak tickets generally aren’t available, and most people don’t think to get advance tickets, such as to/from Stansted:

…and almost no-one pays full fare for some of the remotest stations:

Purples on the Welsh valleys lines, showing mainly commuters and peak time users:

Bright greens for stations serving major destinations where advance tickets are readily available, such Newcastle-upon-Tyne:

…popular tourist places, where many people will be visiting outside of the rush hours and at weekends, such as Oxford and Bicester Village retail outlet:

…and areas well covered by discounted travelcards, like Liverpool’s Merseyrail:

Reds where the season ticket holders dominate, such as Chelmsford and Colchester to the north-east of London:

Browns showing an “urban mix” of season ticket commuters and travelcard local journey makers, like in Stratford, London:

See this map on TubeCreature.

The second map looks at the change in numbers between 2015/6 and 2016/7 (a major methodological change means I cannot use data from earlier years, for a more complete time series). You can view the absolute numbers for both years, but what is of more interest is looking at the changes. The circle fill colour is the % change (with 100% green for a doubling of numbers and 100% for a halving of numbers). The area of the circle represents the absolute change in numbers. The border colour emphasises whether the change is an increase or decrease. Stations with little change will show up as small circles. The biggest trends are the new lines to Oxford via Bicester, and from Edinburgh to Tweedbank. In both cases, the lines were only open for part of the first year, so an increase would be expected even if the day-by-day numbers were flat:

Big drops show in parts of London – the Goblin line having been closed for much of 2016/7 due to a bungled overhead line installation:

There is also a big drop at Kensington Olympia’s however the source reports says this is due to a methodological change – i.e. it may not have actually been a significant drop at all. This is somewhat puzzling, as there are ticket gates at this station, so in/out numbers should be pretty solid, but it may be relating to due to many fewer people, than previously thought, transferring in-barrier to the sparse District line services at this station. When they do this, they are no longer considered to be National Rail passengers and so have “exited” the station here, from a National Rail perspective.

Most parts of the country see a steady increase (light greens):

The big exception being area served by Southern trains – with them being on strike for much of the second year, the fall in numbers in this region is almost universal:

See this map on TubeCreature. You can also download all the total counts and ticket type counts data from CDRC Data.

Launched now! Masters Research Dissertation Programme 2018

We’ve launched this year’s Masters Research Dissertation Programme.

A host of retailers, businesses and organisations have provided details of projects and are now inviting applications from potential Masters students to carry out research on a range of exciting topics.

The programme offers an excellent opportunity to work directly with an industrial partner and to link students’ research to important retail and ‘open data’ sources. The project titles are devised by retailers and are open to students from a wide range of disciplines. In previous years, we have worked with students from Geography (and GIS), Computer Science, Business Analytics, Economics and Statistics, but projects are by no means limited to these areas.

All students will be in with a chance to present their research at an academic conference (date tbc) with three projects selected to win prizes.

Further details about projects and the application process can be found here.

Co-funded PhD studentships available now!

ESRC UCL, Bloomsbury, East London Doctoral Training Partnership Co-funded PhD studentships at the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC)

The Consumer Data Research Centre have two co-funded PhD studentships in quantitative social science based in UCL’s Department of Geography. The awards will be administered through the UBEL Doctoral Training Partnership. Projects are available working with ARUP and Kantar Worldpanel, commencing September 2018.

These awards are open to applicants with backgrounds in quantitative social science and related disciplines, such as geography, social statistics, political science, economics, applied mathematics, computer science, planning, psychology or sociology. Students will be expected to work with consumer data as part of an exciting multidisciplinary research centre.

The studentships will cover

  • Tuition fees per year – for either three years (Ph.D. only) or 1+3 years (including a preparatory year’s Masters study in a quantitative social science course).
  • Annual maintenance stipend full-time: the stipend for 2017/18 was £16,553.

Further details about both studentships are available here. Alternatively please contact Sarah Sheppard s.sheppard@ucl.ac.uk for further information

Building your skills set; building your future

The CDRC offers a range of training courses aimed at enhancing capacity in data analytics and data visualisation methods.  We have a number of courses coming up over the next few months in Leeds and London. If you’re looking to grow your skills set in these areas, consider booking now as places are filling fast.

Tableau Workshop

22nd February 2018 @ 9:30 am – 4:30 pm
Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, University of Leeds 
Fancy learning about data visualisation best practices and receiving hands-on training delivered by Tableau experts? Then this is the course for you with its mix of practical demonstrations and instruction. (Please note that only emails ending .ac.uk can be taken into account for registration on this course).

Introduction to ArcGIS

19th March 2018 @ 9:30 am – 4:30 pm
LIDA, University of Leeds
This course provides an introduction to Geographical Information Systems (GIS) using ESRI’s ArcGIS version 10.2 software. It will give you the opportunity to familiarise yourself with using and navigating the software, as well as focussing on the skills of data entry, data manipulation, editing, analysis and mapping.

Introduction to R

16th April 2018 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, University of Leeds 
Always wanted to learn about the programming language R? During the course you will learn about the benefits of R, how R handles different data types, and how you can begin to use R to solve complex data science, machine learning and statistical problems.

Introduction to Spatial Data & Using R as a GIS – London

23rd April 2018 @ 10:00 am – 4:30 pm
University of Liverpool (London Campus)
The course will cover an introduction to R, how to load and manage spatial data and how to create maps using R and RStudio. We will show you appropriate ways of using classifications for choropleth maps, using loops in R to create multiple maps and some basic spatial analysis.

Confident Spatial Analysis and Statistics in R & GeoDa – London

24th April 2018 @ 10:00 am – 4:30 pm
University of Liverpool (London Campus)
In this course you will cover how to prepare and analyse spatial data in RStudio & GeoDa. You will also use RStudio to perform spatial overlay techniques (such as union, intersection and buffers). By the end of the course you will understand how RStudio manages spatial data and be able to use it for a range of spatial analyses.
Keen to find out more or book? Follow this link to access our training page.

Waste Not Want Not: Food Waste Papers Make Popular Reading

Two papers on food waste by Professor William Young, Co-Investigator of the Consumer Data Research Centre, were among the most downloaded from Resources, Conservation and Recycling Journal at the end of 2017, suggesting a renewed interest in issues surrounding sustainability and responsible consumption among food industry customers.

The result of a collaboration with supermarket giant Asda exploring its customers’ food shopping habits, the research has led to several useful applications by Asda, for example:

  • The Love Food, Hate Waste Campaign, which focuses on providing practical tips on how to store food to avoid waste and creative recipes for using up surplus or leftover food.
  • A more nuanced approach to labelling for ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates by the retailer, for example in removing some best before labels altogether to avoid confusion over when food is and isn’t safe to eat and reducing prices on the day of use by.
  • Responding to the research finding that 85% of Asda customers want help in reducing food waste, the retailer worked with local communities to create Community Life Champions.

The most notable success of the application of the research was the finding that customers who applied the in house recommendations saved an average of £57 a year by reducing their food waste. The research and its applications were  discussed at a parliamentary reception, in June 2016, hosted by MP Hilary Benn. For more on this, see here.

The first paper is ‘Bringing habits and emotions into food waste behaviour’. This research project set out, in partnership with Asda, to explore the relationship between habits and emotional determinants and food waste behaviours. Using a combination of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the theory of interpersonal behaviour, and the comprehensive model of environmental behaviour, the research project created a set of questionnaires sent to 172 Asda customers over 14 months. Collating the answers found, unusually, that participants who experienced more negative emotion when thinking about food waste actually intended to reduce their waste but instead ended up wasting more food. The project highlighted the importance of taking emotions and intentionality into account when it comes to consumer food waste behaviours.

In the second paper, ‘Can social media be a tool for reducing consumers’ food waste? A behaviour change experiment by a UK retailer’, the premise that social media can be a key influencer of people’s behaviours was interrogated by collaborating with Asda to mount a campaign which encouraged reduction in food waste among Asda customers across Facebook, e-newsletter and its print magazine. The results indicated that use of social media in positive messaging campaigns was no more compelling than use of other media and thus called into question other studies which have privileged social media as a key influencing tool.

Professor William Young, who is Co-Director of the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, contributed to both papers. Professor Young’s research focuses on developing theoretical frameworks and applied tools that understand and change consumer behaviour with a view to increasing sustainability and reducing environmental impacts caused by consumption.

On working with Asda he said: Working with a large scale retailer like Asda, and its millions of customers, has been an invaluable experience. Not only have we come away with real, measurable insight from shoppers but we’ve also seen the direct correlation between our recommended actions and tangible behavioural change.”

CDRC GISRUK Data Challenge

The CDRC are collaborating with GISRUK 2018 to host a data challenge that has a particular focus on Brexit. Entrants are encouraged to get their submissions in to be in with a chance of winning a £500 prize.

Challenge
We invite researchers intending to register as GISRUK 2018 conference delegates to develop  a novel analysis or visualisation of CDRC and associated data in order to investigate the hypothesis set out in the Economist article “The immigration paradox Explaining the Brexit vote” (Jul 14th 2016)[1] that argues that the rate of change in number of migrants in an area rather than the total headcount influenced the Brexit vote. We welcome analysis based on parts or all of the CDRC data listed below as well as analysis that links this with other CDRC data and other data holdings.

Issues that might be addressed include but are by no means limited to:

  • Whether Local Authority district is the most appropriate scale at which to ground analysis
  • Whether country of birth or ethnicity as defined by CDRC is the best predictor of voting behaviour
  • Whether the country of birth of recent immigrants plays any role in shaping voting intentions
  • Whether enfranchised members of recently arrived ethnic minority groups are themselves likely to vote for Brexit
  • Whether established party political affiliations affect the share of the Brexit vote
  • Whether voting behaviour varies according to other local, Regional or national circumstances.

    Data
    CDRC available to download at https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/gisruk-data-challenge-2018
  • EU Referendum Result Data
  • CDRC small area predicted ethnicity/citizenship data from 1998-2017. The data in the zip file contained here is for use for the GISRUK Data Challenge 2018 only. The data must not be republished in its unaggregated form.License: The data is copyright and database right Consumer Data Research Centre 2018. All rights reserved. Contains data derived from datasets from various sources, some of which are Crown Copyright National Statistics.

    Conditions
    A requirement of one of the data source providers is that access to this data is restricted to participants in the CDRC GISRUK Data Challenge. Participants do not need to be GISRUK delegates at the time of getting their submissions in, but, in the event of becoming one of the four finalists, must be willing to register, attend and present at GISRUK which will be held at the University of Leicester, 17 – 20 April 2018. In order to the access the data please email the administrator for the Challenge, Oliver O’Brien, at o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk, confirming that you accept the conditions below. You will then be emailed the password needed to unlock the files.

    License
    The data is copyright and database right Consumer Data Research Centre 2018. All rights reserved. Contains data derived from datasets from various sources, some of which are Crown Copyright National Statistics.

    Submission
    Applicants should inform CDRC of their intention to participate in the Challenge to o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk by the 11th February 2018, to include:
  • title of paper
  • author(s)
  • institution  Applicants should prepare a two A4 page case study of their analysis and submit to o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk by the 4th March 2018. These summaries will be used to select 4 finalists projects to be presented at the GISRUK conference. Finalists will be notified by the 19thMarch.The best analysis based on the case study and presentation as judged by a panel made up of CDRC staff and GISRUK organisers will be awarded a £500 prize. The four finalist case studies will be made available on the CDRC website and any outputs made available through the CDRC open service.
  • Research submitted to CDRC for the challenge can then be subsequently published by applicants themselves, if desired, regardless of whether it is chosen for presentation at GISRUK 2018. Applicants may not however carry out or publish further/alternative substantive research with the data beyond what they have submitted to us, due to the above restrictions stipulated by an upstream data provider.
  • The four finalist case studies will be made available on the CDRC website and any outputs made available through the CDRC open service

    Enquiries 
    For all enquiries please contact Challenge Administrator Oliver O’Brien, o.obrien@ucl.ac.uk.

 

 

 

 

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21702228-areas-lots-migrants-voted-mainly-remain-or-did-they-explaining-brexit-vote