Music for the weekend

(via Uhull S.A.)

Urban Picture (painting)

(beautiful work by Jeremy Mann, via Colossal)

Related Links:

• What a Difference a Century Makes
• San Francisco - Fade to 1906, by Shawn Clover
• Streetview Kaleidoscope
• FILMography, by Christopher Moloney

A demographic projection of engineering workforce

 shameless  self-promotion alert! The Scientific Programme of the XXVII IUSSP International Population Conference is out. Here is my self-recommending paper.

Title:
A demographic projection of engineering workforce in Brazil through 2020

Abstract:

One major hurdle for the Brazilian economy relates to the availability of qualified workforce in key occupations. This paper contributes in this matter presenting a demographic projection of engineering workforce availability in Brazil up to 2020. The projection method we have used adapts the cohort-component method to a simplified model of entries and exits in the labor market. Data from five different public databases available in Brazil were used to run the projections on yearly basis. The method is rather flexible and can be used to project almost any population group with higher education degree from different backgrounds, by sex and age. We draw four scenarios that differ in terms of possible growth rates to be observed in the number of student entries, including a constant enrollment number (CER) variant. The results suggest that Brazilian labor market would have between 1.6 and 2.3 million people holding a degree in engineering fields in the year 2020. Finally, our findings suggest that the claimed lack of engineering workforce in the country might not be a matter of purely quantitative supply, but rather of education quality and geographical concentration of engineering schools and engineering workforce.

See extended abstract.

Academic Impacts on Governments

It has become much easier to assess the academic impact of published papers and authors (Google Citations Page* and T. Reuters). However, the assessment of academic impact on public policy is not that straightforward, although it's a crucial issue for Research Institutes, Think-thanks and Funding Agencies.

A team at LSE leads a project on the subject and they are developing quantitative metrics for measuring the impact of research in the 'public sphere'. It's the Impact of Social Sciences Project.  self-recommending  Some podcasts of their latest events should be available here:

• The Future of Academic Impacts
• From Research to Policy: Academic Impacts on Government

*I encourage you to register at Google Scholar Citations. This is one of the best ways for academics to compute citation metrics and track them over time. You only need a gmail account and Google does the rest for you. Besides, anyone can register!

Assorted Links

1. Most common Origins and Destinations of international refugees
   
   
2. Location, Location, and Pacification: The Effect of UPPs in Rio (via Brandon Fuller)
   
   
3. March 15 marked the 200th anniversary of John Snow’s birth, aka the father of modern epidemiology
   
   
4. Foreign-Borns in the US: Then and Now
   
   
5. Woody Allen Answers 12 Unconventional Questions
   
   
6. PDR Journal has recently published a supplemental issue in honor to Paul Demeny focusing current themes in population and public policy
   
   
7. The lasting effect of the initial allocation of land
   
   
8. Demographic convergence in US metro areas by Alan Berube (via Peter Gordon)
   
   
9. A neat animation by Oliver O`Brien (CASA/UCL) showing the touch-ins (red) and touch-outs (green) at London’s tube and train stations

There's no such thing as a free parking spot

In a recent Freakonomics podcast, Donald Shoup (UCLA) talked about his studies on the costs of free parking. Shoup's main argument is that most parking spaces are underpriced, especially in great urban areas. Ok, it's hard to disagree on that. But still, I would like to see some more evidence that reducing parking actually reduces traffic congestion.

Gif of the Day: Traffic Reduction

via urbnist.tumblr

Quote of the Day

"Old demographers never die. They just get broken down by age and sex."

(@conradhacket via Population Eco)

Manufactured landscapes

Amazing photography work by Edward Burtynsky.

Some of my favorites: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Related Link:

• Uncommon cemeteries

The United States public debt (1789-1870)

click on the image to enlarge it, or go to the Source

[Image Credit: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

Educational Attainment and the Demographic Dividend

The Economist Magazine has published a short piece where they highlight Wolfgang Lutz's arguments on the importance of educational attainment to the potential benefits countries may get from their demographic dividend. 

Related Links:

• The changing demographics of Brazilian workforce [this publication is availabe in Portugue only]
• Education-specific population projections

Off-topic: The most amazing 'beatbox' ever

Assorted Links

1. Tim Schwanen's take on Peak car travel
   
   
2. Are the world’s megacities too big? (ht Leo Monasterio)
   
   
3. The Lincoln Institute is offering a few scholarships to support Master's and PhD students from Latin American universities.
   
   
4. America's Scientist Idol, a contest organized by the AAA to improve scientists' communication skills.
   
   
5. In 1969 it was easier to send people to the Moon than to fake the landing in a studio (via Pedro Souza)
   
   
6. Private Vehicle Registrations in EU-27 1991-2012 (via Coordenadas)
   
   
7. Postdoctoral Research Fellows at MPIDR
   
   
8. Visualizing a Full Day of Airplane Paths in the U.S.A.

Flight Patterns - Color from Aaron Koblin on Vimeo.

Crowdsourcing road congestion data

Nathan Yau points out to this interactive map showing county-level commute time estimates for 2011 in the US. The data source is the American Community Survey organized by the United States Census Bureau. Pretty good job!

Now imagine if you could have acess to real time data on traffic conditions on arterial roads in several cities around the globe. There is one company that generates these data. I know what you're thinking: "Damn these guys from Google are awesome!"

Acutally this is not a new project. Google has started it aroud 2009 and now it covers. several cities around the globe. They basically track anonymous locations from smartphones to gauge traffic conditions in real time:

When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.

The Google Maps Traffic Layer (web version) also inclues traffic prediction for any day of the week and time of the day, based on past conditions. Neat! Now it should be very interesting to compare/validate Google's traffic data to "real data" from more traditional sources.

Any volunteers?

Urban Picture

Beautiful aerial images by Alex Maclean (HT Joao Meirelles). Hard to pic one.

The Demography of Adaptation to Climate Change

"The Demography of Adaptation to Climate Change", a new publication by UNFPA, IIED and El Colegio de Mexico. (ht Ricardo Ojima)



*In Chapter 8 G. Martine and R. Ojima discuss Brazilian rapid urbanization. 'The Challenges of Adaptation in an Early but Unassisted Urban Transition'

A short and acid review on this publication by Matthew Kahn, here.

Related Links:

• Linking long-term temperature variability to population density
• The Future of Mapping Carbon Emissions
• China to release pollution data in 74 cities
• Outdoor air pollution mapped by city
• How the Seas Will Eat Coastal U.S. Cities

Assorted Links

1. Top 10 Most Expensive Neighborhoods in Brazil
   
   
2. The price of office space in mega cities around the world
   
   
3. The top 10 emerging technologies for 2013 (via MR)
   
   
4. Top 20: World cities with the most billionaires; Sao Paulo at 12th
   
   
5. 100 fundamental ecological questions (via @UrbanClimateLab)
   
   
6. World's top 100 universities 2013: their reputations ranked by Times Higher Education

Wealth Inequality in the USA

A friend of mine pointed me out to this study by Michael I. Norton (Harvard) and Dan Ariely (Duke) where they contrast the current distribution of wealth in the USA to the ideal level of wealth inequality expected by americans.

Here are the results condensed in 6 min.

Urban Primacy in Latin America

I have bumped into this chart showing the National GDP and Population share of large Latin American cities. It was published in a report by McKinsey Global Institute in 2011: 'Building globally competitive cities: The key to Latin American growth'. A nice way to visualize urban primacy.

(Source: McKinsey Global Institute Cityscope, p. 10)

Related Links:

• The Richest Cities in the US in 1978 and Now
• Urban Hierarchy of 590 cities (1950-2050)

Can maths predict a riot ?

Hannah Fry (UCL) and colleagues have published a paper where they model the spatial development of the riots that took place in London back in 2011.

Here is a ten-minute talk summarizing the paper. 

Paper: 'A mathematical model of the London Riots and their policing'

Abstract:

In August 2011, several areas of London experienced episodes of large-scale disorder, comprising looting, rioting and violence. Much subsequent discourse has questioned the adequacy of the police response, in terms of the resources available and strategies used. In this article, we present a mathematical model of the spatial development of the disorder, which can be used to examine the effect of varying policing arrangements. The model is capable of simulating the general emergent patterns of the events and focusses on three fundamental aspects: the apparently-contagious nature of participation; the distances travelled to riot locations; and the deterrent effect of policing. We demonstrate that the spatial configuration of London places some areas at naturally higher risk than others, highlighting the importance of spatial considerations when planning for such events. We also investigate the consequences of varying police numbers and reaction time, which has the potential to guide policy in this area.

Log Scale

xkcd

Online Complexity Lectures

Prof. Michael Batty (UCL) points us to some of his lectures on Complexity and Urban Modelling available on his website. He also points out to an introductory online course on Complexity by the Santa Fe Institute.

[image credit: ?]

Sounds very interesting for those with sufficient leisure-time! Not my case though. I have to listen to podcasts while doing the dishes and that takes too much of my concentration effort already.

Off-topic: J. Hendrix’s First TV Appearance

Jimi Hendrix’s first TV appearance (1965) via Open Culture

Have a nice weekend!