Assorted Links

1. Evolution of European Motorways 1920-2020
   
   
2. Dataviz of spatial and temporal spread in networks
   
   
3. paper: Open office architecture seems to decrease the volume of face-to-face employees' interaction and increase electronic interaction.
   
   
4. Global Mapping of GDP at 1 km2 Using VIIRS Nighttime Satellite Imagery
   
   
5. Microsoft releases 18M building footprints in Uganda and Tanzania to enable AI Assisted Mapping
   
   
6. OpenRailwayMap, the open online map of the worldwide railroad infrastructure
   
   
7. In 2019, Helsinki had 0 pedestrian or cyclist fatalities for the first time since 1960. How Lowering speeds and traffic calming.

A spatial database of health facilities in sub Saharan Africa

Interesting new paper analyzing accessibility to emergency hospital care in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015. The authors have done a laborious work to map public health facilities and the data is openly available here. HT Moritz Kraemer.

Ouma, P. O., et al. (2018). Access to emergency hospital care provided by the public sector in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015: a geocoded inventory and spatial analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 6(3), e342-e350.

Abstract:

Background

Timely access to emergency care can substantially reduce mortality. International benchmarks for access to emergency hospital care have been established to guide ambitions for universal health care by 2030. However, no Pan-African database of where hospitals are located exists; therefore, we aimed to complete a geocoded inventory of hospital services in Africa in relation to how populations might access these services in 2015, with focus on women of child bearing age.

Methods

We assembled a geocoded inventory of public hospitals across 48 countries and islands of sub-Saharan Africa, including Zanzibar, using data from various sources. We only included public hospitals with emergency services that were managed by governments at national or local levels and faith-based or non-governmental organisations. For hospital listings without geographical coordinates, we geocoded each facility using Microsoft Encarta (version 2009), Google Earth (version 7.3), Geonames, Fallingrain, OpenStreetMap, and other national digital gazetteers. We obtained estimates for total population and women of child bearing age (15–49 years) at a 1 km2 spatial resolution from the WorldPop database for 2015. Additionally, we assembled road network data from Google Map Maker Project and OpenStreetMap using ArcMap (version 10.5). We then combined the road network and the population locations to form a travel impedance surface. Subsequently, we formulated a cost distance algorithm based on the location of public hospitals and the travel impedance surface in AccessMod (version 5) to compute the proportion of populations living within a combined walking and motorised travel time of 2 h to emergency hospital services.

Findings

We consulted 100 databases from 48 sub-Saharan countries and islands, including Zanzibar, and identified 4908 public hospitals. 2701 hospitals had either full or partial information about their geographical coordinates. We estimated that 287 282 013 (29·0%) people and 64 495 526 (28·2%) women of child bearing age are located more than 2-h travel time from the nearest hospital. Marked differences were observed within and between countries, ranging from less than 25% of the population within 2-h travel time of a public hospital in South Sudan to more than 90% in Nigeria, Kenya, Cape Verde, Swaziland, South Africa, Burundi, Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Zanzibar. Only 16 countries reached the international benchmark of more than 80% of their populations living within a 2-h travel time of the nearest hospital.

Interpretation

Physical access to emergency hospital care provided by the public sector in Africa remains poor and varies substantially within and between countries. Innovative targeting of emergency care services is necessary to reduce these inequities. This study provides the first spatial census of public hospital services in Africa.

Urban Picture

Organic Kampala, via BlackZinjah

Postdoc position, LSE and Oxford - Urbanization in Developing Economies

Prof Henry G Overman (LSE) points out to this great opportunity of a Postdoc position to do research on Urbanization in Developing Economies in a joint programme between Serc/LSE and the University of Oxford.

A major joint research programme on urbanisation in developing economies, with particular reference to Africa, has been launched at Oxford's Department of Economics and LSE's Spatial Economics Research Centre with support from the World Bank. Professors Tony Venables, Paul Collier (Oxford) and Vernon Henderson (LSE) are seeking to recruit up to two postdoctoral research economists. This will involve conceptual and econometric work on the overall urbanisation process in developing countries and on the internal development of cities, in particular large African cities. There will be intensive use of satellite data (to classify land use), night lights data, demographic census data, DHS data, survey data, mapping and planning data. The programme offers outstanding opportunities to contribute to cutting edge research in the field, based in two of Europe's leading social science research and training institutions.

Research Vacancies, LSE and Oxford - Urbanization in Developing Economies

Henry Overman points out to some Research Vacancies on Urbanization in Developing Economies in a joint programme between Serc/LSE and Oxford University.

A major joint research programme on urbanisation in developing economies, with particular reference to Africa, has been launched at LSE's Spatial Economics Research Centre and Oxford's Department of Economics, with support from the World Bank. Profs.Vernon Henderson (LSE) Paul Collier and Tony Venables (Oxford) are recruiting a Research Manager, Research Economists and Assistants and GIS Data Specialists to work on the programme. The programme offers outstanding opportunities to contribute to cutting edge research in the field, based in two of Europe's leading social science research and training institutions.

Assorted Links

1. Road pricing: What’s not to love?
   
   
2. Top 20 things politicians need to know about science and Top 20 things scientists need to know about policy-making (ht Paulo Nascimento)
   
   
3. Turning-point years in history according to the most frequent dates used dissertation titles
   
   
4. Up all night to get data, a music parody
   
   
5. San Francisco Aerial Views. 1937-1938
   
   
6. Urban street networks, a comparative analysis of ten European cities
   
   
7. Declining fertility rates will transform the Asian family
   
   
8. Coldest spot on Earth identified by satellite (minus 93.2 Cº)
   
   
9. Snapshot: Global Migration
   
   
10. African polygamy over space and time

Assorted Links

1. Brazil’s Changing Religious Landscape
   
   
2. A map of the African population density (via Demotrends)
   
   
3. A view of Earth from the dark side of Saturn
   
   
4. Transport is Mostly a Real Estate Problem, by Alain Bertaud
   
   
5. Emigration Chart-of-the-Day
   
   
6. Stratospheric land prices in London
   
   
7. In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters
   
   
8. Emergency landings, by Dietmar Eckell
   
   
9. Top 10% Institutions and Economists in the Field of:
• Urban & Real Estate Economics
• Economic Geography

Assorted Links

1. Heading for success: or how not to title your paper (via David Levinson)
   
   
2. The 10 largest African cities in 2013
   
   
3. PAA 2013 Preliminary Program (via Eddie Hunsinger)
   
   
4. The Rio favela transformed into prime real estate (via Andres Marroquin)
   
   
5. Muddy Waters in Manchester (1964)
   
   
6. A monumental burden: Should Washington DC build skyscrapers?
   
   
7. Mapping climate change (via Per Square Mile)
   
   
8. The Skyscraper Index

Assorted Links

1. Car use is peaking in the rich world and exploding in China
   
   
2. Confirmation Bias and the iPhone 5
   
   
3. The fractals at the heart of African designs
   
   
4. Interactive timeline of migration in and out of the UK 1964-2010 (via Alan Smith)
   
   
5. The gap between the nominal and official number of urban residents is large enough to fit the entire population of Brazil  (via Tyler Cowen)
   
   
6. Honduran charter cities in troubled muddy waters (here and here)
   
   
7. Dubai: City on the Move

DUBAI - city on the move from geoff tompkinson on Vimeo.

Assorted Links

1. Demographic data about African countries (via @demotrends)
   
2. Assistant Professor in Demography and Public Affairs Position at Princeton University
   
3. Fertility decline and income inequality (via John Weeks )
   
4. Incentives: Prizes ou Grants?
   
5. Global Warming and the Political Economy of Cities, by Saskia Sassen
   
6. Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture
   
7. A Master List of 500 Free Courses From Great Universities

Assorted Links

1. Brazil facts (via MR)
   
2. The Geography of James Bond
   
3. 10 cities where homes cost less than a car (via The Drunkeynesian)
   
4. Seven Minutes of Terror, or how hard it was to land on Mars
   
5. book: Megacities: Urban Form, Governance, and Sustainability
   
6. The new Schwartnegger Institute on State and Global Policy. (via Lisa Schweitzer) Funny to know that he is 'concerned with the future'.
   
7. Child mortality in Africa

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

[Image Credit: The Economist]

Angola's Chinese empty city

Chinese-built ghost town strikes again! now in Angola.

[image credit]

Related Posts:

• China's empty city (and here)
• It's Alive !!!

Assorted Links

1. paper Climate Change, Crop Yields, and Internal Migration in the United States (via Matthew E. Kahn)
   
   
2. Nice instrument to have in a band
   
   
3. The Jobless Rate for People Like You
   
   
4. How child-mortality rates have changed since 1970
   
   
5. The State of the African Cities Report 2008 (UN-HABITAT)
   
   
6. International Seminar on 'Measuring Urbanity' (Lisbon, May 7th-12th, 2012)
   
   
7. Exploring the debate over contraception and health care in the US

Soundtrack: Café Tacuba

AfriPop Project

AfriPop: demography aims to produce detailed and freely-available population distribution maps for the whole of Africa . It provides "detailed gridded spatial population datasets showing age composition by 5-year groupings and gender." (via devcondata). 

obs. I have just added this project to our Online Databases List, on the right of this page.

Population Density

[image credit: AfriPop]

Soundtrack: Fela

Urban Africa

• Edgar Pieterse (African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town) talks about African Urbanism at LSE - available as youtube video or mp3.
  .

• Mapless Map: Urban populations living in slums (via maptd). If anyone knows where to find data on Africa urbanization, please let us know!

[image credit: Riccardo Pravettoni - UNEP/GRID-Arendal]

Assorted Links

• The Brookings Papers are now entirely open access (via Freakonomics. Hat Tip: MR)
  
  
• Glaeser on Minority Populations Grow in the USA
  
  
• Edgar Pieterse on African Urbanism (at LSE public lectures) - YouTube or mp3.
  
  
• Call for papers: Urbanisation, internal migrations and demographic behaviour (Hat Tip: Ricardo Ojima)
  Deadline for submission: 1st May 2011
  
  
• Urban hierarchy of the United States over time (1790-2000) via Kelso’s Corner. [interesting paths: Chicago, Detroit, LA, Baltimore, St. Louis, Houston and NY]