The media coverage of 'sustainable mobility'

via Brent Toderian

When people ask how my research is going

shared by Taylor R. Genovese

Hacking the system with virtual traffic congestions

In a brilliant artistic performance, Simon Weckert generated virtual traffic jams in Google Maps by pulling a wagon full of smartphones. HT Steven Crowley.

Estimating total fertility rates from population pyramids

Matt Hauer and Carl Schmertmann (both on Twitter) have just published a new paper that promises to be a game changer in population studies. They devised a method to estimate total fertility rates using inputs as minimal as the age/sex structure of a population. They tested the accuracy of the method using 2400+ fertility schedules and the result is incredibly accurate. Matt has written a thread on Twitter summarizing some of the key aspects of the paper.  The code to replicate the paper is here and an ungated preprint of the paper can be downloaded here.

Hauer, M., & Schmertmann, C. (2018). Population pyramids yield accurate estimates of total fertility rates. Demography. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00842-x  []

Abstract:

The primary fertility index for a population, the total fertility rate (TFR), cannot be calculated for many areas and periods because it requires disaggregation of births by mother’s age. Here we discuss a flexible framework for estimating TFR using inputs as minimal as a population pyramid. We develop five variants, each with increasing complexity and data requirements. We test accuracy across a diverse set of data sources that comprise more than 2,400 fertility schedules with known TFR values, including the Human Fertility Database, Demographic and Health Surveys, U.S. counties, and nonhuman species. We show that even the simplest and least accurate variant has a median error of only 0.09 births per woman over 2,400 fertility schedules, suggesting accurate TFR estimation over a wide range of demographic conditions. We anticipate that this framework will extend fertility analysis to new subpopulations, periods, geographies, and even species. To demonstrate the framework’s utility in new applications, we produce subnational estimates of African fertility levels, reconstruct historical European TFRs for periods up to 150 years before the collection of detailed birth records, and estimate TFR for the United States conditional on race and household income.

Estimated TFR from Population Pyramids. We compare the performance of five variants against observed TFRs using data from the Human Fertility Data, Demographic and Health Surveys, the US Census Bureau, and various non-human species.

Why cities should focus on promoting accessibility, not mobility

Amit Bhatt (WRI) has written a very eloquent piece on why cities should focus on promoting accessibility, not mobility. Good read.

Call for Applications: ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award

The International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD has opened a call for applications for the 2020 Young Researcher of the Year Award. The winner of the Award will be invited to present her/his work at the ITF Annual Summit.

"The principal aim of the International Transport Forum’s Young Researcher of the Year Award is to highlight the importance of transport research for sound transport policy formulation and implementation, and to foster closer links between transport policy and research. For 2020, the theme of the Summit is 'Transport Innovation for Sustainable Development'."

I was really honored to receive this award last year and it was a truly great experience. If you are eligible, I would highly recommend you apply for this award. The application is "open to researchers under 35 years of age at the time of closing of applications who have undertaken the research presented in the submitted paper in an institution, university or consultancy firm located in a member country of the ITF/OECD".

First results of Access to Opportunities Project are now online

Last week, we officialy launched the Access to Opportunities Project. In this first edition of the project (2019) we present accessibility estimates by active transport modes (walking and cycling) for the 20 largest cities in the Brazil, and by public transport for 7 major cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre e Curitiba).

At the occasion of the event, we launched the website of the project where one can find:

1. a published report analyzing inequalities in access to opportunities in Brazil's largest cities (report only available in Portuguese)
2. an interactive map to explore the results
3. the data outputs of the project
4. the computational code used to process, analyze and visualize the data

Here is a quick demo of the interactive map but please go ahead and try it for yourself. The app scales fairly well despite the massive amount of data, thanks to Kauê Braga's work using in R to create a mapdeck application in shiny.

Is this Transit Oriented Development (TOD) ?

Aerial footage of the Maeklong Rail Market, Thailand. Captured by the talented Demas Rusli ( Instagram, Twitter).

Plotting the metropolitan areas of Brazil in R

Here is a simple R script to download the shape files of Brazilian metropolitan areas by year and plot them in R.

obs. It's important to note that, since the 1988, metro areas are created by state governments. As a rule, this is done with absolutely no transparency nor any technical criteria. It is this legal issue, rather than the urbanization process in the country itself, that led to such an inflated increase in the number of metro areas in the country over the past two decades.

Number of metro areas in Brazil:

1970: 9

2001: 24 

2018: 77

Procrastination is not about productivity

Procrastination is “a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, self-doubt”. At its core, it’s about emotions, not productivity. 

This is from this brilliant article written by Charlotte Lieberman for the NYT, probably the best piece on procrastination I’ve ever read.