geobr v1.2 is on CRAN

geobr v1.2 just landed on CRAN!

geobr is an R package to download official spatial data sets of Brazil. It includes more than 20 data sets available at various geographic scales and for various years with harmonized attributes, projection and topology

News in this release: 

• the package is much faster 
• new data on metropolitan areas : read_metro_areas
• new data on municipal seats (sede dos municipios) : read_municipal_seat
• new fun to look up code of municipalities : lookup_muni
• new fun to list all data sets available in geobr : list_geobr

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.

Apply for the 2020 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency

Since 2012, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities awards a young researcher every year with the Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency. This award was created to celebrate Lee Schipper, one of the founders of EMBARQ and an enthusiastic supporter of building closer links between rigorous research and policy-making. The Scholarship awards up to two candidates a maximum of $10,000 each to advance transformative research in efficient and sustainable transport. Applications are due by March 18, 2020.

I was honored along with Joanna Moody to receive this award in 2017. It was a great and enriching experience and I would strongly encourage other researchers to apply for the Lee Schipper Award.

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.