Inaugural Lecture: Data Science for Future-Proof Transport Planning

Abstract

I’m delighted to be giving my Inaugural Lecture at The University of Leeds. I welcome everyone – colleagues, researchers, students, alumni, and visitors – to celebrate this milestone. In this lecture, I’ll discuss my work developing evidence for effective and future-proof transport planning using data science. I’ll cover key methodological, empirical, and applied contributions from my research journey, including: * Developing the national Propensity to Cycle Tool (www.pct.bike) * A secondment to the No. 10 Downing Street data science team * Building data capacity at Active Travel England (plan.activetravelengland.gov.uk) * Current projects on integrated transport in Portugal (biclar.tmlmobilidade.pt) and the Network Planning Tool for Scotland. My approach emphasizes reproducible, open, and verifiable research. I’m passionate about open source software and community building, leading to R packages and books like Geocomputation with R (r.geocompx.org) and Geocomputation with Python (py.geocompx.org). A hands-on ‘Hackathon’ will precede the lecture (details and sign up at itsleeds.github.io/tds). Schedule: * 16:00 – 16:25: Drinks reception (ITS social space) * 16:30 – 17:30: Lecture (Esther Simpson room 1.01) * 17:30 - 18:00: Refreshments (ITS social space)