What’s New & Updated

Posts about papers, events, news, and more

Mobile Tartu 2026: a write-up
9 min
event
Last week I attended the 10th Mobile Tartu Conference. In this post I share some reflections on the event, links to some of the great materials presented there, plus a few…
Jun 16, 2026

Migration to Quarto
3 min
Following in the footsteps of reproducible research rolemodels including Nicola Rennie, Andrew Heiss and Jakub Nowosad, I’ve finally migrated my website to Quarto!
Apr 10, 2026
 
stats19 v4.0.0: 45 Years of UK Road Crash Data, Unified
2 min
R
transport
road-safety

A release that unifies 45 years of UK road crash data into a single, consistent interface

Mar 17, 2026

Meal with Anastassia, PhD supervisor Michael, and the 3/2rds of the examination committee to celebrate

Copenhagenize: examining a thesis on urban data science for sustainable mobility and developing bike/research networks
13 min
I spent the last three days in Copenhagen to examine a thesis. I assumed the capital of bike-friendly Denmark and inspiration for the ‘Copenhaganize index’ (which Copenhagen…
Apr 3, 2025

Looking back on 2024 and forward to 2025
9 min

Completing my Civil Service job, new role at the University of Leeds and family updates

Jan 3, 2025

The Pathway to Professorship
21 min

A celebratory post reflecting on the journey to becoming a Professor of Transport Data Science and reward systems in higher education

Jul 24, 2024
 
Mobile Tartu 2024
17 min
Last week I attended the Mobile Tartu conference 2024. It was the 9th time that this 2-yearly conference has run, marking 16 years since the first Mobile Tartu in 2008. I’ve…
Jun 15, 2024

Reflections on 2023
7 min
life
Like last year’s reflections post, I’m going to keep this one short and use it as a chance to reflect on what I’ve been up to over the last 12 months, what I’ve been working…
Dec 31, 2023

Setting up a new computer with Ubuntu to run open source software for research and Geocomputation
13 min
I recently got a new laptop. Being a long time Ubuntu user and fan, decided to get set-up with the user-friendly and long-established Ubuntu. This post is about how to get…
Apr 11, 2023

Reflections on 2022
3 min
life

Thoughts on the year gone by and the years ahead

Dec 30, 2022
 
Setting-up Mastodon: an appropriate social media platform for the 2020s 🐘
10 min
This post provides tips on setting-up a Mastodon account. It’s mostly focussed on the tech but it deserves a brief intro on the wider context motivating this blog post. It…
Nov 5, 2022
 
Reflections on 2021 🎇
6 min
life

Thoughts the year gone by and the years ahead

Jan 1, 2022
 
Open access events on data science in transport
1 min
This is a short post about a couple of events in which myself and colleagues will present on our work on building tools for evidence-based decision making and teaching data…
Dec 3, 2021
 
Cycleways in East Leeds: a Photoblog
7 min
cycling
Taking advantage of a sunny Sunday, a friend and I decided to check-out some recent active travel infrastructure developments in East Leeds. We planned the route around two…
Apr 11, 2021
 
Human compatible book review
7 min
reviews
Highly recommended, 5/5.
Feb 22, 2021
 
Open Science In Transportation Workshop
1 min
talk
Today I am presenting at the Transport Research Board’s 2021 Annual meeting, aka #TRB2021. I say ‘presenting’ but in fact, the talk was a pre-record - see the video below!
Jan 21, 2021
 
Making a reproducible website with blogdown in 2021
1 min
R
For people interested in how I set this site, see the changes tracked on GitHub to transition to the new site here: https://github.com/rbind/robinlovelace/pull/5
Jan 3, 2021
 
Evidence to prioritise pop-up cycleways
2 min
cycling
I gave a talk today at the ‘Ideas with Beers’ seminar series, hosted each Tuesday for the past several months by Brian Deegan, an experienced transport infrastructure…
May 26, 2020
 
Installing spatial R packages on Ubuntu
1 min
r
Having recently acquired a new laptop, an Entroware Proteus (shown below), I had to remind myself how to set-it-up for my needs. This includes the usual things like document…
Mar 30, 2020
 
CASA summer school on geographic data
1 min
r
talks
Last week I presented at UCL’s summer school which, by all accounts, was a very successful event in which many people learned many new skills. The presentation format was a…
Aug 28, 2019
 
Six great things about UseR! 2019
16 min
r
conferences
UseR! is the highest profile and, I believe, most popular annual meeting for R enthusiasts, known affectionately as ‘UseRs’ for the purposes of the event. For those who have…
Jul 13, 2019
 
stplanr paper published
3 min
r
I am very happy to announce that the paper stplanr: A package for transport planning has been published in The R Journal (Lovelace and Ellison 2018) 🎉.
Feb 25, 2019
 
Aggregating lines, part II
6 min
r
The previous post demonstrated a new method to aggregate overlapping lines. It showed how to combine 2 lines that have an area of overlap. More excitingly, it led to the…
Feb 14, 2019
 
Aggregating lines, Part I
7 min
r
It’s been a busy 12 months but with the Geocomputation with R book nearing completion1 I’ve finally found some time to update my blog and do a bit of thinking, about the…
Oct 27, 2018

Can Geographic Data Save the World?
9 min
I presented yesterday on the use of geographic data in policy in a flamboyantly named talk: Can geographic data save the world (slides available from rpubs.com/Robinlovelace)…
May 2, 2017

Switching to blogdown
1 min
r
I’ve finally got a new blog post, to test that my new set-up is working, using the wonderful new blogdown package.
Apr 30, 2017
 
CycleStreets.net in the Propensity to Cycle Tool
7 min
After 2 years in the making, the paper describing the Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT), and the thinking behind it, has finally been published (Lovelace et al. 2016). The PCT…
Dec 21, 2016
 
Geostat2016 Albacete: a write-up
15 min
r
Last week I went to GEOSTAT 2016. Given the amount of fun had at GEOSTAT 2015, expectations were high. The local organisers did not disappoint, with a week of lectures…
Sep 28, 2016
 
R vs QGIS for sustainable transport planning
5 min
R
The 23rd iteration of the GIS Research UK conference (#GISRUK) conference was the largest ever. 250 researchers, industry representatives and academics attended from the…
Jan 20, 2015
 
Clipping spatial data in R
5 min
This miniature vignette shows how to clip spatial data based on different spatial objects in R and a ‘bounding box’. Spatial overlays are common in GIS applications and R…
Jul 29, 2014
 
The Future Is Not What It Used To Be - Book review
10 min
reviews
This is a review I was invited to write for Environmental Values, a journal for academics to publish their musings on the state of the environment and what is to be done…
Jan 28, 2014
 
Moving house by bicycle trailer
7 min
Back in 2009 I moved from York to Sheffield to start a PhD on the Energy Futures 4 year Doctoral Training Centre. Young and naive, some friends and I decided to do it by…
Oct 13, 2013
 
Presentation at FOSS4G 2013
2 min
Visualisation
Open Source
Conferences
Presentation
I presented last Thursday at FOSS4G, THE conference to go to for Free Open Source Software for Geo applications (get it?). It was an interesting event, with hundreds of…
Sep 22, 2013
No matching items