Open Tech Calendar

Chris Hutchinson - Location data analysis through the prism of time

We’ll briefly look at why location analysis needs to be thought of in terms of time and not distance. After all, none of us can travel as the crow flies, and we are all at the mercy of the transport networks around us to navigate the world.
Then we'll dive into how we made this possible at TravelTime, touching on some of the data sets we use, the models and algorithms we’ve built on top of these, and how we then make this accessible to users.
Finally we’ll go into a live demo, showing how the technology can be used to visualise data and answer some real-world questions in location analytics.

Bio
Chris joined TravelTime a couple of years ago as Product Manager, responsible for building integrations between the TravelTime API and other third-party analytics platforms. He now heads up the Customer Success team, working closely with clients across all industries to help them enhance their location search and analytics capabilities with travel time data.

Company (traveltime.com)
TravelTime provides a set of APIs and GIS analytics plugins that enable the world to be searched and analysed by time instead of by distance. The breadth of use cases for the technology is incredibly broad, but can be roughly broken down into two categories:
• Search clients use the API to sort and rank results by travel time when a user searches on their website, such as property sites, job sites, and hotel booking sites
• Analytics clients use our tools to enhance their business intelligence capabilities, and make better decisions such as retail store site selection, office relocations, and sales territories

Strath Slater - Edinburgh: A 20 Minute City?

The concept of the ‘20-Minute Neighbourhood’ - a well connected neighbourhood with all of the amenities people require to meet their everyday needs within a 20 minute return walk or cycle – has been gaining momentum, with high profile trials planned in Paris and Melbourne.
Using spatial analysis of openly available data, buildings in Edinburgh were ranked according to whether or not they are within a 20 minute return walk of a supermarket, GP surgery, school, green recreational space and bus stop.
The results yield some interesting patterns and raise questions about the success of formalised planning in developing liveable and practical urban spaces which meet people’s everyday needs.

Bio
Strath is an Associate at Galbraith, where he uses spatial analysis to deliver projects in the renewable energy, utilities, rural, forestry and commercial property sectors.
He spends his time figuring out how to tell complex stories with spatial data and enjoys using maps as vehicles to encourage people to engage with, interpret and understand an issue.
He can be found on Twitter (@StrathSlater) and linkedIn (www.linkedin.com), where he posts maps and spatial data visualisations.

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