Pacific Views: Library Speaker Series Presents: Spatial Data Science Solutions for Better Bicycling

Tue, 01/17/2023 – 4:00pm
Location: Pacific View Room

UCSB Library invites you to the first Pacific Views lecture of 2023 with Professor Trisalyn Nelson (UCSB Geography). This event is in conjunction with the UCSB Reads 2023 book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, which asks us to explore the question: “What kind of living environment makes us happy?”

Lack of available data can be a barrier to bicycling and pedestrian research and planning. Nelson will describe how her team develops novel data to map bicycle infrastructure, safety, and ridership. She will also highlight projects her research team is conducting to improve bicycling data locally in Santa Barbara.

This event is co-sponsored by BikeMaps.org, MoveSBCounty.org, and Santa Barbara Public Library.

The Pacific View Room is located on the 8th Floor of UCSB Library.

Trisalyn Nelson joined the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara as Jack and Laura Dangermond Endowed Chair of Geography in 2020. In 2022 she became the Chair of the Department of Geography. Dr. Nelson and her team develop and apply spatial and spatial-temporal analyses to address applied questions in a wide range of fields from ecology to health. She has studied mountain pine beetle infestations, grizzly bears, and environmental change. Currently, her research focuses on active transportation, and the use of big data and analytics to better plan cities. Nelson led the creation of BikeMaps.org, a web-map to gather volunteered geographic information on cycling collisions and near misses, as well as WalkRollMap.org, a web-map to collect volunteered geographic information about barriers to pedestrian movement. With her team, she has developed new ways of using fitness app data (like Strava) to map bicycling volume useful for transportation planning. Nelson’s uses BikeMaps.org and other big data to quantify and monitor patterns of urban cycling safety and ridership.