What makes a place busy? Characterising the spatiotemporal elements of the ambient population using a range of data sources

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The PhD project on the topic "What makes a place busy? Characterising the spatiotemporal elements of the ambient population using a range of data sources" is offeredby the UCL Department of Geography and Consumer Data Research Centre(www.cdrc.ac.uk). The primary supervisor is Professor James Cheshire and thesecondary one is Dr Stephen Law. The research will be carried out in association withGHD Group Movement Strategies, a leading people movement consultancy, whichsupplies mobility datasets to be analysed in this project(https://www.ghd.com/en/about-us/ghd-movement-strategies.aspx).The proposed PhD aims to combine individual-based data from mobile devices (GPSbased) and place-based data measuring footfall (via CCTV) to enhance thequantification of ambient populations in urban areas. This will provide a betterunderstanding of dense urban situations such as large stadia, transport hubs, andurban town centres to generate evidence that informs urban policies.Through the programme, I will acquire skills in data science and machine learning foranalysing mobility and imagery datasets as well as develop novel techniques for theirvalidation. This will help to characterize the spatial and temporal population profiles ofplaces at different scales. Providing the framework for utilising and modelling thedatasets of interest will help in planning, designing, and operating crowded places withthe objectives of making them safer, maximising capacity, enhancing the visitorexperience, and increasing profitability. For instance, at the local scale, data may beused to monitor movement density and to detect risks and anomalies in transport hubsand large-scale events (stadia, festivals, concerts) and/or at the national scale,characterising the health of urban retail centres (volume, retail turn-over).Furthermore, through the PhD thesis and academic papers, I will link the mobility datasources to urban geography and urban planning issues, with the aim of creating outputthat is innovative and influential on urban policy, smart city solutions as well as futureresearch. Thus, both the public and private sectors would benefit from the findings ofthis project.