Robin Lovelace

Just updated my Reproducible Project Template so that it now generates Word (.docx) versions of the paper. Really useful for anyone writing reproducible papers in Quarto (.qmd) files who collaborate with people who prefer tracked changes. I've used this for many of my own projects and it's sooo useful, now sharing with the world 🚀 https://robinlovelace.net/reproducible-project-template/

Good to see my Leeds Institute for Transport Studies colleague Harry Roberts presenting on a detailed assessment of different routing tools. Headline: #opensource options are viable for research!

When data science projects get beyond a few hundred lines of code they can become hard to modify without breaking the whole thing. Visualising and understanding the pipeline is key and the #rstats package {targets} is brilliant for this, it can even be used as an orchestrator for Python code!

I've tried many workflow automation tools and nothing beats the #rstats package {targets}. It's pure R, pretty simple (while being feature-rich, great support for parallel execution and multi-lingual workflows, this is calling Python+DuckDB). It *trounces* the likes of make (bash), and #python pkgs dagster and prefect in my tests. Check it out!

I finally got round to updating my website! Following in the footsteps of reproducible research pioneers, I've gone for Quarto, a flexible framework for scientific writing and publication, with support for citations and embedded code that actually runs 🎉 Learn more.. on the new site: https://robinlovelace.net/posts/2026-04-10-quarto-website-update/index.html

RE: @nickbearman@fosstodon.org

The magic of #foss comms: I asked a niche question and within minutes got a definitive answer that alluded my research online. Many thanks Nick and the #foss4g community @osgeo@fosstodon.org @osgeouk@fosstodon.org @qgis@fosstodon.org! Also, this seems like an important read for anyone who made good use of SAGA's now unmaintained QGIS plugin 🙏

Good to be back in Herefordshire. I'm here to visit family and to discuss my dad's archive of photos, maps and more. Will be talking with people here to learn more about landscape history and ecology, and to ensure the archive is as useful as possible to people and nature conservation in Herefordshire and beyond.

RE: @osgeouk@fosstodon.org

Looking forward to this 🚀 I will be there, need to get talks in on time!

I'll be hosting Will Deakin from Network Rail for a Seminar at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, and online, next week Thursday 19th March. Will is a Python programming pro, data visualisation star and data science expert and is well worth listening to, so check out the invite and spread the word, all welcome: https://itsleeds.github.io/tds/sem2/invite.html

This paper was more than 2 years in the making, involving 3 organisations (Leeds Uni, Network Rail, ESRI), 2 (totally different) GISRUK presentations, dozens of iterations, 1 Python package (install it with pip install parenx), and amazing #opensource collaborations 🎉 Looking forward to belated celebration its launch at an informal workshop at #ITSLeeds this afternoon 🚀

Andres Sevstuk presenting at #MobileTartu on his work modelling change in pedestrian traffic given changes to the network. This is very impressive and could help planners in many cities make their cities better for active travel. Looking forward to giving these methods a spin in Leeds and beyond!

FOSS4G UK was hosted here in #Leeds last year and it was a blast. So good it's happening here again in 2026! It will be 11th-12th October this year, watch this space for calls for abstracts etc, looking forward to it! #foss4g #geocomputation #GIS @foss4geurope@fosstodon.org @osgeouk@fosstodon.org

I recently appeared on the Mobility Club podcast to discuss open data, open source tools for transport planning, and why data-driven decision making matters for active travel. 🎧

Great to chat with Isabella & Santiago about bridging research & practice!

🚗💰 The "Invisible" Costs of Driving.

I created this visualization for my PhD thesis to show that a car’s cost isn’t just what you pay upfront.

We have a habit of obsessing over the Purchase Cost (a single number), but ignoring the Lifecycle Cost (the reality).

You can find this figure and more in the full thesis (freely available online!). 🎓

#Research #PhDLife #ElectricVehicles #SustainableTransport #Finance #DataVisualization

Looking forward to presenting on building communities and capacities in data-driven transport planning at the ITF Conference on Transport Data later today! For anyone interested in the topic but unable to make it in person or on Zoom, see #openaccess slides here: https://robinlovelace.net/itfworkshop/

Thinking about capacity and community-building in transport planning, it strikes me that maybe we should start thinking more about causes of friction and fragmentation. Disjoints between different government layers and departments in UK are a case in point!

Calling all #RStats + #Transport researchers!

stats19 v4.0.0 is here - a major update to the UK's road crash data package.

What's new:

45 years of data (1979-2024) with a single, unified column schema
Zero-warning parsing
Fixed coordinate precision bug
...

Please install, test, and report any issues before we submit to CRAN!

pak::pak("ropensci/stats19")

Blog post: https://www.robinlovelace.net/post/stats19-v4/
Issues: https://github.com/ropensci/stats19/issues

An emphasis of our workshop at #MobileTartu was more reproducible, open and therefore scientific research. As part of this, students were asked to their work as code in the workshop repo. I'm happy to say they aced it! For many this was their first time using GitHub, let alone opening a Pull Request. Well done all 👏

I've just updated the Reproducible project template repo based on a few small #reproducible research websites I've needed to create. This workflow is now my default for doing talks and workshops, quicker than PowerPoint with many benefits! Details: http://robinlovelace.net/reproducible-project-template/

RE: @robinlovelace@fosstodon.org

It's great to log-on to #Mastodon to find not only my work being discussed and put out there with enlightening comments (thanks @AntoninDanalet@datasci.social ), but also that quote reposts are now a thing, when did that happen?! In any case check it out when you get a chance and join the conversation of openness (including open publications, code, data and accessible communities) in research! #OpenSource #dataScience for #reproducibleresearch in the public interest 🚀

I've just tried Posit Assistant on the free plan and must say, I'm impressed. Using the super-cheap Gemma 4 26B model (10% cost of Sonnet) on free plan it worked instantly. Hats of to the #posit team for integrating this into RStudio and allowing people to test with free plan!

A question for any #gis experts out there: whatever happened to QGIS's SAGA plugin? See https://github.com/geocompx/geocompr/pull/1182 for context and tagging @qgis@fosstodon.org, @nowosad@fosstodon.org, @underdarkGIS@fosstodon.org, @nickbearman@fosstodon.org and @osgeo@fosstodon.org in case you have any leads. Seems to have vanished from GitHub and the QGIS plugin registry to me! #qgis #saga

Good to see conversations emerging from the recent Podcast interview I did. What a way to get research out there and to get conversations going 🎙️ I definitely recommend long-form conversations to supplement papers, reports, great to see ideas are reaching new people and places online 🚀 To get involved: search and you will find!

RE: @AntoninDanalet@datasci.social

This is so true, the hard part now is not to *build the thing* but to *build the community* 🌱 🚀

I very much enjoyed listening to a talk on landscape ecology by Sandra Denman at the #Herefordshire Parklands Conference, complete with reproducible geographic data visualisations made with the #rstats package {ggplot2}. Science and open source software in action!

Today I learned 1) that the tram system of Leeds of early 1900s was HUGE and 2) that the 1910 town map of Leeds captured things that are TINY, including individual trees and rail tracks 🤯 Defo doing more with this soon, watch this space...

Interested in historic railways in the UK and beyond? I've just written some code and uploaded some #openaccess datasets showing the extent of abandoned railways in the UK, could be a good basis for research projects. See here for more: https://github.com/itsleeds/openraildata ideas of research questions welcome!

Happy to see new newest member of the #geocompx family up on the geocompx.org website: Spatial Data Visualization with tmap is an awesome book that is still in progress 🏗️ Well worth a read to launch your reproducible map making journey 🚀

Exciting new funded #PhD opportunity here at the University of Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies #ITS. The project will develop definitive new insights into the impacts of new speed limit policies, down to the road network with the potential to save dozens of lives. If you'd like to progress your career and undertake groundbreaking new research, or know anyone who would, check it out!

Refugee flows out of Ukraine each year since 2022. Source: UNHCR. Reproducible #datascience source code to reproduce this map: https://github.com/Robinlovelace/itfworkshop Looking forward to presenting this later today!

Great to be in #Estonia again! I'm here for the #MobileTartu conference and will be teaching Data Science for Transport Planning. For anyone unable to make it in person but interested in the topic, you can follow the #openaccess materials here: https://tdscience.github.io/tartu26/ #reproducible #datascience

RE: @harry_wood@en.osm.town

Good example of constructive and *actionable* feedback when asked to comment on specifications. Does this also apply to academic review? My guess: YES!

My work recently set-up GitHub enterprise 🎉 It's probably overkill for many research use-cases but handy for teaching. Many thanks to the University of Leeds!

Looking forward to this. If you're in/around Belfast on 18th May and interested in #datascience, transport planning, or evidence-based decision making check it out! Details TBC and on github.com/pctni.

The user interface in the new Posit Assistant is one of the best and most intuitive I've seen for using AI tools for editing code. This will be excellent for students and researchers already familiar with RStudio. This is a brilliant harness and user experience for using AI for productive and open data science, great work 🎉

The logo for FOSS4G UK 2025 was awesome. Now we're looking to make the logo for FOSS4G UK 2026 and plans are for a logo competition. Watch this space any geo people with an interest in design, chance for eternal fame and good vibes incoming 🚀

Good to see open source and reproducible research mentioned prominently in Alain Chiaradia's talk at the Meeting Active Travel seminar in Cambridge this morning. sDNA+ is powerful and performant. Worth checking it out! Also interested to learn of any ongoing use cases for sDNA 🏗️

I've just added a few more links to #openaccess resources and a few more maps to the nascent openraildata resource page. Credit to my ITS Leeds colleague Alex Stead for the links, we have some ideas for research building on these datasets, watch this space!

On my way to the Modelling Active Travel seminar, after catching 05:18 train from Leeds. Cambridge here we come! This view from the way down shows what many urban streets are like and why accurate modelling of walking, wheeling and cycling requires high resolution data ⚡ For more on my upcoming talk and links see here: https://robinlovelace.net/events/aum2026/