Lunch and Learn with Dr. Colin Ferster

 

Please RSVP at this link by Friday, April 21st at 3 p.m. as we will be providing lunch.

The Center for Spatial Studies would like to invite you to a Lunch and Learn with Dr. Colin Ferster on Wednesday, April 26th at 12:30 p.m. in Ellison Hall 5824. Dr. Ferster will be leading a talk titled: OSM Can-BICS: Mapping bicycle infrastructure across Canada. Read below about Dr. Ferster as well as what he will be chatting about.

Bio: Colin Ferster is a geographer studying crowdsourced data and active transportation in cities. His training is in GIS and remote sensing and he applies these methods to develop innovative datasets to help understand people and their environments. He is a research associate in the Cities Health and Active Transportation Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in Canada and the SPAR Lab at UC Santa Barbara.

Description: High quality and consistent bicycling infrastructure data are needed to advance research into equity and safety and for planning and promoting active transportation. Yet there was no consistent and complete national dataset for bicycling infrastructure in Canada. We developed a national bicycling infrastructure dataset. First, we classified OpenStreetMap (OSM) using the Canadian Bikeway Comfort and Safety Classification System (Can-BICS) as a consistent categorization for infrastructure type. Next, we performed a site-specific accuracy assessment by comparing the classification with more than 2,000 reference points from a stratified random sample in 15 cities. We met with city planners to validate the classified network dataset and solicited feedback and improvements in mapathons. Finally, we used the classified network dataset to develop a standardized measure of cycling infrastructure for all dissemination areas in Canada. In this talk, we will present the OSM Can-BICS classified dataset and metric of the cycling environment, including detail on the development, validation, and descriptive results.