In this visual news article, I visualized results of the 2022 US Midterm elections to explore the widely held assumptions that gerrymandering would lead to fewer competitive House races in the 2022 election.
In this visual news article, I visualized the spread of the "Big Lie" (that the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was stolen) across social media platforms by 160 Republican candidates.
This scientific paper represents a research effort aimed at measuring equality in access to urban infrastructure in cities across the world. In collaboration with two other researchers, we have developed an open source computational framework to assist planners in the design of more equitable accessibility policies. This framework uses open data, network science, and machine learning to identify socio-economic inequalities in access to infrastructure for any city in the world.
In this (currently under peer-review) research project, I analyzed ~1M geo-located from #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd to understand the interplay between hashtag activism and physical mobilization processes during social movements.
In this visual essay, Sahiti Sarva and I have visualized the language used in women-centered headlines and how this language has (or has not) changed over time. Using keywords associated with the word “woman” (like girl, mother and lady), we collected and analyzed 382,139 headlines published between 2005 and 2021 by the top English-language news publications and news agencies in four countries: The United States of America (US), India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (UK). A total of 186 publications were considered (i.e. 24 publications in South Africa, 51 publications in India, 57 publications in the UK, and 54 publications in the US).
Tracing what are likely to be permanent structural shifts in the economy, this report quantifies and explores the impact for the industry on mobility restrictions, the rise in e-commerce, the explosion of in-home media consumption and shifts in media spend.
Throughout history, social movements have often been catalysts for radical societal change. In the past two decades, hashtag activism, the use of social media platforms for internet activism, has become a driving force behind the development of social movements across the world. From #MeToo to #IdleNoMore and most recently #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, social media has been used strategically by activists to mobilize communities to come together and protest against different forms of injustice. In the field of social movements science, a large body of research has studied the role of hashtag activism for the formation of social movements, but less efforts have been allocated towards the study of the spatio-temporal relationship that exists between hashtag activism and political processes. In other words, in spite of the a-spatial nature of social media, can the study of hashtag activism help us understand human behaviours and societal processes that occur off-line, in the physical space? Such conundrum is the basis of the research in this master thesis, where a data-driven framework is implemented to investigate the spatio-temporal relationship between hashtag activism and two important political processes: physical protest activity and legislative action. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first national level quantitative study aimed at measuring the temporal relationships between hashtag activism, physical protest activity, and legislative action, at various spatial resolutions. Therefore, the study provides several contributions to the field of social movements research and, more broadly, the computational social sciences.
The UK entered 2021 in the grip of a dangerous third wave of the pandemic, despite Lockdown 3.0 over Christmas, driving down trips taken by people to depressed levels last seen in Lockdown 1.0, reducing economic activity for Q1. Time spent at home closely tracks the severity of lockdowns and mandates to work from home (WFH). Underpinned by the UK’s advanced digital infrastructure and services, WFH is providing resilience to Gross Value Added (GVA) creation, while staff in B2C activities are furloughed. The City of London is emblematic of the potential for outsourced GVA creation under WFH. Its skilled and highly paid staff are too valuable to employers to risk exposure to the virus. WFH, largely preserving GVA, will anchor the future of work.
This report contains a visual narrative on the impact of COVID-19 on mobility in the Greater London Area (GLA). We use data from The Health Foundation, Google and the Greater London Authority to visualize how the pandemic has impacted the use of public transportation, visits to essential services, leisure activities, and work-life over the course of 2020. We also visualize the potential economic impact of the pandemic for the GLA, with the central business district having suffered disproportionally from reduced mobility.
Together with Mikhail Sirenko and Trivik Verma at the TU Delft Computational Urban Science and Policy (CUSP) lab, we have developed an open source computational framework to assist planners in the design of more equitable accessibility policies. Our framework uses open data, network science and machine learning to measure equality in access to infrastructure for any city in the world.
This report contains an analysis of the tree canopy cover and impervious surfaces in Metro Vancouver. Measuring tree canopy cover is a relatively simple way to determine the extent of the urban forest and the magnitude of services it provides. Impervious surfaces are associated with many of the negative effects of urbanization such as increased temperatures (the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect) and flood risk, along with impacts to stream health through disrupted hydrological cycles and poor water quality.
When implemented in the right location, solar energy provides many benefits. UBC, Vancouver campus, has extensive roof area that could be used for implementation of solar energy facilities such as Photovoltaic solar arrays. However, whether it is beneficial to implement these facilities depends on a variety of influencing factors. This study provides an assessment of UBC campus and its spatial, architectural, and geographical attributes to determine the suitability of UBC rooftops for implementation of solar energy capture facilities. A solar suitability index, ranking all 537 UBC roofs from most suitable for solar energy facilities to least suitable for solar energy facilities is developed.
A short photo-documentary I conducted on Farès, a man who skateboards barefoot at Place de la Republique in Paris, France.
