The Commission on Geovisualization would like to bring to your attention the work of their member Jo Wood, City University London data visualisation specialist. He created stunning visualisations based on data from the first 5 million journeys made by riders on London’s cycle hire scheme, which were made the focus of a recent New Scientist story.
According to Prof Wood: “Visual analytics allows transport planners and organisations such as Transport for London (TfL) to make better informed decisions to support the movement of people around our cities.”
In the animation, the routes that are least travelled begin to fade out after 15 seconds akin to “a graphic equaliser”, according to collaborator Andrew Huddart, who is manager of the University’s Transport Collaborative Hub.
Around the 1-minute mark, three major systems begin to emerge: routes around, and through Hyde Park in West London and commutes in and out of King’s Cross St Pancras in the north together with bike traffic between Waterloo and the City, toward the east of the capital.
Andrew Huddart believes that the next level of the data visualisation analysis will be the addition of anonymised user profiles which will provide more information about people’s use of bicycles over time, leading to a better placement of docking stations. This will also assist in balancing the load across the Barclays Cycle Hire network.
