Bags of Impulsiveness: Psychological and Demographic Predictors of Plastic Bag Consumption in Big Data
Despite the success of plastic bag charges in the UK, there are still around a billion single-use plastic bags bought each year in England alone (DEFRA, 2018), and politicians are currently debating whether to double […]
The Anatomy of Retail Transactions
N/LAB has devoted considerable effort to descriptive and predictive analytics in the domain of retailing. The lab has access to data from various multinational retailers. In press and in prep work is bound to make a […]
Mapping Money Movement: Generating Geo-demographics with New Methods
Understanding population level money flows around a city has significant potential to drive both policy implications and economic activity. An example of the former is the detection of vulnerable sub-populations while an example of the […]
Crowd Sourcing ground-truth demographics for machine learning
The collection of geo-demographic data for understanding cities has typically been undertaken by census and other large scale surveys. Providing the basis for a wide range of activity including city planning, market intelligence and policy […]
Automated Road Quality Surveys: Superior and Cost Effective
In collaboration with DFiD and the Department of Roads (DoR) Zanzibar, N/LAB is investigating methods combining remote sensing (drone/satellite imagery) and applied machine learning methods to automate the assessment of low volume road conditions. Traditionally […]
Deep Learning and Aerial Imagery for Land Use Classification
Land use classification is a critical information to monitor a territory, support its development and plan its evolution. Aerial imagery is generally used as the base media to derive a land use classification by manual […]
Generating Geo-demographic Data from CDR Data: Mobility
Understanding mobility at a population level provides a key role in urban planning. Traditionally undertaken by transport surveys, a key outcome is city wide Origin-Destination (OD) Matrices. While providing known utility, these traditional approaches are […]
Big Data for Resilience – Flooding in Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam suffers from biannual flooding caused by various factors including climate change and rapid unplanned urban growth. Receiving a ESRC-NERC-DFID grant for “Big Data for Flood Resilience in East Africa”, this project investigates […]
Transport – Road Conditions
Leveraging recent deep learning advances with high resolution drone imagery, the team has developed state-of-the-art techniques for the automatic detection of buildings and roads from aerial imagery. N/LAB is now focusing on the extension of […]
Community Mapping
Maps are crucial in emerging countries to make decisions, but often do not exist. Community mapping is a participatory process where community members map their neighbourhoods, making maps openly available in the process. In emerging […]