AlbertLeNotebook

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 08/18 to 09/25

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Decide on sub-team

Task 1: Researched a little bit about each sub-team and decided what fit my skills and interests. Decided on the Pedestrian Environment Index mobility team.

Challenges & Solutions: N/A

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired: N/A

Team Meetings: Full class meeting with introductions of each team and an overview of past projects.

Personal Reflection: I am interested in walkability and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, so I am very excited to be working on this project. I am also interested in data analytics, so creating the PEI and adding parameters/equations will be interesting to me too.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 08/26 to 09/1

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Decide which side of the team I should work on

Task 1: The two options were either the side that would collect more and more reliable data sources or a team that determines which parameters are the most important. I decided to work on the parameter side because I am interested in the data analytics side of the project. I familiarized myself with research websites and common topics in walkability and infrastructure.

Challenges & Solutions: Learning the vocabulary used in academic settings was a little challenging since I have not been exposed to much academic material in the past, but I easily came up to speed. After reading one or two articles, it became easier to understand.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired: Navigating through csv files and finding research papers.

Team Meetings: Virtual meeting with Dr. Benson Ku and the rest of the GT team. We determined the two big challenges for the term: reliable/more data sources and which parameters are most indicative of mental health issues.

Personal Reflection: I did not really contribute much to the team as a whole this week, but I will pick up when the project does. I worked on my own research skills this week.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 09/1 to 09/08

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Read articles that Josh sent Task 2: Look over existing parameters

Task 1: Josh sent articles from last term that kicked off the whole project. They overlooked things like subjective walkability and other indicators of walkability. Using the information from those articles, I looked for more research that would be relevant. I found multiple new parameters to mention at the meeting.

Task 2: I looked over the existing PEI and what the code was used to calculate it. I see that it is missing mention of public transportation, weather, cleanliness, and safety. It mostly lacks subjective indices. We should look at trying to implement some new indices, like a comfort index.

Challenges & Solutions: Trying to read through the old code and what data it was using was a little difficult, but through a little bit of research and time I eventually found everything that was being used.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired: Python libraries and GeoJSON

Team Meetings: Virtual meeting with Yichao where I was assigned to parameter review. We discussed possible Google Maps API implementation.

Personal Reflection: I found multiple new parameter ideas after reading research papers. I need to learn more python and libraries because a lot of the code that was used was unfamiliar to me. I will watch some video tutorials in the future to help with this.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 09/08 to 09/15

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Read Articles on Subjective Walkability Task 2: Research Data and parameters online

Task 1: Read articles Josh sent that started the project last term. Learned about subjective walkability which is lacking from the current PEI. Came up with ideas for new parameters.

Task 2: Searched online for sources of data to use. Found a few good databases for cities.

Challenges & Solutions: It is pretty difficult to get data that isn’t specific to a certain city. There are only a few big datasets that combine cities into one big national set, but most parameters are in city datasets.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired Discovered good research methods for finding databases

Team Meetings No team meeting held

Personal Reflection: I found many useful articles and research that can be implemented as new parameters. I should start researching and working earlier in the week because finding these databases took up a lot of my time in one day.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 09/15 to 09/22

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Came up with new subindices ideas Task 2: Search for more datasets

Task 1: Combined my research from last week to come up with ideas for three new subindices: Activity, Comfort, Transit. Activity is how popular/busy an area or building is. Comfort is how good an area looks and how attractive it is to someone. Transit is how easily accessible public transportation is for the city’s population.

Task 2: Searched online for more sources of data that are specific to each index. Found some very useful APIs.

Challenges & Solutions: It was once again hard to find data on a big scale, but some APIs were very useful nationwide.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired Discovered good research methods for finding databases

Team Meetings No team meeting held

Personal Reflection: I found more important parameters again this week for the team. I should start researching and working earlier in the week because finding these databases took up a lot of my time in one day.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 09/22 to 09/29

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Create the data matrix Task 2: Learn how to use React to create a web app in the future

Task 1: Create an excel/sheets matrix that lists states on the rows and parameters on the columns. Show how easy/difficult it is to get data for each parameter in each state.

Task 2: Learned how to use the React framework to code the front-end of the web app in the future Brushed up on Flask for back-end coding in the future

Challenges & Solutions: It is pretty difficult to get data for entire states at a time. We may plan to focus more on the development of the web app rather than getting unfeasible data for more states and time periods.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired Learned how to use Jupyter and React

Team Meetings No team meeting held

Personal Reflection: I created the parameter and city matrix for the team. I should be better organized in the future. It would make more sense for me to be in the development team rather than research because we have architecture majors on the team while I am in computer engineering.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 09/29 to 10/05

Tasks for This Week

Task 1:Implement an elementary web app Task 2: create functions that create each subindex

Task 1: Created a rudimentary react app with a basic backend that calls a population density index and displays the map. I went over the code that Atharva wrote so I can help in writing more backend functions in the future.

Task 2: I looked through the code from last term that was used to calculate CDI, IDI, and LDI. I converted the code into a function that could easily be called by the web app’s backend and also create csv files for each city that is requested.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired Learned how to write to csv files and access libraries like osmnx. It was interesting going through all of the code from last term and converting it.

Team Meetings Met up with the team in person on Monday to decide what Chunlan and I should do to help Atharva code the web app. Chunlan is going to design a ui/ux for us while I was tasked with just helping write functions and frontend for Atharva.

Had an online meeting with Atharva on Saturday where he outlined goals he wanted me to hit. He showed me how to write all of the functions which helped a lot.

Personal Reflection: I wrote three functions for the web app over the weekend. I need to learn a little more about web development in general, because writing the functions weren’t difficult but I still am a little weak on the implementation side.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 10/05 to 10/12

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Try to implement a 2007 and 2017 time stamp for each index in the cities Dr. Ku Listed

Task 1: I found out OSMnx doesn't have a query option for historical data so I researched other ways to set a date parameter. I found an API that implements OSM data called Overpass which does allow querying by "attic data", which is what they call historical data. I rewrote the IDI generator with overpass querying and generated a map.

Challenges & Solutions: No OSMnx built in date query option was a big challenge, but the Overpass API was an easy work around. I had to learn how to use XML, however, because that is the main way Overpass works.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired: Learned how to use XML and Overpass

Team Meetings: Team meeting with Dr. Ku cleared up the main goals for the rest of the term. We will just work on the application and returning older data.

Personal Reflection: I implemented the new subindex generator for the team this week. I reached out to Atharva to see if he could help out on the rest of the indices too.

[balbertle]

Overview Week Span: 10/12 to 10/19

Tasks for This Week

Task 1: Try to finish out the rest of the subindex generators' codes

Task 1: While trying to implement the rest of the code, I realized that the date query wasn't working properly. Even while changing the date input, it was returning the same map and index values. I tried looking for a new API, but it seemed like Overpass was the only one that implements it.

Challenges & Solutions: The Overpass API looks broken and I tried looking through the code, but I couldn't find anything wrong with it. I'll look for alternative ways to retrieve this data online. It also could be a problem with the API for the time being.

General Takeaway, Skills & Knowledge Acquired: I learned about other history data retrieval systems for OSM like OSHDB and ohsome API

Team Meetings: No meeting because of Fall Break

Personal Reflection: I need to figure out the bug in the code and why it returns the same data no matter what date. I want to learn how to debug better and how to use Overpass to where I can check the date that is being output to me.