iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Just updated my Reproducible Project Template so that it now generates Word (.docx) versions of the paper. Really useful for anyone writing reproducible papers in Quarto (.qmd) files who collaborate with people who prefer tracked changes 🚀 robinlovelace.net/reproducible...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Insane, all this on a residential road in a relatively small settlement? This level of unnecessary harm shouldn't be an accepted part of daily life.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

When data science projects get beyond a few hundred lines of code they can become hard to modify without breaking the whole thing. Visualising and understanding the pipeline is key and the #rstats package {targets} is brilliant for this, it can even be used as an orchestrator for Python code!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Good to see my Leeds Institute for Transport Studies colleague Harry Roberts presenting on a detailed assessment of different routing tools. Headline: #opensource options are viable for research!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I very much enjoyed listening to a talk on landscape ecology by Sandra Denman at the #Herefordshire Parklands Conference, complete with reproducible geographic data visualisations made with the #rstats package {ggplot2}. Science and open source software in action!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Good to be back in Herefordshire. I'm here to visit family and to discuss my dad's archive of photos, maps and more. Will be talking with people here to learn more about landscape history and ecology, and to ensure the archive is as useful as possible to in Herefordshire and beyond.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Good to see open source and reproducible research mentioned prominently in Alain Chiaradia's talk at the Meeting Active Travel seminar in Cambridge this morning. sDNA+ is powerful and performant. Worth checking it out! Also interested to learn of any ongoing use cases for sDNA 🏗️

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I've just updated the Reproducible project template repo based on a few small #reproducible research websites I've needed to create. This workflow is now my default for doing talks and workshops, quicker than PowerPoint with many benefits! Details: robinlovelace.net/reproducible...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

On my way to the Modelling Active Travel seminar, after catching 05:18 train from Leeds. Cambridge here we come! This photo shows why accurate modelling of walking, wheeling and cycling requires high resolution data ⚡ For more on my upcoming talk and links see here: robinlovelace.net/events/aum20...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I finally got round to updating my website! Following in the footsteps of reproducible research pioneers, I've gone for Quarto, a flexible framework for scientific writing and publication, with support for citations and embedded code that actually runs 🎉 robinlovelace.net/posts/2026-0...

robinlovelace.net

Migration to Quarto – Robin Lovelace

A practical migration and deployment update

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Looking forward to presenting on building communities and capacities in data-driven transport planning at the ITF Conference on Transport Data later today! For anyone interested in the topic but unable to make it in person or on Zoom, see #openaccess slides here: robinlovelace.net/itfworkshop/

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Refugee flows out of Ukraine each year since 2022. Source: UNHCR. Reproducible #datascience source code to reproduce this map: github.com/Robinlovelac... Looking forward to presenting this later today!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Thinking about capacity and community-building in transport planning, it strikes me that maybe we should start thinking more about causes of friction and fragmentation. Disjoints between different government layers and departments in UK are a case in point!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

An emphasis of our workshop at #MobileTartu was more reproducible, open and therefore scientific research. As part of this, students were asked to their work as code in the workshop repo. I'm happy to say they aced it! For many this was their first time using GitHub. Well done all 👏

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

The user interface in the new Posit Assistant is one of the best and most intuitive I've seen for using AI tools for editing code. This will be excellent for students and researchers already familiar with RStudio. This is a brilliant harness and user experience for using AI for data science 🎉

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Andres Sevstuk presenting at #MobileTartu on his work modelling change in pedestrian traffic given changes to the network. This is very impressive and could help planners in many cities make their cities better for active travel. Looking forward to giving these methods a spin in Leeds and beyond!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I've just tried Posit Assistant on the free plan and must say, I'm impressed. Using the super-cheap Gemma 4 26B model (10% cost of Sonnet) on free plan it worked instantly. Hats of to the #posit team for integrating this into RStudio and allowing people to test with free plan!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Great to be in #Estonia again! I'm here for the #MobileTartu conference and will be teaching Data Science for Transport Planning. For anyone unable to make it in person but interested in the topic, you can follow the #openaccess materials here: tdscience.github.io/tartu26/ #reproducible #datascience

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

One thing he asked in his final days was for me to help ensure the legacy of his huge archive, and I'm working on making it available. If you're interested, please get in touch and share this site: bosci.net 🙏

bosci.net

David Lovelace Archive

A static-first archive website and data catalog for David Lovelace's Herefordshire landscape history collection.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I want to share sad news of the passing of my father David Lovelace last month. He was an amazing dad, an inspiration for me and others around him, and made a huge contribution to landscape history, mapping and nature conservation where I grew up.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

The #FOSS4G UK conference website is live and ready for you to buy tickets and submit talks. It's a very friendly and informative conference, highly recommended for anyone interested in this space. For details, see uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2026/

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Looking forward to this. If you're in/around Belfast on 18th May and interested in #datascience, transport planning, or evidence-based decision making check it out! Details TBC.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

The logo for FOSS4G UK 2025 was awesome. Now we're looking to make the logo for FOSS4G UK 2026 and plans are for a logo competition. Watch this space any geo people with an interest in design, chance for eternal fame and good vibes incoming 🚀

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

FOSS4G UK was hosted here in #Leeds last year and it was a blast. So good it's happening here again in 2026! It will be 11th-12th October this year, watch this space for calls for abstracts etc, looking forward to it! #foss4g #geocomputation #GIS

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I've tried many workflow automation tools and nothing beats the #rstats package {targets}. It's pure R, simple (while being feature-rich, great support for parallel execution and multi-lingual workflows, this is calling Python+DuckDB). It *trounces* the likes of make/dagster 4me. Check it out!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Looks impressive, are you using it in everyday workflows now? I'm using duckdb and interested in sedona.db and more, I imagine the community will consolidate on an option and wondering what that will be..

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Hi Cam thanks for your interest, just follow the link to join! Apologies for slow response and looking forward to it tomorrow.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

I'll be hosting Will Deakin from Network Rail for a Seminar at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, and online, next week Thursday 19th March. Well worth listening to, so check out the invite and spread the word, all welcome: itsleeds.github.io/tds/sem2/inv...

itsleeds.github.io

Open Tools and Creative Visualisation for Transport Systems – Transport Data Science

We are pleased to announce a seminar by Will Deakin from Network Rail on the use of Open Tools and Creative Visualisation for understanding complex transport systems.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Good to see conversations emerging from the recent Podcast interview I did. What a way to get research out there and to get conversations going 🎙️ I definitely recommend long-form conversations to supplement papers, reports, great to see ideas are reaching new people and places online 🚀

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Exciting new funded #PhD opportunity here at the University of Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies #ITS. The project will develop definitive new insights into the impacts of new speed limit policies, down to the road network with the potential to save dozens of lives. Check it out!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

I recently appeared on the Mobility Club podcast to discuss open data, open source tools for transport planning, and why data-driven decision making matters for active travel. 🎧 Great to chat with Isabella & Santiago about bridging research & practice!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

My work recently set-up GitHub enterprise 🎉 It's probably overkill for many research use-cases but handy for teaching. Many thanks to the University of Leeds!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Today I learned 1) that the tram system of Leeds of early 1900s was HUGE and 2) that the 1910 town map of Leeds captured things that are TINY, including individual trees and rail tracks 🤯 Defo doing more with this soon, watch this space...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

This paper was more than 2 years in the making, involving 3 organisations (Leeds Uni, Network Rail, ESRI), 2 (totally different) GISRUK presentations, dozens of iterations, 1 Python package (install it with pip install parenx), and amazing #opensource collaborations 🎉 Celebrating its launch today 🚀

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

I've just added a few more links to #openaccess resources and a few more maps to the nascent openraildata resource page. Credit to my ITS Leeds colleague Alex Stead for the links, we have some ideas for research building on these datasets, watch this space!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Interested in historic railways in the UK and beyond? I've just written some code and uploaded some #openaccess datasets showing the extent of abandoned railways in the UK, could be a good basis for research projects. See here 4more: github.com/itsleeds/ope... ideas of research questions welcome!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Happy to see new newest member of the #geocompx family up on the geocompx.org website: Spatial Data Visualization with tmap is an awesome book that is still in progress 🏗️ Well worth a read to launch your reproducible map making journey 🚀

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

People have been asking about the materials for the Data Science for Transport Planning course in Leeds and I'm happy to share that we've made them #openaccess for anyone who wants to get started in this space: tdscience.github.io/dstp/ #itsleeds.

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Stoked to announce the launch of our new short course, Introduction to Data Science 🚀 Designed to be delivered in 3-hour session but you can study at your own pace using online #opensource materials. Fully reproducible and deployed with GitHub actions: itsleeds.github.io/introds/ #datascience

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Just adding #Python code for the course I'm teaching on Friday 🐍 I decided to use the newer 'polars' package instead. Such a cool package! We now show people how to solve a problem originally designed to teach Excel from the command line, in #rstats and #python, take your pick!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Is it possible to teach an Introduction to Data Science course in 3 hours? I will find out soon! You can too if you attend the course this Friday as part of the MSc at the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) in Leeds. You can also attend remotely, watch this space for #openaccess materials 🚀

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Every transport system has to deal with changes in elevation leading to slopes, also known as gradients. Even in the Netherlands, which is often described as being 'flat as a pancake', there are slopes on roads. Reproducible code using our {slopes} #rstats package: github.com/ropensci/slo...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

I just came across another new tool to support effective investment in active, efficient and effective transport systems: index.velobserver.ch/zuerich Credit to Roger Fischer, many thanks for sharing, I look forward to learning more about this #openaccess tool!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Most transport models oversimplify modes, even complicated models with hundreds of unit parameters. It's good to see a transport model in the woodsild with a detailed and hierarchical classification system. More like this please!

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Looking forward to presenting on modelling transport systems with simple and efficient tools at the Transport and Mobility colloquium in Zurich later today. For anyone interested, check out the slides and #opensource code to reproduce the results here: www.robinlovelace.net/presentation...

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

I'm very much looking forward to Prof Eva Heinen's inaugural talk in Zurich today and you can too, from 17:15 CET (16:15 in UK) at this link: event.swisscom.ch/v/eth-live-1... Plus I will be presenting at event there tomorrow, more soon!

event.swisscom.ch

Swisscom Veertly

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Robin Lovelace @robinlovelace.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

For anyone wondering how to make modern maps projected on a globe, here's some reproducible code you can give a spin right now: github.com/Robinlovelac... Context: someone asked how I made the map in the talk I delivered at the ITF-Eurostat conference last week, happy to share it with the world!

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