Mar 2026: International womens' day, travel and a return to shiny!

* Title: March 2026: International womens' day, travel and a return to shiny!
* Speakers: Alessia Calafiore and Nevil Hopley
* Date: Thursday 19 March 2026, 6.00PM - 7.00PM
* Location: LG.08 40 George Square The University of Edinburgh, EH8 9JX
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## Alessia Calafiore: Using R to Uncover Gender Differences in Urban Mobility

For decades, transport systems and urban planning practices have largely been designed around a “default” user -- typically reflecting male travel patterns and priorities. This narrow perspective has shaped infrastructure and policies that often overlook the diverse and complex mobility needs of women and other genders.
In recent years, a growing body of research has challenged this one-size-fits-all approach. Evidence increasingly shows that travel behaviour differs by gender in terms of trip purpose, chaining, mode choice, safety concerns, and caregiving-related travel. Recognising and understanding these differences is essential for designing more equitable and effective transport systems.
In this talk, I will demonstrate how R can be used to analyse data from the Scottish Travel Survey to identify and explore gender differences in urban mobility. The presentation shows some initial results of the ESRC-funded Mobilising Gender Data project, supported by the Geographic Data Service.

Alessia Calafiore is a Lecturer in Sustainability and Urban Data Science at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture of the University of Edinburgh and investigator at the Geographic Data Service. I am co-lead of the CHASS Research Theme - Future Cities and co-organiser of EdinbR.
My research sits at the intersection of Urban Planning, Geography and Computer Science and I am interested in developing new spatially informed computational methods to better understand the mutual relationship between human behaviours and their urban contexts. This work blends traditional and new forms of data to provide quantifiable evidence of urban dynamics and inform policy making. My current substantive focus concerns how we can equitability manage sustainability transitions within cities.
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## Nevil Hopley: Choose your own [shiny] adventure (the sequel)

In January we went through the first half of the SQA's shiny app build. Return tonight to hear the rest of the story!

We will dig under the surface of SQA’s first publicly available Shiny app. In keeping with the app’s intended user experience, this talk will be in the format of a ‘choose your own adventure’. This means that the audience will decide which features of the app that they want to hear about, including the hurdles that were overcome during its development. Start exploring the app now at: qualifications.shinyapps.io/nq_progression/

Nevil Hopley, Senior Data Analyst at the Scottish Qualifications Authority