Also, I have a special offer for you good people.
Good day my good friends.
Jolly Old Saint Nick is warming up for his big night of the year, but for you all he has a couple of great presents lined up. As a way of saying thank you for sticking with me for the last year or so (yes, it’s been nearly a year), not only have I made all of the Extra articles I wrote free for everyone (see the end of the email), but also for this week only I’m running a special discount for new sign ups for the yearly Extra subscription, where you get 20% off it.
If that doesn’t do it for you, have this picture, how about this free picture of the glorious Flying Scotsman?
Or maybe you just want the links. That’s fine.
James
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Learning lessons about how failure cascades through a transport system – COVID-19 edition
Issues with global supply chains have heardly been out of the news in recent months, what with port backlogs and major shipping routes getting blocked by container ships running aground. But this new analysis shows how failure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic cascaded through the system from its original origins in Asia. This last line really struck home how close the system came to complete failure:
We show that the pandemic challenged service network integrity and that network disruptions first clustered in Asia before rippling along main trade routes. Agile liner shipping operations, aided by planned service suspensions, prevented the collapse of the global maritime transport networks and indicated the maritime industry’s ability to withstand even major catastrophic incidents.
Simply, the major liners shifted to agile operations almost overnight to save themselves and global supply lines. The thing is, while faster and efficient supply chains maximise returns, they are vulnerable. We learned this lesson during the Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, but we often forget how much more valuable to economies a resilient supply chain is. We are resilient to and during disaster, but it helps to plan resilience.
Want people to support your plans? Understand their needs, involve them at every stage, and engage extensively says research report number 43523443404 into the issue.
The National Centre for Social Research has published a useful report on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and it gives a good overview of the best practice to follow when doing it. Its useful in that this is based on the lived experiences of people who actually live in LTNs and have seen the impacts of them. So you should probably read it, and to be fair it is work of a good quality.
I don’t mean to be a cynic, and I say this as a consultant myself. But my word we spend a lot of money in transport on stating the bloody obvious, and getting consultants to remind us of the obvious. This may be my thing for next year. Pay for my time, yes, but pay it so I can help you build something, and not teach you how to suck eggs for the 30th time. Rant over.
Using mobility data to predict disease outbreak locations
A few years ago, Google search data was used to predict trends in Flu outbreaks, which failed and since that point search data has largely been forgotten as a short-term predicting tool. But some people stuck at it after the very public failure, where they found that by combining with other data sources, search data could actually be useful. One of those sources is GPS tracking data, which has been applied to predicting COVID-19 outbreaks. The results are quite something:
We show that by integrating COVID-19 related web search query analytics with social contact networks, we are able to predict COVID-19 hotspot locations 1–2 weeks beforehand, compared to just using social contact indexes or web search data analysis.
This is not just tracking people’s GPS locations and whether or not they Google “COVID-19 symptoms.” It uses GPS data to identify social contacts, and people’s web search history is used to identify whether they are at risk of catching COVID-19, and creating hotspots from that data. Its quite brilliant, really.
Random things
Here’s what I found whilst searching the Internet in a Santa hat:
How children at urban schools can benefit from learning in nature (City Monitor)
Carbon Pipelines in the Hawkeye State (Naked Capitalism)
Cyberpunk 2077’s Metro Finally Added To the Game Thanks To Modders (Screenrant)
Rail fares capped to prevent high increases for passengers (Department for Transport)
Sun sets on superjumbo: Last Airbus A380 rolls off the production line (The Register)
Interesting things
Oh this is strictly not transport, but its a reminder about how awesome science is. Back in April, humankind ‘touched the sun’ for the first time, and this is the footage taken by the probe that did it. What you are seeing there is our own sun. I love science.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
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Mobility Matters 