Spotlight On: Maarten Vanhoof

Maarten Vanhoof is an urban geographer and a Research Fellow at CASA.

Name & Title: Maarten Vanhoof, Research Fellow

Project/s: Urban Dynamics Lab

How would you summarise your personal research?

I'm an urban geographer with an expertise in analysing big mobile phone data. What I'm interested in most, is analysing, visualising and communicating information from digital data sources to better understand the way we use our cities.
 

A network of mobility patterns in France based on mobile phone data.

Tell us a little about your current research:

Together with Roberto Murcio, Richard Milton and Mike Batty, I'm looking into urban modeling based on the Quant model (http://quant.casa.ucl.ac.uk/). Specifically what we try to do is create a model to understand the effect of large scale infrastructure on the mobility of larger regions, like the Manchester Greater Area. The modeling part is interesting to me as it balances out nicely with the very descriptive big data analysis I did on big data before. It's like looking at two sides of the coin, trying to better understand how our cities work and how we could improve them.
 

What's your favourite thing about CASA?

My favourite thing about CASA is pasta day. Well, our lunches together in general. They are always funny, often in a weird way but I guess that's okay...

Where can people find out more about your work?

You can find out more about me here: www.maartenvanhoof.com and on twitter: @Metti_Hoof. Or just drop me an email, I am easy going.

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