Two data-driven DCRP courses taught by Dr. Nikhil Kaza and Dr. Matthew Bhagat-Conway provide DCRP’s undergraduate, Masters, and Doctoral students with new insights into data analytics and spatial analysis.
Dr. Kaza’s graduate PLAN 672 Urban Data Analytics course works to expand students’ knowledge of R for use in a variety of planning-related contexts. Each week the course guides students through a new analysis, highlighting how students can make use of open access EPA data to analyze spatial variation in air pollution levels, conduct web-scraping processes to develop neighborhood walk scores, and employ raster analysis techniques to perform land suitability analyses. Past students have used the course’s final project to support their masters and doctoral theses and publish peer-reviewed papers building off of their work.
Dr. Bhagat-Conway’s PLAN 390 Introduction to Urban Data Analytics course is an undergraduate special topics course launching this semester. Dr. Bhagat-Conway brings in his own data-driven research experience into the course and provides students with an introduction to working with R, QGIS, and Git. Through the course, students learn to clean data and conduct spatial data, text, and network analysis and conduct their own analysis of an urban-related issue in their final projects.