A snippet of personal (and some work-related) things I’ve been working on. I’m fortunate that most of day job is open source, you can check out my daily contributions on my github.
Machine Learning
Austin Airport TSA Wait Time Forecasting
I created and maintain a twitter bot that tweets daily a forecast for how busy the airport will be using a simple ARIMA model trained on historical TSA checkpoint volume data. As part of this work, I set up an ETL that processes hundreds of thousands of pages of PDFs posted to the TSA website.
Example prediction:
Longer wait times expected tomorrow: Higher than 90% of days. pic.twitter.com/4z9TT4y9OS
— Austin Airport Wait Time Forecasting (@ForecastAUS) June 20, 2024
Data Analysis & Visualization
Austin MetroBike Trips Visualization
Using a tool called flowmap.blue I was able to quickly visualize multiple years of docked bicycle data. It is featured on flowmap.blue’s examples page.
Created with: Python, Google sheets
Change in commute patterns in Texas
I wanted to track how the state of Texas has been doing on returning to “normal” following the COVID-19 pandemic. Google’s Mobility data tracks the % change (relative to February 2020) to how often their users are going to residential areas, parks, grocery stores, and others. I was particularly interested in the “workplaces” category which should be a good indicator of how many workers are returning to office.
The return to the office hasn’t been even. The cities and the Permian Basin are lagging behind the more rural areas of the state.
Created with: Python + Geopandas
COVID-19 Mobility Impacts Dashboard
From April 2020 to August 2021, I kept a running blogpost tracking the changes to Austin’s mobility caused by COVID-19. Using data sourced from the City’s open data portal, I created some live-updating charts showing vehicle volume, micromobility trips, and traffic incidents. Every month I posted a full report showing trends in the data along with a few takeaways of mine.
Created with: Google apps script, plotly studio
Speaking Engagements & Presentations
American Society Of Highway Engineers Central Texas Region July 2021 Meeting: Planes, Strains, and Automobiles - Presentation Slides
South by Southwest 2019 Lightning Talk: Unlocking the future of Transportation with Open Data
Open Austin July 2020 Meeting: Measuring COVID-19 Update - Presentation slides
Saving Lives with Connected Vehicle Data: Link to webinar recording
