Through the Urban Information Lab, Smart Cities BDP Student Margaret Liu collected spatial data and information for a research study on robot delivery systems.
"This connecting experience has confirmed my interest in doing research in spatial analysis for urban settings and problems.”
What is the name of the lab and/or title of the research project?
Urban Information Lab -- "Autonomous Robot Delivery System Adoption Strategy on Urban Logistics: A Case Study in Austin, Texas”
How did you find this research assistantship?
I found this research assistantship through the help of my BDP advisor and a professor who had connections with Dr. Jiao, who is the head faculty of the lab.
What kind of work did you do as a research assistant and what did you learn through this experience?
My primary role as a research assistant was to collect the necessary spatial data and information for the study. This included researching and downloading data sets, cleaning up the data, inputting them into shapefiles for GIS analysis, and calculating the necessary information. I learned a lot on how to clean up large datasets through coding and transferring them into different formats that were suitable for our research.
What was the most rewarding aspect of your Connecting Experience?
The most rewarding aspect was seeing the visual final product of all the work that had been done. For this project, it was the maps that I created to display the data and analysis. When you are working on a project for such a long time, it is difficult to see the tangible results that are meaningful to others, so being able to visually present my work was really rewarding.
In what ways has this Connecting Experience shaped your plans for the future?
This connecting experience has confirmed my interest in doing research in spatial analysis for urban settings and problems.