title: Graph convolutional LSTM model for traffic delay prediction with uncertainty

authors: Townsend, Dale

subjects: Deep learning

abstract: Traffic flow in an urban environment exhibits a complex spatio-temporal in- teraction. The propogation of traffic flow through a transportation network depends on a number of factors, including the structure of the network and the time of day. Current analysis of this data by road controlling authorities is of- ten simplified and lacks a detailed understanding of how traffic moves through the network. A deep learning model which models both the spatial and tempo- ral interactions present in the data is able to capture complex patterns present in the data and allows for a more detailed understanding of traffic flow. A GC- LSTM model is explored for Hamilton City to predict traffic delay. It is found to have improved prediction accuracy over a standard LSTM by incorporating the spatial structure of the Hamilton road network. Additionally, Bayesian layers are integrated into the model to obtain a probability distribution over each prediction. By quantifying the uncertainty over each prediction, the de- cision making process based on the analysis can be carried out with a higher degree of confidence than a single point prediction from the model.

text: Graph convolutional LSTM model for traffic delay prediction with uncertainty Traffic flow in an urban environment exhibits a complex spatio-temporal in- teraction. The propogation of traffic flow through a transportation network depends on a number of factors, including the structure of the network and the time of day. Current analysis of this data by road controlling authorities is of- ten simplified and lacks a detailed understanding of how traffic moves through the network. A deep learning model which models both the spatial and tempo- ral interactions present in the data is able to capture complex patterns present in the data and allows for a more detailed understanding of traffic flow. A GC- LSTM model is explored for Hamilton City to predict traffic delay. It is found to have improved prediction accuracy over a standard LSTM by incorporating the spatial structure of the Hamilton road network. Additionally, Bayesian layers are integrated into the model to obtain a probability distribution over each prediction. By quantifying the uncertainty over each prediction, the de- cision making process based on the analysis can be carried out with a higher degree of confidence than a single point prediction from the model.

year: 2021

title: Coming home through football: A geographic exploration of long-distance fandom

authors: Baker, Tegan Alexandra

subjects: geography

abstract: This thesis focuses on the relationship between long-distance football fandom and home. It examines how the act of supporting non-domestic football clubs is a symbolic and material connection to multiple scales of home for 32 long-distance football fans, aged between 17–65, who live in Aotearoa New Zealand. I argue that football fans and homes are mutually constituted and continually reproduced through football fandom practices. Examining fan practice from the scale of the body through to the globe demonstrates how multiple homes interplay with fan practice. Literature on home and literature on sport have not yet been combined by scholars. Drawing these two bodies of work together offers the opportunity to unpack fans’ relationships to ‘things’, between ‘people’ and to ‘places’, providing a window into critical geographies of identities.
Social, cultural, feminist and emotional geographies of home and qualitative research methods frame this research. A range of methods are combined to create a holistic view of the complex and messy relationships which construct fan identities and homes. Semi-structured interviews with 27 men and five women participants along with self-directed photography, ‘going-alongs’, participant sensings and textual data analysis were used to examine participants experiences of football fandom and home. 
Findings are organised into three intersecting themes: things; people; and, places. The first theme focuses on how connections to a club are established and maintained through material cultures of home. Material objects construct home not only through a physical presence but also through becoming infused with emotions and memory. Unpacking the relationships between ‘people’ which shape fan identities is the second theme. Fans and their homes are gendered, raced and classed through the act of supporting a club. The relationship to ‘place’ is the third theme, where I examine the multiple places which influence fan identities. Here fan ‘homes’ are imagined as multi-scalar and I highlight the ways in which connections to a club are key to fluid notions of home and identity. 
This research demonstrates that football fandom offers a unique opportunity to geographers. Fandom spaces are under-researched and worthy of further scrutiny. Examining the relationships between home and fandom sheds light on the workings of power across a range of scales from the body, to the nation and the globe. Football fans’ homes are messy, complex, varied lived and felt.

text: Coming home through football: A geographic exploration of long-distance fandom This thesis focuses on the relationship between long-distance football fandom and home. It examines how the act of supporting non-domestic football clubs is a symbolic and material connection to multiple scales of home for 32 long-distance football fans, aged between 17–65, who live in Aotearoa New Zealand. I argue that football fans and homes are mutually constituted and continually reproduced through football fandom practices. Examining fan practice from the scale of the body through to the globe demonstrates how multiple homes interplay with fan practice. Literature on home and literature on sport have not yet been combined by scholars. Drawing these two bodies of work together offers the opportunity to unpack fans’ relationships to ‘things’, between ‘people’ and to ‘places’, providing a window into critical geographies of identities.
Social, cultural, feminist and emotional geographies of home and qualitative research methods frame this research. A range of methods are combined to create a holistic view of the complex and messy relationships which construct fan identities and homes. Semi-structured interviews with 27 men and five women participants along with self-directed photography, ‘going-alongs’, participant sensings and textual data analysis were used to examine participants experiences of football fandom and home. 
Findings are organised into three intersecting themes: things; people; and, places. The first theme focuses on how connections to a club are established and maintained through material cultures of home. Material objects construct home not only through a physical presence but also through becoming infused with emotions and memory. Unpacking the relationships between ‘people’ which shape fan identities is the second theme. Fans and their homes are gendered, raced and classed through the act of supporting a club. The relationship to ‘place’ is the third theme, where I examine the multiple places which influence fan identities. Here fan ‘homes’ are imagined as multi-scalar and I highlight the ways in which connections to a club are key to fluid notions of home and identity. 
This research demonstrates that football fandom offers a unique opportunity to geographers. Fandom spaces are under-researched and worthy of further scrutiny. Examining the relationships between home and fandom sheds light on the workings of power across a range of scales from the body, to the nation and the globe. Football fans’ homes are messy, complex, varied lived and felt.

year: 2018

title: A late-Holocene and prehistoric record of environmental change from Lake Waikaremoana, New Zealand

authors: Newnham, Rewi M.

subjects: Palynology

abstract: Further evidence in support of a late pre-European (Polynesian) settlement of New Zealand is provided by an 1850-year-long tephropalynological record from a remote region in New Zealand's North Island. The earliest unequivocally anthropogenic forest clearance is estimated from sedimentation rates to have occurred c. 375 14C years BP (c. ad 1523–1631), although the radiocarbon chronology, shown by tephrochron ology to be erroneous due to hard-water effects, suggested this occurred c. 900 years earlier. Delineation of the anthropogenic era, and the distinction between human activity and other agents of environmental change in the pollen/spore diagram, are supported by cluster analysis and detrended correspondence analysis. Two distinct phases of forest clearance are evident during the pre-European era, reflecting local changes either in population pressure or settlement patterns. We note that the lull between the two phases of forest clearance coincides with the maximum of the ‘Little Ice Age’ within the period c. late ad 1600s to early 1800s.

text: A late-Holocene and prehistoric record of environmental change from Lake Waikaremoana, New Zealand Further evidence in support of a late pre-European (Polynesian) settlement of New Zealand is provided by an 1850-year-long tephropalynological record from a remote region in New Zealand's North Island. The earliest unequivocally anthropogenic forest clearance is estimated from sedimentation rates to have occurred c. 375 14C years BP (c. ad 1523–1631), although the radiocarbon chronology, shown by tephrochron ology to be erroneous due to hard-water effects, suggested this occurred c. 900 years earlier. Delineation of the anthropogenic era, and the distinction between human activity and other agents of environmental change in the pollen/spore diagram, are supported by cluster analysis and detrended correspondence analysis. Two distinct phases of forest clearance are evident during the pre-European era, reflecting local changes either in population pressure or settlement patterns. We note that the lull between the two phases of forest clearance coincides with the maximum of the ‘Little Ice Age’ within the period c. late ad 1600s to early 1800s.

year: 1998