Matthew Lim - Week 8 Journal

[mlim70]

Task 1: Make code more efficient by incorporating PACE
Task 2: Align region boundaries with those from the ARC Beltline website
Task 3: Calculate region centroids

Weekly Accomplishments

What tasks did you complete this week? (Include links)
I completed tasks 2 & 3 (getting correct boundaries, calculating centroid coordinates). I have yet to incorporate PACE, but I was able to optimize the code's efficiency in many other areas via improving calculation efficiencies, caching, etc. I also added other general Quality of Life improvements (automating centroid initialization, debugging statements/checks, tqdm progress bars, invalid GEOID exclusion).

Tasks are still ongoing? Current status?
Ongoing tasks include incorporating PACE, which I hope to do tonight and tomorrow. We also have to find a way to visualize our simulation because currently the shapefile is for the entirety of Georgia, which is too big for our current software to generate a graph of. We also have to incorporate the 4-step model. I believe Devam is working on both of these tasks.

Challenges and Learning

What was the biggest challenge you faced this week? How did you address it?
The biggest challenge was acquiring the appropriate shapefiles and incorporating it into our code. It took me a long time to find the shapefile in the first place, and then change our code to automate centroid generation based on it, as well as all other calculations (amenity density calculations).

What's one new thing you learned or skill you improved?
Some new skills improved include using OSMnx, shapefiles, and caching (downloading, extracting, etc.).

Did you attend any team meetings? Key takeaways?
Only the weekly Tuesday meeting.

Reflection and Planning

Your progress this week?
I made a lot of progress this week. If I can incorporate PACE before the Tuesday meeting, I will be very happy with my progress.

Main focus for next week?
Next week I hope to identify ways to improve our simulation's accuracy even further, beyond the four-step model.

Any resources you're looking for?
N/A