Michael Szell

@mszll

Human-centric #geospatial #DataScience 🚶🚲 Sustainable #mobility #networks, in #Copenhagen Created: , […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

16 Siguiendo505 Seguidores252 Publicaciones

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Michael Szell@mszll· 12d

Very nice new tool showing #bike routes in #Austria with lots of configurability: https://radatlas.at/ There is a family-friendly option, but there isn't more than a handful of routes suited for families with small children. In other countries you have a real […] [Original post on datasci.social]

Michael Szell@mszll· 16d

It seems #Google #scholar has now really become #slopware. Every week I get weirder and weirder edit suggestions, this time to revert several published papers to their preprint versions.. Is #openalex the future of scientometric data/search? 🫣

Google scholar edit suggestion to revert several published papers to their preprint versions

Michael Szell@mszll· 19d

Invisible walls: how pedestrians navigate around social interactions https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20876

A diagram of our field experiments. Actors (shown in orange) stood in busy pathways while
displaying 5 distinct signs of interactional involvement (see depictions of Variables 1–5). In different configurations of these variables, we observed whether pedestrians (shown in blue) walked between or around our
actors and we measured pedestrians’ walking trajectories.

Michael Szell@mszll· 19d

It's nice to work hard on things in silence, and imagine they could become really useful someday.. https://docs.bikenetkit.org/GrowBikeNet/usage_05_custom_data_imports/ #BikeNetKit

Street network of Athens with its primary and secondary roads highlighted in red

Michael Szell@mszll· 26d

A happy, explorative trip in the sun! 🌞 🌼 (Only interrupted every 40m by a high-risk, life-or-death situation, where anytime an #SUV could have exited and crushed her. 🤷 ) #urbanplanning #parenting #motonormativity #CIM #Copenhagen

Small child in green dress kneeling to smell flowers in front of row of parked SUVs.

Small child in green dress kneeling to explore a blue door in a tree.

Small child in green dress riding tricycle on sidewalk, next to an SUV parking in driveway.

A small child in green dress riding a tricycle on sidewalk, with low-vision driveway approaching on the left from which an SUV could exit anytime.

Michael Szell@mszll· 26d

The slides of my talk two days ago at #Complexity Science Hub #Vienna are now online [pdf]: https://michael.szell.net/downloads/talk_szell2026css.pdf The complex socio-technical system of #bicycle networks: From politics to planning software […] [Original post on datasci.social]

Title slide showing a bicycle network in Vienna and the title: The complex socio-technical system of bicycle networks: From politics to planning software

Michael Szell@mszll· 27d

Every time I'm in #Vienna I can't resist the urge to an impulse purchase at Doblinger. This time it hit on the more mysterious side.. 👻

Photo of two Urtext versions of Skrjabin's Preludes (Op 11) and Satie's Nocturnes, on top of piano keys

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 10

Tuesday, July 14th, 2pm I'll give a talk at Complexity Science Hub #vienna : The complex socio-technical system of #bicycle networks: From politics to planning software https://csh.ac.at/events/the-complex-socio-technical-system-of-bicycle-networks-from-politics-to-planning-software/

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 9

@underdarkGIS introducing MOBIML at #agit2026. Looks super useful for #mobility science.

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 8

Trysalin Nelson opening #agit2026! First time for me here - happy to see a strong #geospatial community in Austria.

Speaker and moderator in front of screen

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 8

We find a strong correlation between right wing votes and delays in bike network development in #paris. Qualitative observations for such a link have been reported in the past, but we now have the data to back it up.

Left: Scatterplot of the share of bicycle lanes built
against left-wing votes
, Right: against right-wing
votes, with corresponding maps of the voting patterns. The black lines show fitted linear regressions. Dashed gray lines show the average values for each axis.

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 8

🚨 New paper on #cycling #politics: Right-wing Votes Relate to Delays in Bicycle Network Development https://findingspress.org/article/163938-right-wing-votes-relate-to-delays-in-bicycle-network-development

Left: Paris’ Plan Vélo 2021-2026 progress on street level, Right: share of bicycle lanes built
aggregated by political voting unit

Michael Szell@mszll· Jul 4

Looking forward to #agit2026, presenting our analysis on the Danish Bicycle Node Network, and our progress on @bikenetkit https://bikenetkit.org/ #BikeNetKit July 9th, session 10B from 13:00. See you in Salzburg!

Title slide with title, authors, and a colorful map/network of Denmark

Michael Szell@mszll· Jun 10

Me gusta!

Michael Szell@mszll· Jun 10

TFW you invest a whole day of work into something, unsure if it's worth the effort, and then you see the outcome 🤩 #quadrangulation

Manhattan street network, quadrangulated

Michael Szell@mszll· Apr 16

Download the slides of my #cycling #mobility #GISRUK talks today here: LoopBikeNet: https://michael.szell.net/downloads/talk_szell2026qac.pdf BikeNetKit: https://michael.szell.net/downloads/talk_szell2026bdo.pdf

Title slide titled "Quality assessment of a country-wide  bicycle node network with loop census analysis"

Title slide titled "BikeNetKit: Developing an open-source
bicycle network software suite for urban planners"

Michael Szell@mszll· Apr 9

Now we developed the loop census method, which lists each node's loops (cycles) up to day-trip length. We find that long-range cyclists can access most of the country with many choices, but families with small children can not - which could however be overcome by e-bikes.

Two maps of Denmark side by side showing the bicycle node network for adult cyclists (left) versus families with children (right). 38% of the nodes in the adult cyclist scenario are red (no round trip options), while 79% of nodes are red for the family scenario.

Michael Szell@mszll· Apr 9

A bicycle node network has a wayfinding system of numbered nodes for recreational #cycling, on a regional/national scale. We have previously shown on bikenetwork.dk the low bikeability in #Denmark outside of cities, now improved by the new bicycle node network.

A signpost with a node number and two arrows pointing to adjacent nodes

The Danish bicycle node network in green, spanning Denmark (except greater Copenhagen)

Map of Denmark showing high bikeability in cities (green), low outside of cities (red)

Michael Szell@mszll· Apr 9

New 🚲 preprint! https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07029 Quality assessment of a country-wide bicycle node network with loop census analysis We analyzed the new 30000km long Danish #bicycle node network, exploring all 28M round trips in the network up to day-trip length. 🧵

Network of 7000 nodes and 10000 links spanning Denmark, nodes colored from red to blue.

Michael Szell@mszll· Feb 27

Just registered for #gisruk, woohoo! Who else is coming to Birmingham? I'll talk about #bicycle node networks.

Map of the Danish bicycle node network, showing many colored nodes over the country

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 12

Mind the gap: Revealing sidewalk networks at scale pdf: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2632-072X/ae35b9/pdf Nice to see important research on the both most important and neglected mode of transport 🚶

Figure 2. Schematic pipeline of the network construction process. The deep learning stage (a-c)
begins with (a) tiling high-resolution aerial imagery (5000 × 5000 pixels) into smaller patches (512 × 512
pixels), which are fed to (b) a segmentation model (DeepLabV3). This model generates (c) binary output
masks identifying sidewalk pixels. The masks are then reassembled to reconstruct the full segmented tile. In
the network construction stage (d-f) the merged predictions undergo a (d) binary closing to fill gaps, (e)
skeletonization to reduce the sidewalk predictions to their centerlines, and (f) generation of the network (nodes
and edges). Finally, these tile-level results are integrated to produce a large network across the entire urban
area

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 9

Haven't seen this on Mastodon yet - the #royalsociety #musk saga continues: https://www.ft.com/content/088b804f-15e0-4a8e-b32d-146a826b8d6c?utm_social_post_id=647289682&utm_social_handle_id=did%3Aplc%3A5u54z2qgkq43dh2nzwzdbbhb Perfect example for how to run a scientific society into the ground 🤦

Image of an old dude with white hair leaning against royal bookshelf. Next to it the headline:
Elon Musk should keep UK Royal Society membership, says president
Paul Nurse tells FT that national science academy should avoid ‘making judgments’ about ‘character’ of fellows

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 9

Not the "new year's resolution" I wanted to make 😢.. let's really hope this gets better in a few years:

Since 2026 I have decided to stop reviewing for US-based conferences, so please do not contact me to review for such conferences:

Decline message US-based conferences:
Dear Colleague,
thank you for asking. As much as I would like to accept your invitation, this year I cannot review for the conference unfortunately, as I couldn't attend even in principle because of political repression in the host country. I won't review for conferences in the US for the foreseeable future - thank you for your understanding.

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 9

Finally some research into the decision making processes for #cycling ! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950105925000476

The cycling infrastructure planning process in Canton Zurich for three different cantonal organisations: the office for spatial development, the office for mobility, and the civil engineering office.

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 5

The #bicycle network field has grown so much that there are now papers out analyzing its citation network, haha 😆 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198225004610 Fun to see how this has evolved! Our nodes are: orozco, szell, vybornova. Several friends also visible 😍

Co-citation network of the bicycle network literature. Colored nodes and links.

Michael Szell@mszll· Jan 3

Just updated our server's downtimes for 2025 and for all-time. Although datasci.social had a downtime of over 10 hours in 2025, our all-time uptime is still way above 99.9%. 🤓 https://community.datasci.social/docs/server/

Historical uptimes
Year Uptime Average downtime per month
All-time 99.931% 30 minutes
2025 99.876% 54 minutes
2024 99.998% <1 minute
2023 99.908% 40 minutes
2022 99.995% <2 minutes

Michael Szell@mszll· Dec 22

Targeted cooling of urban cycling networks for heat-resilient mobility https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11753 Cool 😬 paper on how targeted tree planting can substantially cool streets for #cycling!

Land-cover comparison for Midtown Manhattan under the (a) Base and (b) Tree-Planting scenarios, showing added canopy cover across the hottest 1,000 street segments.

Michael Szell@mszll· Oct 27

Very cool paper out by our collaborator Chris Larkin (et al): Identification of plausible low traffic neighbourhoods using open data https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950105925000415 Code: https://github.com/Froguin99/LTN-Detection

Map of Newcastle Upon Tyne, partitioned into potential low traffic neighborhoods

Michael Szell@mszll· Oct 17

Here the city's press release: https://via.ritzau.dk/pressemeddelelse/14560655/line-barfod-om-kobenhavnsk-budget-stolt-af-det-storste-cykelbudget-nogensinde They ~quadrupled the bicycle budget to >600 mio. DKK. Below my full comments to the journalist, which was used for the article.

Kilde: Mobilitetsredegørelsen 2025

På cykelområdet er der ca. blevet bevilliget 160 mio. kr. årligt (10-års gennemsnit for 2016-2025). Investeringer på cykelområdet omfatter både midler til cykelinfrastruktur og cykelinitiativer, men også sikre skoleveje, trafiksikkerhed samt eksterne investeringer og bidrag fra puljer. I 2025 blev der bevilliget 174 mio. kr. til cykelområdet. Af de 174 mio. kr. blev 82 mio. kr. bevilliget primær til cykelinfrastruktur og cykelinitiativer, 68 mio. kr. til sikre skoleveje, trafiksikkerhed, strøggader, cykel- og gangbroer og 11 mio. kr. i forbindelse med eksterne investeringer fra trafikselskaber samt bidrag fra puljer.

From an urban planning perspective it is very good and much needed that Copenhagen is increasing its bicycle budget. It is especially important that some of this investment will be allocated to child safety, as Copenhagen's transport policies have indeed neglected children. I personally experience this every morning through the terrifying traffic chaos on the street of my 7 year old daughter's school. As a consequence, Copenhagen has fallen behind several cities in Europe. Investing into cycling is increasing a city's livability, and also comes with massive economic benefits, especially to the public health system.

We should however not forget, that still vehicular infrastructure receives a budget that is many times higher than cycling, so this bicycle budget is only like a drop in the bucket. Despite the laudable efforts, Copenhagen is still missing the political will to boldly transform its transport system towards becoming truly human-centric. Also the public wants this, as one can see clearly in Paris' ongoing success story. So, despite offering fantastic cycling infrastructure for fit adults, Copenhagen unfortunately remains inherently car-centric. A budget increase is great, but not enough by far - it will need a fundamental rethinking of transport, urban living, and crucially the political will to change this.

Michael Szell@mszll· Oct 17

Copenhagen increased its bicycle budget - I was asked to comment: https://www.verdensmaal.org/nyheder/k%C3%B8benhavns-kommune-vil-g%C3%B8re-det-lettere-at-suse-ge