Quarto: a library to run them all? A collaborative exercise to use, learn and assess quarto for authoring reproducible documents in different scenarios

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Using literate programming is a widespread practice amongst data scientists. This practice not only encourages data scientists to produce transparent, rich and reflective accounts of their analysis without the extra overhead of switching between tools, but also leads to artefacts (i.e., notebooks) that are increasingly becoming a medium for dissemination, reproducibility and education. Rmarkdown or Jupyter notebooks, are two of the most well known and used options. While both solutions can be used with multiple programming languages, the decision of whether to use one or the other is almost certain to be exclusively based on that. At least until now, with Quarto being mature enough to become a game-changer.

Quarto is a language-agnostic software based on Pandoc to render files combining markdown and code into multiple ranges of formats and outputs. As a result, it can be used with either R, Python or Julia without any other dependencies.

This collaborative workshop will be structured as follows:

a brief theoretical introduction and instructions;
a task that participants may choose from the different use cases provided (i.e. generating a single document, migrating from Rmarkdown or Jupyter, creating a book or generating interactive content); and
a group discussion and conclusions.

Participants in this workshop have fun while gaining enough depth of breath and practice to evaluate how feasible it is to use Quarto in different scenarios and, ultimately, if it can become the one tool for authoring reproducible scientific or technical documents, regardless of your language of choice.

Expertise level

Practitioner
Expert

Audience

This workshop is targeted to anyone interested in reproducible publishing, especially if they are looking for a single solution to use regardless of their programming language and are willing to explore with others quarto’s pros and cons, contributing to a group discussion.

Streetscape Perception Modelling – Theoretical Considerations and Methodological Possibilities

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:00:06 +0000

The influence of features and properties of the urban built-up environment on people’s sense of safety and perception of beauty, social vibrancy, and walkability is a topic of interest of urban geographers, designers, planners, and environmental psychologists alike. Along with emerging forms of data and the computational paradigm of Artificial Intelligence, current GIS, citizen science, and sensor technologies offer exciting technical and methodological possibilities for extracting, representing, and modelling aspects of people’s perception of streetscapes. This workshop aims to explore these possibilities, exchange research experiences, and discuss the theoretical grounds based on which we can operationalise, i.e., model, streetscape perception, particularly based on geospatial technologies.

The workshop will offer an open and interactive environment for researchers of all levels to discuss questions including, but not limited to:

What theoretical frameworks can guide us in extracting, representing, and modelling different streetscape perception aspects of people from different social groups and cultural backgrounds?
Which variables, parameters, and indicators these theoretical frameworks suggest and how can they be reliably extracted based on different digital technologies and participation methods?
Which GIS interfaces, data structures, and visualisations are effective in representing people’s perception of streetscapes as to foster theory development and inform planning and policy design towards more sustainable and inclusive urban spaces?

An outcome of the workshop will be a written summary of the discussed ideas authored by all participants and published in the PLATIAL’21 proceedings. The indicative programme is as follows:

Introduction by the organisers (20 min)
Crash presentations by participants (optional) (20 min)
Break-out group discussions (30 min) + World Café (30 min)
Paper writing outlook (20 min)

James-Tripp |

Quarto: a library to run them all? A collaborative exercise to use, learn and assess quarto for authoring reproducible documents in different scenarios

Expertise level

Audience

Streetscape Perception Modelling – Theoretical Considerations and Methodological Possibilities