A spatial typology of car usage\tand its\tlocal determinants in England
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper presents an initial classification of Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) in England based on their car ownership, car usage and relevant local characteristics. Whilst a long lineage of widely used geodemographic classifications exist in the UK, none of these is sufficiently focused on travel behaviour and transport infrastructure to allow a useful placebased understanding of travel patterns alongside monitoring and evaluation of local transport interventions. The analysis uses a privileged dataset which includes the characteristics of every vehicle registered in the UK in 2011, the registered keeper type and location and the annual mileage derived from annual ‘MOT’ tests. We present initial results in the process of developing a typology of MSOAs using cluster analysis applied to the car and mileage data alongside variables selected from a long list of variables from additional sources including the Census and DfT Accessibility statistics. The most meaningful set of variables to use as clustering variables is derived from underpinning regression models to identify the strongest determinants of car ownership and use. A clustering procedure is tested to produce a stable and meaningful set of provisional local area transport-types. We present the methodology used to create the classification, a visual profile of each local transport-area-type identified and identify the next steps required to develop and address the methodological and conceptual challenges of identifying appropriate spatial units of analysis, and change over time. This initial classification has potential to be extended with other available datasets including, meteorological and topographical data as well as new local level measures of rail and bus provision, developed specifically for this project. We conclude with a brief discussion of how the identification of places that are physically, socially and behaviourally similar to each other in terms of their current car usage patterns and associated determinants allows for context appropriate policy planning, evaluation and knowledge sharing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".