Quantitative Methods Research Group (QMRG) – Royal Geographical Society with IBG

Those who are observant may have noticed a new “CATMOG” tab appear on the top right of the website. Our long requested project of digitising the exceptionally useful CATMOG series is now complete (minus a couple in the series we haven’t been able to source). This very tedious task of scanning and PDF manipulation was completed by one of the QMRG newest committee members Dan Lewis who we should thank.

We hope that you find this resource of use, and please get in touch if you would be willing to lend us a copy of some of the missing books.

On the 20th January 2009, the QMRG is supporting a workshop in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds on “Numerical Modelling in Physical Geography”. The meeting aims to bring together those working in a variety of fields to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and techniques, which doesn’t really exist at present. Invited speakers from the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, and Exeter will talk on numerical modelling approaches in glaciology, fluvial hydraulics, geomorphology, and global climate, as well as error analysis methods. The meeting is oriented towards work built firmly around conservation principles, generally involving the solution of coupled PDEs for mass and momentum. If you wish to come along, please e-mail Chris Keylock (c.j.keylock@leeds.ac.uk). Please be aware that places are limited.

Members of the QMRG may be interested in two books which are now appearing as free PDF files:

Atlas of Cyberspace – Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin [link]

Fractal Cities – Michael Batty, Paul Longley [link]

The QMRG are able to offer up to four post graduate student bursaries for the 2009 GISRUK conference. These bursaries will cover the full registration cost at the student rate. To be eligible for a bursary you will need a full paper accepted in the main program. We usually have more applications than bursaries so will assign them on a competitive basis. To apply for a bursary, please send your accepted extended abstract to Alex Singleton (a.singleton@ucl.ac.uk)

The competition for this years QMRG dissertation prize was particularly strong, and as such there are two  winners:

The Physical Geography prize goes to Robert Bradford from the University of Bristol and is titled “Modelling the Future of a Valley Glacier in the European Alps, under 21st Century Climate Predictions Recently Released as part of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios”

The Human Geography prize goes to Charlotte Norton also from the University of Bristol titled “A Multilevel Approach to Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Life Satisfaction in Germany from 1992 to 2006″

Well done to both Charlotte and Robert, plus thanks to all those who sent in entries and to committee members who spent time completing reviews.

UPDATE: Dave Unwin has informed us that that the R workshop is now unfortunately full, sorry to those who have missed out.

The Joint Worldwide Universities Network, RGS(with IBG) Quantitative Methods Research Group & UCGIS
Virtual Seminars in GIScience and Technology programme is now available for Fall/Autumn 2008. This has the theme of Neogeography.

Instructions and schedule can be downloaded from: [here]

There are some great speakers, and the seminars are free to members of the QMRG.

Additionally, there is a second semester of e-workshops on Spatial Analysis in R. This flyer is available [here]

The recent QMRG annual general meeting has brought a number of changes to the committee. The QMRG would like to extend thanks to the hard work of the outgoing chair Rich Harris and welcomes Alex Singleton as his replacement. Additional new QMRG committee members include Dan Lewis and James Cheshire; both are starting a PhD this year at UCL.

Hello and welcome to the new and improved website of the Quantitative Methods Research Group of the RGS/IBG. We hope that this site will provide a more streamlined method of disseminating useful information between our members. As this is a new website there are likely to be typos and bugs. Please let us know if you spot any through our contacts page.