Calendar of Events

What about time in transportation and health research? Mei-Po Kwan Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences Initiative in Population Research Ohio State University Transportation researchers have long recognized the role of time in influencing activity-travel behavior.  In previous studies time has been treated largely as a linear reference system for registering when eventshappen or as a dimension for assessing how phenomena change over time and space. This presentationexamines a different notion of time and its implications for transportation and health research, revisitingsome fundamental concepts like distance, accessibility, and geographic context, and explores newconceptualizations that take time into account. It suggests that time is at least as important as spacefor understanding how individuals of different social groups experience access to facilities and exposureto contextual or environmental influences. These new conceptualizations of accessibility, context, andexposure are based on the spatio-temporal configuration of people’s everyday lives. The lecture offers thata temporally integrated perspective would help shed new light on many issues transportation and healthresearchers have been examining for decades. Program5:00 – 6:00PM  Reception6:00 – 7:00PM  Lecture7:00 – 7:30PM  Q&A and discussion Bio Sketch of Mei-Po KwanMei-Po Kwan is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Ohio State University. She is the Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Geography at OSU. She received her Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has served as a proposal reviewer or advisory panelist for nine programs of the U.S.National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council and the Austrian Science Fund.  Kwan received the 2005 UCGIS Research Award for outstanding contributions to GIScience from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), the Edward L. Ullman Award for outstanding contributions to Transportation Geography from the Association of American Geographers (AAG), and the Joan N. Huber Faculty Award for outstanding scholarship from the Ohio State University in 2005. She was named a James and Catherine Ralston Fellow by the University of Tennessee in 2003. She has been recognized as an Ameritech Fellow. Kwan is Editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Methods,Models and GIS).  She is also Editor of Regional Studies and Associate Editor of Geographical Analysis. She is currently on the editorial board of The Professional Geographer and Gender, Place and Culture, and on the International Editorial Advisory Board of the Canadian Geographer.  Kwan is a member of the Board of Directors for UCGIS. She is a National Councilor for the AAG, Chair of the AAG Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group, and Secretary for the AAG Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group.  She was a board member of the AAG Transportation Geography Specialty Group, and Chair of the AAG Committee on the Status of Women. At the Transportation Research Board of the U.S. National Academies, she is a member of the “Understanding Behavior Process: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods Subcommittee of the Traveler Behavior and Values Committee (ADB10(4))” and the “Telecommunications and Travel Behavior Committee (ADB20).”Kwan’s research addresses theoretical and substantive questions in geographical information systems (GIS) for transportation (GIS-T), particularly individual accessibility in space-time, telecommunications and information technologies, human activity patterns, gender and ethnic dimensions of transportation, and Intelligent Transportation Systems.  Her work focuses mainly on the geographical and temporal characteristics of people’s daily activities, and the impact of recent social, economic and political changes on their everyday lives as manifested through changes in the geographies of their daily activities.  Her recent research focuses on the analysis of activity-travel diary data using geocomputation and 3D geovisualization methods.RSVP at http://uclalewiswachslecture.eventbrite.com/