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Abstract. Travel time estimation is crucial for several geospatial research studies, particularly healthcare accessibility studies. This paper presents a comparative study of six methods for drive time estimation on geospatial big data in the USA. The comparison is done with respect to the cost, accuracy, and scalability of these methods. The six methods examined are Google Maps API, Bing Maps API, Esri Routing Web Service, ArcGIS Pro Desktop, OpenStreetMap NetworkX (OSMnx), and Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM). Our case study involves calculating driving times of 10,000 origin-destination (OD) pairs between ZIP code population centroids and pediatric hospitals in the USA. We found that OSRM provides a low-cost, accurate, and efficient solution for calculating travel time on geospatial big data. Our study provides valuable insight into selecting the most appropriate drive time estimation method and is a benchmark for comparing the six different methods. Our open-source scripts are published on GitHub (https://github.com/wybert/Comparative-Study-of-Methods-for-Drive-Time-Estimation) to facilitate further usage and research by the wider academic community.

 

We construct two types of unital separable simple 𝐶∗-algebras: 𝐴𝐶1 𝑧 and 𝐴𝐶2 𝑧 , one exact but not amenable, the other nonexact. Both have the same Elliott invariant as the Jiang–Su algebra – namely, 𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧 has a unique tracial state,  𝐾0  𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧  , 𝐾0  𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧  + ,  1 𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧  = (Z, Z+, 1), and 𝐾1  𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧  = {0} (𝑖 = 1, 2). We show that 𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧 (𝑖 = 1, 2) is essentially tracially in the class of separable 𝒵-stable 𝐶∗-algebras of nuclear dimension 1. 𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝑧 has stable rank one, strict comparison for positive elements and no 2-quasitrace other than the unique tracial state. We also produce models of unital separable simple nonexact (exact but not nuclear) 𝐶∗-algebras which are essentially tracially in the class of simple separable nuclear𝒵-stable 𝐶∗-algebras, and the models exhaust all possible weakly unperforated Elliott invariants.We also discuss some basic properties of essential tracial approximation. 1. 

We revisit the notion of tracial approximation for unital simple C*-algebras. We show that a unital simple separable innite dimensional C*-algebra A is asymptotically tracially in the class of C-algebras with nite nuclear dimension if and only if A is asymptotically tracially in the class of nuclear Z-stable C-algebras. 1 

This paper focuses on a core task in computational sustainability and statistical ecology: species distribution modeling (SDM). In SDM, the occurrence pattern of a species on a landscape is predicted by environmental features based on observations at a set of locations. At first, SDM may appear to be a binary classification problem, and one might be inclined to employ classic tools (e.g., logistic regression, support vector machines, neural networks) to tackle it. However, wildlife surveys introduce structured noise (especially under-counting) in the species observations. If unaccounted for, these observation errors systematically bias SDMs. To address the unique challenges of SDM, this paper proposes a framework called StatEcoNet. Specifically, this work employs a graphical generative model in statistical ecology to serve as the skeleton of the proposed computational framework and carefully integrates neural networks under the framework. The advantages of StatEcoNet over related approaches are demonstrated on simulated datasets as well as bird species data. Since SDMs are critical tools for ecological science and natural resource management, StatEcoNet may offer boosted computational and analytical powers to a wide range of applications that have significant social impacts, e.g., the study and conservation of threatened species.