Last week, Prof. McKenzie participated in the 19th International Conference on Location Based Services (LBS 2025), held in Espoo, Finland, from May 7-9, 2025. Hosted by Aalto University, this annual conference brought together researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the latest advancements in geospatial technologies, spatial computing, and location-based data analytics. This year’s program spanned topics from indoor positioning and mobility modelling to geoprivacy and spatial cognition, and was well attended by a truly international cohort of academic researchers, government officials, industry professionals, and students. Prof. McKenzie delivered the opening keynote on the first day of the conference. His talk explored the intersection of shared micromobility, urban data, and equitable access to cities, drawing on recent work from the Lab to highlight how spatiotemporal data can help us better understand urban vitality and mobility behaviour.
Earlier in the week, Prof. McKenzie also co-organized the Data-Driven Mobility Analytics (DDMA 2025) Workshop, alongside Prof. Henrikki Tenkanen (Aalto University, Finland) and Prof. Marina Toger (Uppsala University, Sweden). The workshop brought together researchers working at the intersection of mobility, transportation, and spatial data science, with a focus on methodologies, tools, and applications for analyzing mobility systems through (open) data. Featuring lightning talks, group discussions, and collaborative breakout sessions, the workshop was well attended and proved to be quite a productive and generative space for advancing research ideas.
All-in-all, it was a great week in the greater Helsinki region. It is always great to catch-up with colleagues and hear about some of the truly incredible work that is being done in the fields of location based services and mobility analytics.
