Thomas Wieland

About

Hi, I’m Thomas, and I’m a geographer through and through. However, I’m not the kind of geographer who travels the world as part of their job. That’s why, instead of an Instagram account filled with beautiful travel photos, I have this GitHub page.

I specialize in quantitative economic and urban geography, with a methodological focus on statistics and econometrics, machine learning, and GIS. During my PhD, and especially in the years that followed, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the capabilities of the proprietary software available for data analysis at the time. This led me to start working with R in 2015. A year later, I released my first R package.

I develop open-source software for geographical analysis in Python and R. The motivation for most of what I do in this field stems from specific questions arising from my scientific work. Occasionally, however, it also involves analytical questions driven purely by personal interest. (I’m self-taught when it comes to programming, so unfortunately, some of my code shows it. Sorry about that!)

CV

Employment

Since 2023: Data Scientist at Coop, Basel (CH)*

2016-2022: Postdoctoral researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Geography and Geoecology, Karlsruhe

2012-2016: Researcher and project manager at Institut für Stadt- und Regionalmanagement (ISR), Munich

2010-2012: External GIS project consultant at Autonome Provinz Bozen/Südtirol – Landesinstitut für Statistik (ASTAT), Bozen (IT)

Since 2010: Part-time professional activity as a lecturer and (previously) also as a consultant/analyst

2008-2013: Research assistant at Georg August University Göttingen, Institute of Geography

*My open-source software projects are developed independently in my personal time and are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of my employer. Any views or opinions expressed through these projects are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Education

2009-2014 PhD in Geography at the University of Göttingen, graduated with the degree Dr. rer. nat

2002-2008 Studied Geography at the University of Göttingen, graduated with the degree of Diplom-Geograph (Master equivalent)

Scientific work

During my active career as a scientist, these were my research focus areas:

Retail geography
- Consumer behavior (store and channel choice), especially in the context of multi-channel retailing
- Market areas of stores, especially with respect to the effect of spatial clustering
- Location analysis and store performance models
Health geography
- Spatial accessibility of health care locations
- Spatial analysis of epidemic spreads
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI)
Some other topics
- Economic growth and disparities
- GIS-based analysis of the development of settlement areas and cultural landscapes
- Economic impact of tourism and tourist attractions
- Analysis of residential real estate markets

My publications are available via ResearchGate and Google Scholar. Information on past projects is available, in part, on my former staff page at KIT.