A GIS toolkit for measuring and mapping space-time accessibility from a place-based perspective

This article introduces a novel geographical information system toolkit for measuring and mapping the accessibility of individuals to services. The toolkit contributes to earlier implementations by combining aspects of both place-based and person-based accessibility measures. To this end, place-based accessibility measures are derived from a person-based framework by considering space-time prisms that are centred at service facilities rather than individual anchor points. The implementation is also innovative by explicitly accounting for the opening hours of service delivery in its accessibility measurement. In addition, the toolkit is aimed to be user-friendly and to generate insightful and comprehensible results for non-technically oriented users, which is illustrated in a brief case study about library accessibility in Ghent (Belgium)

Taking the bus to the park? - a study of accessibility to green areas in Gothenburg through different modes of transport

Green areas in urban environments can have recreational, environmental and health benefits but for them to be utilized, high accessibility for inhabitants is necessary. In an expanding city like Gothenburg, maintaining geographic accessibility to green areas can be challenging. This study performs an accessibility analysis to assess whether Gothenburg has sufficient accessibility to green areas, and whether any spatial inequality occurs. It also aims to compare the accessibility by public transport to other modes of transport: walking, biking and driving car. Earlier research of accessibility analysis to green areas have rarely included network analysis of public transport. For green areas in Gothenburg, no network analysis of any transport mode has previously been performed. This study found that the accessibility is sufficient for most of the population of Gothenburg. Although the accessibility is not evenly distributed, no spatial inequality with regards to income was found. Compared to other transport modes public transport seems to be preferable primarily in relatively long-distance travels.How do we get to our parks? Most city dwellers of Gothenburg have high accessibility to parks and natural areas, according to a new study. The time it takes to travel to the closest one is well within the goals set by Gothenburg municipality, for most of the population. In the study you can see which areas of the city has the highest accessibility and which has the lowest. The scientific study has analyzed the accessibility to green areas and compared travelling by public transport to travelling by car, bike and by walking. In a policy document from 2014 the municipality of Gothenburg states that parks should be accessible within 15 minutes by walking, and according to this study, this is the case for 93 % of the population. The report also states that natural experiences should be accessible within 30 minutes travel time by public transport, which is the case for 98 %. The results shows that the central areas of Gothenburg has generally high accessibility, along with most districts of the city, but the district of Hisings Backa and some areas in the outskirts of the city do have too long travel time. The results also show, that the travel time to a park or natural area is generally shortest when using a bike, but when travelling long distances driving a car is preferable. Public transport is slower than both car driving and biking. Why is such a study needed? Parks and natural areas in cities are important for many reasons. First, they have several health benefits such as reducing obesity. Secondly, the recreational values are important. Thirdly, they have environmental benefits, e.g. giving less polluted air, providing high biodiversity, captures carbon and cools cities during heat waves. This study might serve as a foundation for future city planning. How can the accessibility to green areas be improved? And how can the city promote choices of transport that is beneficial for the personal health as well as the health of our environment? This study is a step on the way of answering these questions

Developing Quantitative Indicators to Measure Built Environment Using GIS: a Case Study in Cities of Loma Linda and Redlands in California

Adventist communities are the subject of much epidemiological research due to their homogeneous lifestyle characteristics. Little is known about how Loma Linda’s built environment influences its Adventist community making it the city with the highest life expectancy in the U.S. One approach is to measure the potential of a city to promote walking, but there is a lack of tools that measure multiple dimensions of this built environment indicator. We developed a built environment toolbox taking into account different factors: access, density, diversity, and quality. A pilot study was conducted to compare the built environment of the city of Loma Linda with the city of Redlands in California. The toolset used network analysis functions in order to test the indexes. The indicators used were access to recreational areas, population density, land use diversity, and quality of sidewalks. Data were obtained from subjects of the Adventists Health Study 2. The city of Loma Linda presented better access to recreational areas, higher population density, and more diverse land use in the participants’ built environment. These findings should inform urban planners in order to consider walkable indicators that can promote a healthy community

Planning Support Systems: Progress, Predictions, and Speculations on the Shape of Things to Come

In this paper, we review the brief history of planning support systems, sketching the way both the fields of planning and the software that supports and informs various planning tasks have fragmented and diversified. This is due to many forces which range from changing conceptions of what planning is for and who should be involved, to the rapid dissemination of computers and their software, set against the general quest to build ever more generalized software products applicable to as many activities as possible. We identify two main drivers – the move to visualization which dominates our very interaction with the computer and the move to disseminate and share software data and ideas across the web. We attempt a brief and somewhat unsatisfactory classification of tools for PSS in terms of the planning process and the software that has evolved, but this does serve to point up the state-ofthe- art and to focus our attention on the near and medium term future. We illustrate many of these issues with three exemplars: first a land usetransportation model (LUTM) as part of a concern for climate change, second a visualization of cities in their third dimension which is driving an interest in what places look like and in London, a concern for high buildings, and finally various web-based services we are developing to share spatial data which in turn suggests ways in which stakeholders can begin to define urban issues collaboratively. All these are elements in the larger scheme of things – in the development of online collaboratories for planning support. Our review far from comprehensive and our examples are simply indicative, not definitive. We conclude with some brief suggestions for the future

Using prospective methods to identify fieldwork locations favourable to understand divergences in health care accessibility

Central to this article is the issue of choosing sites for where a fieldwork could provide a better understanding of divergences in health care accessibility. Access to health care is critical to good health, but inhabitants may experience barriers to health care limiting their ability to obtain the care they need. Most inhabitants of low-income countries need to walk long distances along meandering paths to get to health care services. Individuals in Malawi responded to a survey with a battery of questions on perceived difficulties in accessing health care services. Using both vertical and horizontal impedance, we modelled walking time between household locations for the individuals in our sample and the health care centres they were using. The digital elevation model and Tobler’s hiking function were used to represent vertical impedance, while OpenStreetMap integrated with land cover map were used to represent horizontal impedance. Combining measures of walking time and perceived accessibility in Malawi, we used spatial statistics and found spatial clusters with substantial discrepancies in health care accessibility, which represented fieldwork locations favourable for providing a better understanding of barriers to health access.publishedVersio

Urban network analysis training in Rhinoceros3D : Barcelona, 11-13 July 2022

"ETSAB, DUOT, LUB" -- Portada"Course instructor: Andres Sevtsuk (associate professor of urban science and planning at MIT, Director of the City Form Lab)" -- Coberta"ETSAB summer masterclass" -- CobertaDescripció del recurs: 20 setembre 2023Conté: Foreword: Walking the streets: an approach to urban proximity through the analysis of pedestrian networks / Eulàlia Gómez-Escoda -- Presentation: Urban Network Analysis tools for modeling land use and transportation interactions for pedestrians and cyclists / Andres Sevtsuk -- Barcelona’s Superblocks under the spotlight: evaluating expected impact of green axes in pedestrian route choice and retail footfall / Mikel Berra-Sandín and Enric Villavieja Martínez -- The walking routes of the children of La Vila de Gràcia / André Salazar and Ricardo Sotomayor -- Walking the hills. Analysis of the walkable network around existing and planned L9 metro stations in upper Gràcia, Barcelona / Álvaro Clua, Francesc Valls and Joan Martí Elia

How to monitor sustainable mobility in cities? Literature review in the frame of creating a set of sustainable mobility indicators

The role of sustainable mobility and its impact on society and the environment is evident and recognized worldwide. Nevertheless, although there is a growing number of measures and projects that deal with sustainable mobility issues, it is not so easy to compare their results and, so far, there is no globally applicable set of tools and indicators that ensure holistic evaluation and facilitate replicability of the best practices. In this paper, based on the extensive literature review, we give a systematic overview of relevant and scientifically sound indicators that cover different aspects of sustainable mobility that are applicable in different social and economic contexts around the world. Overall, 22 sustainable mobility indicators have been selected and an overview of the applied measures described across the literature review has been presented

Proceedings of the 3rd Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium OGRS 2014

The third Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium (OGRS) was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 to 13 June 2014. The symposium was hosted and organized by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aalto University School of Engineering, in partnership with the OGRS Community, on the Espoo campus of Aalto University. These proceedings contain the 20 papers presented at the symposium. OGRS is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas in and results from the development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education.  The symposium offers several opportunities for discussing, learning, and presenting results, principles, methods and practices while supporting a primary theme: how to carry out research and educate academic students using, contributing to, and launching open source geospatial initiatives. Participating in open source initiatives can potentially boost innovation as a value creating process requiring joint collaborations between academia, foundations, associations, developer communities and industry. Additionally, open source software can improve the efficiency and impact of university education by introducing open and freely usable tools and research results to students, and encouraging them to get involved in projects. This may eventually lead to new community projects and businesses. The symposium contributes to the validation of the open source model in research and education in geoinformatics