Implementation of age-friendly initiatives in smart cities: probing the barriers through a systematic review

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers that hinder the implementation of age-friendly initiatives in smart cities. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of the literature was conducted using Scopus search engine. Relevant keywords were used to discover 81 publications in academic journals. The titles, abstracts, keywords and full texts of the publications were examined to select 39 publications that were relevant for identifying the barriers that hinder the implementation of age-friendly initiatives in smart cities. The contents of the 39 relevant publications were analysed to ascertain the key barriers. A system thinking approach was adopted to understand the interaction among the barriers. Findings The study identified five key groups of barriers – namely physical barriers and environmental characteristics, technological barriers, social barriers, financial barriers and political barriers – that smart cities encountered or are likely to encounter in implementing age-friendly initiatives. Moreover, practical examples of good age-friendly implementation practices were highlighted. Research limitations/implications A limitation of this study is in the number of publications reviewed. Despite the comprehensive review, the number of publications reviewed may not be exhaustive. This is justified by the inapplicability of considering all possible keywords in one review study. Practical implications The systemic perspective of the barriers that hinder the implementation of age-friendly initiatives in smart cities would support policymakers in formulating policy recommendations to improve age-friendliness in cities. Originality/value This study underscores the variable and dynamic nature of developing age-friendly smart cities and forms novel basis for gaining insights into the multiple factors that can promote the integration of age-friendly initiatives within smart cities

Age-friendly cities and communities: a review and future directions

The unprecedented increase in the ageing population, coupled with urbanisation, has led to a vast number of research publications on age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC). However, the existing reviews on AFCC studies are not sufficiently up-to-date for AFCC researchers. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the annual publication trend, the contributions of authors and institutions from different countries, and the trending research themes in the AFCC research corpus through a systematic review of 98 publications. A contribution assessment formula and thematic analysis were used for the review. The results indicated a growing AFCC research interest in recent times. Researchers and institutions from the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom and Hong Kong made the highest contribution to the AFCC research corpus. The thematic analysis classified the AFCC research corpus into four main themes: conceptualisation; implementation and development; assessment; and challenges and opportunities. The themes indicate the current and future research patterns and issues to be considered in the development of AFCC and for interested researchers to make proposals for future research. Future directions are proposed, including suggestions on adopting new assessment methods and instruments, collaboration and cross-nation comparative research, considering older adults as place-makers and conducting a prior participatory analysis to maximise the participation of older adults

The influence of urban visuospatial configuration on older adults’ stress: A wearable physiological-perceived stress sensing and data mining based-approach

Population ageing raises many fundamental questions, including how the urban environment can be configured to promote active ageing. The perceived element for older adults' involvement in the environment differs from the average person. Despite this difference, there is little to no research into understanding how the perceived elements (specifically, the visuospatial configuration) of the environment influence older adults' involvement—most studies focused on younger adults. The focus here is stress, which occurs when environmental demand exceeds a person's capability. As stress impacts a person's involvement in the environment and older adults are more likely to feel stress due to their decline in functional capability, it is important to understand how the visuospatial configuration of urban environment influence stress. Older adults were recruited to participate in an urban environment walk while their physiological responses (Photoplethysmogram) were monitored using wearable sensors. Their perceived stress responses were also collected. Spatial clustering and hot spot analysis were conducted to detect locations with clusters of physiological responses caused by spatial factors. These locations were subsequently labelled as stress or non-stress based on participants' perceived stress. The perceived visual elements of the urban environment were extracted using isovist analysis. Principal component analysis, self-organising map and machine learning algorithms were used to understand the relationship. The results demonstrate that isovist minimum visibility, occlusivity, and isovist area are the most influential determinants of older adults' physiological stress. Older adults prefer urban configurations where they can be seen. This study can be used to inform urban design and planning

Older pedestrians’ physiological reactions are indicative of stressful and non-stressful urban built environment conditions

This research examines whether the physiological responses, measured using wearable sensors, among older adults vary by stress and non-stress environmental conditions. The physiological responses – specifically, heart rate variability and electrodermal activity – and perceived stress among ten older adults were measured while walking along an urban path. The path condition was assessed by two trained observers. The differences in participants’ physiological responses (individual and collective) and individual differences (including body mass index and gender) under perceived stressful and non-stressful path conditions were tested using Wilcoxon signed-rank. A test for clustering of physiological responses was conducted among all participants and associated perceived stress and non-stress path conditions. In addition, a spatio-temporal analysis was conducted to detect variation in physiological responses within the stress and non-stress path conditions. Results indicated that, on average, participants experienced a statistically significant higher physiological response to environmental conditions perceived as non-stress than environmental conditions perceived as stress. Women experienced a significantly higher physiological response to non-stress environmental conditions than men. Stressful environmental conditions pose a high demand to older adults with a body mass index above 24.9. Personal factors and time-dependent environmental factors influence the effectiveness of wearable physiological sensing; nevertheless, such sensing can complement existing built environment assessment approaches to improve active ageing and age-friendly city and community design

Detecting stressful older adults-environment interactions to improve neighbourhood mobility: A multimodal physiological sensing, machine learning, and risk hotspot analysis-based approach

Not only is the global population ageing, but also the built environment infrastructure in many cities and communities are approaching their design life or showing significant deterioration. Such built environment conditions often become an environmental barrier that can either cause stress and/or limit the mobility of older adults in their neighbourhood. Current approaches to detecting stressful environmental interactions are less effective in terms of time, cost, labour, and individual stress detection. This study harnesses the recent advances in wearable sensing technologies, machine learning intelligence and hotspot analysis to develop and test a more efficient approach to detecting older adults' stressful interactions with the environment. Specifically, this study monitored older adults' physiological reactions (Photoplethysmogram and electrodermal activity) and global positioning system (GPS) trajectory using wearable sensors during an outdoor walk. Machine learning algorithms, including Gaussian Support Vector Machine, Ensemble bagged tree, and deep belief network were trained and tested to detect older adults' stressful interactions from their physiological signals, location and environmental data. The Ensemble bagged tree achieved the best performance (98.25% accuracy). The detected stressful interactions were geospatially referenced to the GPS data, and locations with high-risk clusters of stressful interactions were detected as risk stress hotspots for older adults. The detected risk stress hotspot locations corresponded to the places the older adults encountered environmental barriers, supported by site inspections, interviews and video records. The findings of this study will facilitate a near real-time assessment of the outdoor neighbourhood environment, hence improving the age-friendliness of cities and communities

Are the Ageing Workforce Satisfied with the Construction Work Environment?

The construction industry is experiencing a shortage of workforce and skill gap due to the significant reduction in the younger workers entering the construction industry compared to the exponential number of retiring workers. Providing ageing workforce with a satisfactory construction work environment (CWE) can be one of the ways to encourage them to remain in the construction industry. Therefore, this study aims to assess the level of satisfaction of the ageing workers with the CWE. The study adopted a quantitative approach and data was sourced from older construction workers in Edinburgh, Scotland using a questionnaire survey. Factor analysis and mean score analysis were employed to assess the older workers level of satisfaction with the CWE. The study identified five components of the CWE termed as organisational-psychological environment, physical environment, functional environment, policies and practices environment and auxiliary environment. The older workers were most satisfied with the functional environment, followed by the auxiliary environment, policies and practices environment, physical environment and lastly, organisational-psychological environment. The study recommended that the construction industry put in more effort in making the CWE very satisfying to all workers especially the ageing workforce. A very satisfying CWE should compensate and amend the losses accompanying ageing. The authors encourage future studies to explore the relationship between the level of satisfaction with the CWE and the quality of life of the ageing workforce

Transitions of cardio-metabolic risk factors in the Americas between 1980 and 2014

Describing the prevalence and trends of cardiometabolic risk factors that are associated with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is crucial for monitoring progress, planning prevention, and providing evidence to support policy efforts. We aimed to analyse the transition in body-mass index (BMI), obesity, blood pressure, raised blood pressure, and diabetes in the Americas, between 1980 and 2014