2nd International Conference on IoT in Urban Space
Abstract
What makes us feel safe when walking around our cities? Previous
research has shown that our perception of safety strongly depends
on characteristics of the built environment; separately, research has
also shown that safety perceptions depend on the people we encounter
on the streets. However, it is not clear how the two relate
to one another. In this paper, we propose a quantitative method
to investigate this relationship. Using an online crowd–sourcing
approach, we collected 5452 safety ratings from over 500 users
about images showing various combinations of built environment
and people inhabiting it. We applied analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)
to the collected data and found that familiarity of the scene
is the single most important predictor of our sense of safety. Controlling
for familiarity, we identified then what features of the urban
environment increase or decrease our safety perception
