Activity Spaces, Trajectories, and Agents: Assessing the Built Environment Effects on Walking Routes

Calvin Tribby, University of Utah

Summary:

Dissertation Summary:Understanding the role of the built environment on active transportation is essential for encouraging healthy and active lifestyles and effectively guiding street rehabilitation and other environmental interventions. This research project is part of a larger study of western Salt Lake City, UT and the effects of a new light rail line and a complete street rehabilitation on health outcomes of residents in the neighborhood. As part of this overall project, the goal of this research is to untangle the effect of the built environment on the specific route choices for walking through three sub-goals. The first sub-goal is to develop methods to aggregate and summarize built environment attributes for walking routes, based on GPS collected data, within the space and time constraints of a specific trip. The second sub-goal is to measure attributes of routes not taken for specific trips to reveal the strengths of the relevant built environment attributes. The third sub-goal is to explore modification of these attributes using an Agent-Based Model. The methods and findings of this research will provide a refinement to current measures and models of the built environment for walking, which has applications for health, urban, and geographic research of livable neighborhoods.

Project Details

Project Type:
Dissertation
Project Status:
Completed
End Date:
June 30,2014
UTC Grant Cycle:
Tier 1 Dissertation Fellowships Spr. '12
UTC Funding:
$15,000

Downloadable Products

Other Products

  • Tribby, C. P., Miller, H. J., Brown, B. B., Werner, C. M., & Smith, K. R. (2017). Analyzing walking route choice through built environments using random forests and discrete choice techniques. Environment and Planning B-Urban Analytics and City Science, 44(6), 1145-1167 (PUBLICATION)
  • Tribby, C. P., Miller, H. J., Brown, B. B., Smith, K. R., & Werner, C. M. (2017). Geographic regions for assessing built environmental correlates with walking trips: A comparison using different metrics and model designs. Health & Place, 45, 1-9 (PUBLICATION)