Sustainable and Healthy Communities through Integrating Mobility Simulations in the Urban Design Process
No Access Until
Permanent Link(s)
Collections
Other Titles
Author(s)
Abstract
A design focused active mobility simulation tool called Urbano.io that facilitates the design of healthy and sustainable urban habitats was developed and validated. This project added the ability to 1) adapt statistical and behavioral models from the transportation literature to incorporate street quality and thermal comfort-aware active mobility mode choices over others, and 2) validate the new behavioral models with urban data from NYC. More specifically, an hourly outdoor comfort map for NYC was created that was correlated with CitiBike usage and pedestrian count data to investigate the link of urban form, microclimate, and life in the streets. In addition, the most requested features from the community to remove a number of limitations that were revealed during intensive use in practice, online workshops, and conference calls with practitioners and researchers over the last four months were implemented. Key limitations that were addressed were: 1) accelerated algorithms and data structures to speed up analysis to allow larger analysis domains, 2) support for multimodal trips and other travel modes (such as biking, transit, and shared mobility), 3) support for customizable choice models to determine which modes would be used for different mobility needs, and 4) 3D terrain support to accurately model effort of sloped pathways.