GREENER URBAN TRAVEL ENVIRONMENTS FOR EVERYONE: From measured wellbeing impacts to Big Data analytics

Greenery is an integral part of healthy and liveable urban environments. Availability of greenery is a question of environmental justice and equity. The benefits of greenery have been clearly shown in the residential context, but exposure to greenery in everyday urban travel environments has been studied much less, if at all. The project will produce a novel understanding of the quality, availability and wellbeing impacts of green urban travel environments. Furthermore, it will produce knowledge on how equitably green exposure during travel and related wellbeing impacts are available to urban populations. It provides approaches and analysis on where to add greenery to advance equity. The project draws on the recent developments in urban informatics: It employs cutting edge technologies from immersive Virtual Reality to Big Data mining, but also critically evaluates it. Controlled VR experimentations and carry-on sensors will be used to reveal if and why green travel environments matter for people and what greenery features are relevant, also considering seasonal variations. The understanding will be backed up with more traditional surveys. Computer vision on street-view images and 3D models will be used to map relevant greenery features, from the human perspective and considering seasonalities. Mobile Big Data will be leveraged to study the mobility flows of the urban population and to reveal the equity of green exposure during these everyday trips, also considering different transportation modes. Finally, advanced spatial prioritization and green routing tools will identify the future potential for greener travel environments for everyone. When successful, the project will produce transformational knowledge on the importance, availability and equity of green urban travel environments. It will produce completely new open methods and transferable procedures for analysing green travel environments in Europe and beyond.