Disability and accessibility: how to integrate the interactions between pedestrians and urban environment through a GIS?
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Nadja, V.; 2Olivier, K.; 3Thierry, J.
1CEPS/INSTEAD ET LABORATOIRE EVS ISTHME UMR 5600 Email: nadja.victor@live.fr
2CEPS/INSTEAD Email: olivier.klein@ceps.lu
3LABORATOIRE EVS ISTHME UMR 5600 Email: thierry.joliveau@univ-st-etienne.fr
Abstract
Nowadays, many countries have ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). This implies among other that public spaces have to be designed to be accessible to all. However, urban spaces cannot be cleared of all obstacles: favourable spaces for some are not always for others. In addition, to enhance pedestrian mobility, it is important to have a fine knowledge about the level of accessibility at different scales for different people. That is why, when trying to measure the accessibility of urban spaces, the users’ point of view must be explicitly considered. While measures of pedestrian accessibility are mostly based on an average user or a very specific target audience (i.e. wheelchair users or elderlies), the approach proposed in this communication is more inclusive. Therefore, we will tackle disability as the result of an interaction between the urban environment and users’ capabilities. The main issue of this communication is about how to integrate in a GIS the interactions between pedestrians and environment taking into account all kinds of users. To answer this question, we propose to approach pedestrian accessibility beyond the standard user by replacing him with a set of users with their own characteristics. The proposed approach was carried out on Luxembourg-City. This medium-sized city is well adapted for such an experiment with varied environments composed of several natural, topographic and anthropological constraints. Thus, we applied a three steps methodology. 1) We have built a specific pedestrian network in a GIS by integrating sidewalks, pedestrian streets and all the elements that can be passed through by pedestrians. In order to integrate potential obstacles during pedestrian trips, we also imputed to the segments of the network an adapted geographic database detailing finely the characteristics of the environment crossed by the pedestrians: crosswalks, slopes, etc. However, some more specific attributes or obstacles are not present in common databases and can directly affect the trips of some pedestrians. 2) Consequently, in order to complete the database, we developed a specific data collection process, taking the form of an urban audit, to impute on each segment properties or elements impacting pedestrian accessibility. 3) Finally, a survey was conducted on users with various physical profiles to define and adapt restrictions based on health status and capabilities to move. Once the model built and completed, a first cartographic output reveals and localizes the nature of spaces following their capacities to welcome, or not, all kind of users. Mapping those areas presents a great potential as decision support tool for stakeholders and planners. It reveals and highlights hidden obstacles which can avoid the access to public spaces. Following a geo-statistical analysis of the elements impacting accessibility, four classes of network sections are identified: one favourable and three with different kinds of obstacles. Our results finally confirm that there is no hierarchy between those unfavourable areas. Indeed, they can be favourable to some and unfavourable to others following their own physical characteristics. A second output offers routes advisements applications adapted to end-users. Beyond, classical shortest paths, our route planner offers over solutions like shortest accessible paths for a given user, or the less consuming energy paths, etc. To deal with the fact that relations between pedestrian and environment are unique following their own physical characteristics, we propose to inform them about routes they can personally handle. Thus, those routes are calculated with many restrictions in function of their state of health and their capacities to move. Those routes can finally deal with users’ desire to optimize their road (time, length, energy expenditure) and their capacity to access urban spaces.