Air Quality Based Informational Intervention Framework To Promote Healthy And Active School Travel

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive framework that guides in setting up an effective intervention design to promote active school travel keeping in view the air quality. As lack of physical activities are observed in school going children all over the world so various programs have been launched to encourage active commuting among school going kids using different intervention strategies. So far no effort was found in which the pollutant exposure aspect is taken into account. The primary objective of this study is to develop a computational model that helps in detecting walking/cycling school routes at an individual level that enhance physical activity alongside lesser exposure to air pollutants. The computations involved in this process is dependent on a variety of data sets such as individual’s school travel dairy, street level pollutant concentration data, public and active transport network data. The output generated gives exposure and physical activity involved in the current and suggested school routes. It is taken into consideration that the changes identified are healthy (having low exposure to pollutants) and encourage active school travel. These changes can be considered as alternatives/suggestions to develop the customized information package that can be used as a behavioural intervention tool.