An ontology-based approach for harmonizing metrics in bike network evaluations

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The urgency to decarbonize the transportation sector has accelerated the adoption of micro-mobility solutions, with cycling network development witnessing remarkable growth. Robust and quantitative evaluation frameworks are needed to evaluate the quality of such developments. While a plethora of bike network evaluation approaches exist, their diversity creates issues of interpretability and comparability due to varying metrics and domain-specific terms. We present three contributions to address these challenges. First, we construct a formal ontology, VeloNEMO, that captures key attributes of evaluation metrics for harmonizing bike network evaluation metrics. Second, we generate a machine-readable knowledge base containing these metrics, enabling meta-analyses and resolving some of the existing terminological discrepancies. Third, we propose recommendations for transparent and comparable metric descriptions across various evaluation approaches, illustrated by exploratory metric selection scenarios for a forthcoming bike network evaluation tool. In summary, our research addresses the need for a structured and shared vocabulary for bike network evaluations. This ontology-based approach aims to improve the coherence of evaluation methods as the field of bike network planning continues to evolve, ultimately supporting decision-making for sustainable transportation planning.