Pedestrian Users Research Articles

From the ground floor of the city

This paper is devoted to the process of shaping of urban pedestrian public spaces in new revitalised urban structures of European cities in the early 21st century upon the example of a new revitalised centre of Bjørvika Barcode in Oslo. New public spaces emerge, creating a new spatial context. The paper also focuses on some aspects of the creation of space, particularly from the perspective of pedestrian users of the ‘ground floor’ of these spaces and the perception thereof connected with – without limitations – composition and aesthetics of architecture, and its relation towards the surrounding area and nature. Creation of urban spaces has a significant effect on the process of shaping of the surrounding synergic architecture and synergic urban pedestrian public spaces, as well as creates a new spatial identity of the place and its architecture.

Shared space streets: design, user perception and performance

Shared space is becoming an increasingly well-accepted approach to street design, pursuing improvement of street uses on foot without restricting other modes of movement. This approach introduces a degree of uncertainty regarding application of traffic rules by minimising traffic signs and conventional physical demarcations to enable different users to share the road space and negotiate their movement through and across it. Despite existing evidence for reduced traffic accidents and casualties, this type of street design remains an unorthodox approach. This article addresses the key issues of road safety, user comfort and revitalization aspects of the shared space, raised in the last decade with a focus on pedestrian users. Based on analysis of the layout, performance and user perception of six study areas, evidence reveals how these schemes affect safety, comfort, the conventional spatial distribution or hierarchy of users, and public life.

The Impact of Congested Mobility on the Functions of Public Spaces in Cities, Ramses Square Case Study

Public spaces play significant role in satisfying the needs of users in four levels: accessibility, environment and comfort, public utilization and sociability. The fulfillment relationship between needs and functions is affected by several aspects. The main aspect is mobility network in public spaces. In Ramses square, the existence of Ramses regional railway station as a hub of multi-layering transportation modes generates enormous flow of vehicles and pedestrians. Additionally, the congested street network and 6th October flyover cause high vehicle flow crosscutting pedestrian movements. This research investigates the effect of congested mobility on pedestrian usage. The methodology is to determine the users’ needs of Ramses and to analyze the existing situation of it then to compare them with the standards of public spaces. The research includes theoretical and empirical parts. For theoretical part, literature review explains the standards of public spaces’ elements. For empirical part, urban survey is used to determine the functions of Ramses and questionnaire to determine the needs of users. Finally, the research reaches its conclusion that the existence of congested mobility disconnects the mutual relation of needs’ satisfaction for users and minimizes it to the extent of being a traffic node used for vehicles-sometimes unsafe-regardless other dimensions.

Real Time Experimental Study and Analysis of Elliott Wave Theory in Signal Strength Prediction

Prediction of mobile users signal strength in a wireless environment is extremely difficult due to the multipath fading effect. The quality of service of mobile user improves when the received signal strength is estimated. Elliott wave theory is a technical analysis used for forecasting financial market trends. In this paper, the applicability and the possibility of Elliott wave theory in signal strength prediction to mobile communications is investigated. The main advantage of the Elliott wave theory is it is independent of fading environment, distance between the user and the base station and the height of the antenna. In the proposed algorithm, past samples are considered for predicting future samples with no need for any overhead information. The performance of the algorithms is tested in real life scenario such as pedestrian users and for the users moving at an average speed of 60 km/h. Evaluation of the performance of the algorithm is done through comparison of predicted results with the practical signal strength at their relative time. The results demonstrate a 62% successful predictor.

Driving Factors Toward Accurate Mobile Opportunistic Sensing in Urban Environments

The dramatic increase in the number and sensing capabilities of mobile devices is fostering opportunistic sensing as a paramount data collection paradigm in smart cities. According to this paradigm, sensing of large-scale phenomena is autonomously performed by mobile devices that provide irregular samples in time and space. The collected data is then transferred to a central controller, and processed so as to obtain a representation of the phenomenon. In this paper, we investigate the factors that impact the accuracy of mobile opportunistic sensing. Specifically, we characterize the accuracy of a phenomenon representation obtained from samples collected by mobile devices and processed through the popular LMMSE filter. We do so by drawing on random matrix theory, which allows us to deal with irregularly spaced samples. Our analytical expressions capture the fundamental relationships existing between the accuracy and the parameters of mobile opportunistic sensing. We apply our analytical results to a realistic scenario where atmospheric pollution samples are collected by vehicular and pedestrian users. We validate the proposed analytical framework, and then exploit the model to investigate the impact on mobile sensing accuracy of a number of parameters. These include the pedestrian and vehicle density, the participation ratio to the sensing application, the type of phenomenon to be sensed, and the level of noise and position errors affecting the collected samples.

Experimental Study on Elliott Wave Theory for Handoff Prediction

The main objective for the next generation wireless network is the offer of a high data rate when the user is on the move. The key element that offers continuous connectivity is the handoff. In this paper, we propose a handoff prediction model, which can predict handoff behavior of the user well in advance and reduce the latency in the handoff operation. The prediction model is validated with real life scenario both for the pedestrian user and the vehicle user, traveling at a speed of 80[Formula: see text]km/h. The experimental result verifies the capability of the proposed algorithm to predict the future sample with accuracy and minimum latency. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed system outperforming the existing system compared to the probability of the handoff detection and minimizing the false alarm probability. There is also the fact of the proposed algorithm not requiring any additional hardware for predicting the mobility of the user.

Evaluation of Deployment Challenges of Wireless Sensor Networks at Signalized Intersections.

With the growing demand of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) for safer and more efficient transportation, research on and development of such vehicular communication systems have increased considerably in the last years. The use of wireless networks in vehicular environments has grown exponentially. However, it is highly important to analyze radio propagation prior to the deployment of a wireless sensor network in such complex scenarios. In this work, the radio wave characterization for ISM 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) deployed taking advantage of the existence of traffic light infrastructure has been assessed. By means of an in-house developed 3D ray launching algorithm, the impact of topology as well as urban morphology of the environment has been analyzed, emulating the realistic operation in the framework of the scenario. The complexity of the scenario, which is an intersection city area with traffic lights, vehicles, people, buildings, vegetation and urban environment, makes necessary the channel characterization with accurate models before the deployment of wireless networks. A measurement campaign has been conducted emulating the interaction of the system, in the vicinity of pedestrians as well as nearby vehicles. A real time interactive application has been developed and tested in order to visualize and monitor traffic as well as pedestrian user location and behavior. Results show that the use of deterministic tools in WSN deployment can aid in providing optimal layouts in terms of coverage, capacity and energy efficiency of the network.

Engaging communities in changing the environment to promote transport-related walking: Evaluation of route use in the ‘Fitter for Walking’ project

Abstract Promoting walking for transport may help to increase physical activity levels. Associations between the built environment and walking for transport have been well reported. Engaging communities in making small-scale changes to local routes is one potential low-cost strategy to improve neighbourhood environments. The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in pedestrian use of local routes following environmental changes made by communities and local authorities (LAs) in the ‘Fitter for Walking’ (FFW) project, to assess route users’ awareness of the environmental improvements which were implemented and to make recommendations for future evaluation. FFW targeted deprived communities in twelve LA areas in England. Coordinators worked with communities and LA partners to improve local route environments based on identified barriers to walking. Route user counts and intercept surveys were conducted in five FFW case studies at baseline, 12 months and 14–20 months after the project activities had commenced. A wide range of environmental improvements were undertaken. After 12 months, there was a decrease in pedestrian route use overall (−19.4%) and in four case studies (range −42.1% to −10.4%). However, after 14–20 months, an increase in pedestrian route user overall (14.9%) and in all case studies (range 5.4–58.9%) was observed compared to baseline. Route users’ awareness of environmental improvements made to routes varied across case studies and was very low for some of the improvements which had been made. Engaging communities in making small-scale environmental improvements to key routes in local neighbourhoods may be an effective, low-cost strategy for increasing walking for transport. Increasing the number of people walking on newly improved routes may take a long time and require additional promotional initiatives. Evaluating these types of initiatives is challenging. These factors should be considered by health and transport professionals developing initiatives and by researchers interested in measuring behaviour change.

SIGNIFICANCE OF MICROCLIMATIC STUDY IN URBAN CANYONS TOWARDS AMBIENT URBAN SPACE DESIGN

About 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and the fraction is growing. Thus the study of the urban boundary layer and urban climate is of great importance.Since urban centres of the world have immense growth of population, their quality requires a very careful screening for sustainable future, growth and development. The quality of outdoor urban spaces is more significant in tropical countries like India, since the activities are shared between indoor and outdoor. There are clear links between the climate of a settlement and its potential sustainability. Its opportunities for gathering energy, its need for energy conservation and its ability to dispose of airborne wastes are largely controlled by the climate it experiences. moreover, urban design decisions will create microclimates that either accentuate or moderate the properties of the background climate. Thus, there is a clear role for an applied urban climatology in the planning of sustainable settlements. hence there is a compulsive need for providing ambient environmental conditions outdoors, specific to the pedestrian users. The uhI (urban heat Island) phenomenon though is influenced by many factors, the role of urban design and professionals like architects, urban designers and planners cannot be ignored. Often they are neglected when urban design principles get executed onsite. Therefore there is a need for understanding the urban microclimate interaction with the urban geometry elements for deriving design solutions and guidelines for the future. Though urban microclimate is also dependent on multiple factors this paper focuses on its relation with various urban geometry elements specific to the urban streets. The unit chosen for the study is ‘urban canyon’. To understand the microclimatic variation various profiles of urban canyons were selected. The urban microclimatic discomfort is given by the term “microclimatic Stress” and the thermal index used for the measurement is PeT (Physiological equivalent temperature) and rayman Pro is used for its calculation. The study of the canyons concluded with findings that proved significant impact of street geometry elements on the microclimatic stress of urban outdoors.

Testing New Lighting Technology in a Park Pedestrian Area

European Union directives on ecodesign requirements of discharge lamps have also their effect on street lighting. The commonly used mercury vapor lamps have to be replaced starting from 2015. Pori, a middle sized city situated on the west coast of Finland, has about 17 000 mercury discharge lamps for street lighting. This was the starting point for Pori Energia, the utility that takes care of public lighting in the city of Pori, and for Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (SUAS) to initiate an investigation of alternative lamps. This paper considers the results of a practical experiment of four lamp types applicable for street lighting: high pressure sodium lamp, metal halide lamp, inductive lamp and led lamp. The lamps were installed above a park pedestrian area and the illumination was measured in various circumstances in the winter. In addition, electric measurements were carried out in the Electric Laboratory of SUAS. Also a small scale opinion poll among the pedestrian area users was included in the research. The results show that the luminous flux of all of the new lamp types was higher than that of the old mercury lamps. This was clearly proved even when the aging factor was taken into account. The led lamp seems to be the best choice relative to illumination/power consumption ratio. The park pedestrian area users were also satisfied with the chromatic tone of the white led light. However, the led lamp technology is not in mature phase and using it widely may cause extraordinary costs in the infrastructure of electric networks.

Serviceability limit state of vibrations in under-deck cable-stayed bridges accounting for vehicle-structure interaction

Verification of the serviceability limit state of vibrations due to traffic live loads can be neglected in conventional types of concrete road bridges but becomes critical in the design of slender structures like under-deck cable-stayed bridges. The novelty of the work presented in this article is that an innovative vehicle-bridge interaction model is employed, in which realistic wheel dimensions of heavy trucks, road roughness profiles and the cross slope of the road are considered in nonlinear dynamic analyses of detailed three-dimensional finite element models. An extensive parametric study is conducted to explore the influence of the bridge parameters such as the longitudinal and transverse cable arrangement and the support conditions, in addition to the load modelling, road quality, the wheel size, the transverse road slope and the vehicle position and speed on the response of under-deck cable-stayed bridges. It has been observed that the vibrations perceived by pedestrians can be effectively reduced by concentrating the cable-system below the deck at the bridge centreline. The Fourier amplitude spectrum of the acceleration at critical positions along the deck proved that the response of under-deck cable-stayed bridges is not dominated only by contributions at the fundamental mode and, consequently, the conventional deflection-based methods are not valid to assess the users comfort. Instead, Vehicle-Bridge Interaction analyses are recommended for detailed design, considering the wheel dimensions if the pavement quality is bad and/or if the wheel radius is large. Finally, we verify through multiple approaches that the comfort of pedestrian users is more critical than that of vehicle users. However, the comfort of vehicle users is shown to be significantly affected when the road quality is poor.

UWB 병사통신 단말기의 구현

In this paper, we present the implementation result of an UWB terminal for mobile tactical networks. Considering the major characteristics of the terminals of tactical networks, i) targeting voice service, ii) pedestrian users, and iii) demanding high network fidelity, we designed all protocol layers from physical layer to applications layer. The designed terminal is implemented in forms of software and hardware with RF ASIC, FPGA, DSP, and GPP. The functionality of the implemented terminal is validated by successfully performing 1 to 1 and multi-hop voice communication test.

Right or Left: Tactile Display for Route Guidance of Drivers

Abstract A tactile interface is an alternative channel of communication, which can be utilized to display navigational instructions in cars under high visual and auditory load conditions. We investigated the use of a tactile belt for turn-by-turn information presentation in cars, which was originally designed for the route guidance of blind and pedestrian users. Important information artifacts in turn-by-turn route guidance are the distance to an upcoming crossing and the direction to follow. The tactile belt was examined in a pilot study for presenting direction information in a car navigation system. The pilot study was used to explore first ideas of tactile encodings for direction presentation with the tactile belt. The study presented in this article compares these designs systematically for their use in tactile route guidance in the car. For this purpose we conducted an experiment with 10 participants on real urban roads to evaluate three different vibrotactile patterns. The results show that the “two vibrators front design” was significantly different than the “two vibrators side design”. The two vibrator front encoding was preferred significantly. The performance of the participants on two vibrators front design was significantly different than the two vibrators side design. The Friedman test showed a significant difference in the usability of all three vibrotactile patterns. A significant difference was found in the ease of use of two vibrators front encoding compared to other encodings. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative results, we conclude that the two vibrators front encoding is comparatively is the better design for presenting the direction information. Our findings will be helpful for the car industry in designing the tactile based car navigation systems.

Pedestrian-Focused Approach to Pedestrian – Boulevard Interaction in Terms of Landscape Features

The aim of this study was to examine the landscape features of densely used boulevards in Aydin, Turkey. Adnan Menderes and Atatürk boulevards were the main focus of this study, where the convenience and landscape values of pedestrian – boulevard interaction were analysed. The features and their usages were assessed. Refuges and sidewalks were analyzed according to living and non-living aspects and their visual contribution. Convenience for disabled usage and the intervention of the other usages were examined and to what extent the boulevards supported the pedestrian usage was assessed. The assessment has illustrated that the landscape features of Atatürk Boulevard were less convenient and should be improved. The average scores established by the questionnaire study have supported this finding. The living elements of Adnan Menderes Boulevard were scored 2.96 for central refuges, sidewalks 2.90; while Atatürk Boulevard was scored 2.00 and 2.13, respectively. On the other hand, the scores for the non-living elements of the boulevard features were 2.78 and 2.47 in Adnan Menderes while in Atatürk Boulevard the scores were 2.57 and 2.18. As a result, changing of the non-living features with ones that reflect the identity of the city could add value to the city environment. Insufficient features must be remedied and the boulevards should be improved with respect to the standards.

Motivos de uso y no uso de puentes peatonales en la Ciudad de México: la perspectiva de los peatones

To analyze the motives for using and not using pedestrian bridges (PB). A cross-sectional survey was conducted of a sample of pedestrian users and non-users of PB; a logistic regression model was used to analyze the motives for use and non-use. The prevalence of non-use was 50.5 % of 813 surveyed pedestrians; the principal reason to use a PB was safety, and not to use it was "laziness". There were significant differences when analyzing the reason of non-use in the age groups 19 to 36 years, adjusted for education and physical characteristics of the PB ([aOR=1.7; 95 % CI=1.06-2.86] and [ORa.1.9; 95 % CI=1.14-3.33], respectively). The results of this study allow us to identify important aspects to consider--from the perspective of the pedestrians--when constructing new PB and improving existing PB to increase use in areas with a high risk of pedestrian injuries.

The Rumelhart Prize at 10

William Bechtel, Marlene Behrmann, Nick Chater, Robert J. Glushko, Robert L. Goldstone, Paul Smolensky Department of Philosophy, University of California at San Diego Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University Department of Psychology, University College London School of Informatics, University of California at Berkeley Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

Delivery of pedestrian real-time location and routing information to mobile architectural guide

The research presented in this paper focuses on the use of different computing and wireless techniques and technological systems for real-time navigation support and location based information delivery for a pedestrian user interacting with city architectural information system on a digital handheld device while on the move. In this research case, the use of basic GPS receiver, Dijkstra algorithm, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)/Near Field Communication (NFC) systems and 2 Dimensional (2D) barcode technologies was examined and the potential for the use of WiFi and mobile cells is noted. This paper explores the virtue and shortcomings of each in order to determine the best possible integrated solution. The suggested integration will locate the pedestrian user in the virtual city representation on location, informs the user about buildings and other artefacts relating to the site where s/he is currently located and guide the user to a next point of interest efficiently.

Finding Your Way around Heritage Sites: The Delivery of Digital Information to Mobile Devices

An information enriched 3D digital city model connected wirelessly with the real-time user interaction has the potential to deliver an effective piece in the pervasive computing jigsaw. Real-time location awareness can contribute to the effective delivery of 3D digital city models and associated information to small mobile devices. Location awareness is also one of the vital elements of ubiquitous computing systems; together the mobile hardware and its interactive contents can be thought of as ‘everyware’ [1]. This paper describes the work -undertaken with different technological systems that have potential for pedestrian location sensing connecting the pedestrian user with real and virtual environments simultaneously. In particular we look at how users can be correctly located and efficiently informed about buildings and artefacts that are part of the spectrum of built forms that together are referred to as Architectural Heritage sites.

Optimized tracking for cooperative sensor systems in multipath environments

Abstract. In a cooperative sensor system for pedestrian protection, a pedestrian and other road users exchange data by means of radio frequency communication. In the proposed system, the pedestrian carries a transponder which is interrogated by a vehicle and sends an anonymous identification (ID) sequence. By decoding the ID, the interrogation unit in the vehicle detects the presence of the transponder. Evaluating the incident wave of the transponder's answer, a localisation is possible. In the proposed localization system, the measurement results can be distorted by multipath propagation. Multipath errors result if signals of the same transponder arrive simultaneously at the receiver unit from different directions. In this case, erroneous distances and angles are measured. Because the signals arriving from different directions contain the same transponder ID, they can be assigned to their origin. One of the challenges in post-processing for signal improvement is enhancing the selection of the correct position information by making assumptions about the pedestrian's movement and by knowing the vehicle's current driving parameters. Additionally, information contained in multipath signals is used to form a better estimate for the true position of the transponder. To overcome the problems related to multipath propagation effects, a method is proposed that estimates the origin of a multipath signal and maps the distorted position information back to the true position. A fusion of tracked direct positions and mapped multipath signals leads to an improvement in positioning accuracy.

Bounded Dimensioning of Multitraffic Next-Generation Mobile Networks

Next-generation mobile networks (NGMNs) are envisaged to offer interconnectivity among existing and emerging wireless technologies through a common Internet Protocol (IP)-based packet network. Interconnectivity through a common framework will enable individual networks to independently evolve (adoption/modification of a new/current system), allow new technologies to seamlessly integrate with the existing framework, and facilitate ubiquitous roaming for the mobile users. Dimensioning provides a theoretical bound for provisioning the required NGMN capacity to meet the projected traffic demand that arises from the participating networks. Although conventional network dimensioning (e.g., second generation, third generation, etc.) encompasses radio and core networks, the independence of networks within the NGMN framework confines its dimensioning process to the core network. Based on cell loading bounds (the number of users that are simultaneously supported in a cell), future traffic projection, and data rate variability, this paper proposes a dimensioning algorithm that derives an approximate estimate bound of core network elements [the number of base stations/access points (BSs/APs) per access router (AR), the number of ARs per mobility anchor point (MAP), and the number of MAPs per gateway (GW)]. The estimate bound is governed by the appropriate selection of the wired link capacities. A macrocell-based approach is considered within the proposed hierarchical NGMN architecture to address stationary, pedestrian, and vehicular users.