Investigating the Relation between Walkability and the Changes in Pedestrian Policy through Wearable Sensing

Abstract

Since the enhancement of pedestrian rights, various pedestrian-related laws and policies have been implemented to enhance walkability. However, although laws and policies have been implemented to improve walkability, the quantitative measurement of walkability was insufficient in previous studies. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the walkability of three experimental sites with different built periods using a wearable sensor. This study aims to overcome the limitations of previous studies and to confirm the applicability of pedestrian-related laws and policies. Accordingly, 30 subjects were recruited to participate in the experiment. Gait data were collected using the inertial measurement unit sensor of a smartphone. Based on the collected data, a similarity index was calculated by comparing the reference gait with the gait at each experimental site using dynamic time warping. The closer the calculated result is to 0, the higher is the similarity, that is, the walkability is high. The results of this study can be used as both a monitoring tool for pedestrian policy and an actual condition survey tool. Moreover, these results are expected to contribute to a pedestrian evaluation system using citizen sensing in smart cities in the future.