Abstract

Designing Healthy Communities: Evaluating Neighborhood Walking Environments with GIS-based Tools
Track: Health and Human Services
Author(s): Cynthia Scully, Megan Wier

Walkability and pedestrian safety are critical components of healthy and vibrant communities. Developing practical planning and forecasting methods to assess pedestrian needs could help evaluate barriers to walking and reduce pedestrian injuries. The San Francisco Department of Public Health has created GIS-based tools to assess pedestrian environmental quality and predict pedestrian injuries based on built environment characteristics. These tools employ GIS to display the quality of the street-level walking environment and spatially predict pedestrian injuries on a census tract level. We used a community-based approach to apply these methods to a San Francisco neighborhood, and incorporated local resident concerns into the project design. This presentation will provide a description of the GIS-based pedestrian tools and illustrate how these tools can be used to connect people to their environment in order to address pedestrian facility design and its impact on health.

Cynthia Scully
San Francisco Department of Public Health
1390 Market Street
San Francisco, CA , California 94102
United States
Phone: 415-252-3989
E-mail: cyndy.comerford@sfdph.org

Megan Wier
San Francisco Department of Public Health
1390 Market Street, Suite 910
San Francisco, CA , California 94102
United States
Phone: 415-252-3972
E-mail: megan.wier@sfdph.org