moving to blogger

I have copied this blog over to urbanhealthgis.blogspot.com and will be posting there until further notice.

The main reason is that I want to edit the template and add scripts.

New GPS in Health Research Network (GPS-HRN) website

The GPS in Health Research Network (GPS-HRN) is an international network of academics and health researchers interested in GPS technology.

The new website is now live www.gps-hrn.org

Built Environment and Schools

Here are some websites related to the built environment and schools

Travel to School

Feet First – helping NZ primary schools promote walking.

Safe Routes to School – a US network to advance the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) movement in the United States.  SRTS can provide a variety of important benefits to children and their communities, including increasing physical activity, reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality, and enhancing neighborhood safety.

Learning about the Built Environment in Schools

Engaging Places – a built environment education project looking at the supply and demand of built environment education in UK schools.

UNSW Built Environment – schools and community engagement

 

I know this blog looks ugly…

But have been too busy calculating access to gaming machine venues across NZ to pretty it up. The gambling access calculations have not been without problems. Will post on problems and solutions when I finish calculating…

Free/Open Source Research Tools

The International Journal of Conservation (Oryx) has a good list of free and open source research tools.

Zotero is my favourite.

URBAN methods paper published

The research design and methods paper for the URBAN (Understanding the Relationship Between physical Activity and Neighbourhood) study has been published in BMC Public Health. This is the project where I calculated walkability for neighbourhoods and use this to select neighbourhoods with high and low walkability for the study.

Vipers and Vampires: Measuring Oil Vulnerability

Had a very interesting visitor yesterday: Jago Dodson from the Urban Research Program at Griffith University in Australia. Jago has published research on measurement of Oil Vulnerability in Australian cities eg:

Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City: Assessing Socioeconomic Risks from Higher Urban Fuel Prices (Dodson and Sipe, 2007)
Shocking the Suburbs: Urban Location, Housing Debt and Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City (Dodson and Sipe, 2006)

Oil vulnerability is measured by combining various census variables (mode of transport to work, number of cars in a household) and socioeconomic data (SEIFA) to produce the VIPER (Vulnerability Index for Petrol Expense Rise).

The VAMPIRE (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage,Petrol and Inflation Risks and Expenditure) is a measure of oil and mortgage vulnerability and includes mortgage information.

I decided to try this for a NZ city. Here is a quick lo-res attempt at an Auckland VIPER:

VIPER index from 2006 census data. Dark = more vulnerable to oil price increases. Light = less vulnerable.

Now I just need to find some mortgage data, cause even though VIPER is a pretty cool name, I love the idea of creating a VAMPIRE index!

Health and The Built Environment Seminar

Yesterday Reid Ewing, a Research Professor at the National Center for Smart Growth, visited SHORE and gave a talk that touched on various aspects of the relationship between the Built Environment and Public Health.

He talked about the sprawl index they developed, which is comprised of: low density, highly segregated land use, lack of centering, and poor street connectivity. Low accessibility is also a characteristic of sprawl.

Sprawl has been linked to outcomes like: increased VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled), worse air quality, climate change, and traffic safety.

Climate change and traffic safety were new ideas things for me.

Reid also mentioned the 6 “D” variables that influence travel at the meso and micro scale: Density, Diversity, Design, Demographics, Distance to transit, and Destination accessibility.

Some of those D’s are relatively straightforward. Design is more complicated to measure but the key point is that “human scale” design is good.

A very interesting comment that Reid made was that Destination accessibility is the most important variable in terms of VMT. This relates to the CO2 project ie my model which measures change in accessibility under different transport scenarios.

Auckland Harbour bridge walkway/cycleway

Petition for a walkway /cycleway across the Auckland Harbour bridge:

Get Across

conference deadlines

Gosh it is busy. Abstract after abstract after abstract…

The Australasian Transport Research Forum 2008 abstract deadline was yesterday. Managed to get something in on time. Although if it gets accepted, then I only have a month to do the analysis AND write the paper. On top of everything else. Hmmm.

The GeoCart 08 paper is due next Monday. Have lots of ideas relating to the Mauri project, perhaps too many, but I haven’t written anything, so I think I might have to give the full paper thing a miss, and settle for just an abstract and presentation.

Then the New Zealand Geographical Society 2008 conference abstracts are due the following week. Still thinking about whether to do something for this conference. Maybe two or even three things. That would be efficient. Two birds. One stone.

And all the papers to write as a result. Hmmm… I’m not even going to many conferences this year!