Projects

Projects I am currently involved in

Community Gambling Harm – calculating access to gaming machine venues across New Zealand

Reduced CO2 from Sustainable Household Travel – specific research question: ‘What is the social impact of reduced CO2 emissions from household travel.’

• Developing a GIS based household level model of accessibility that takes into account time budgets and individual/household level differences in accessibility. The model incorporates spatial microsimulation to create disaggregate household level data.
• Calculating a public transport accessibility index for the Auckland region
• Calculating a version of the VIPER for the Auckland region
• Investigating the relationship between urban form and household travel

URBAN (Understanding the Relationship Between physical Activity and Neighbourhoods) – we are investigating how neighbourhood differences in the walkability of the built environment are associated with variation in physical activity patterns and body size of residents.

• Calculating a walkability index for four NZ cities
• Selecting study neighbourhoods
• Creating maps for sampling

Completed projects I have been involved in

‘Te Mauri o te U-Kai-Po: intergenerational experiences of environments and wellbeing’- investigating Maori experiences of significant features of environments in which they live. Exploring with iwi what they consider are important sites in their local areas (eg. marae, whenua and other resources and taonga), and examines how and in what ways properties of place such as identity, belonging, resource access and kaitiakitanga are associated with health. Investigating use of GIS both in relation to this research and in supporting Maori health and wellbeing.

Moving through the built environment: where, how, and why – evaluating where, when, and how adults travel by combining GPS measurements, accelerometry, and GIS. Examining the relationship between commute distance, transport mode(s), and commute time. Determining the effect of built environment variables on the relationship between perceived and actual non-motorised transport.

Perceptions of Social Cohesiveness in New Zealand Neighbourhoods -