A Pilot Study Mapping Citizens’ Interaction with Urban Nature

Ferrara, Enrico; Liotta, Antonio; Erhan, Laura; Ndubuaku, Maryleen U.; Giusto, Daniele D.; Richardson, Miles; Sheffield, David; McEwan, Kirsten

doi:10.1109/dasc/picom/datacom/cyberscitec.2018.00-21

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Altogether, the reviewed smart city health interventions displayed a significant level of heterogeneity with respect to their strategies, tools, methods, aims, and required resources. Rather than one dominant set of concepts being observed across studies, numerous delivery methods including augmented reality [90], IoT frameworks [97], GPS tracking [76], mobile phone applications [77], and sensing technologies [86] were documented. Interestingly, within this heterogeneity, the nature of interventions and their evaluations appeared to reflect some of the notions of the smart city 2.0 paradigm, specifically the tenets of a bottom-up approach [14] and emphasis on more citizen-focused processes [20][21][22][23].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Place of residence as it related to concerns dealing with the natural environment and its specific features was often built into interventions as one of the explicitly stated research designs and outcomes. Specifically, evaluated location-based or time-space concepts included mental health outcomes based on exposure to different natural features (e.g., trees, birds, water) in urban built environments [76], citizens' social interactions with nature in urban green areas [77], mood and mindfulness benefits derived from time spent in local outdoor or natural environments [78], wellness benefits of various natural environments [79], and well-being improvements generated from time in urban green spaces [80]. In this same vein, natural environment place of residence considerations were also observed more in the delivery of a smartphone application that promoted place-specific weather tracking and information updates designed for asthma management [81].…”

Section: Place Of Residencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most notably, a number of articles examined an outcome linked to social capital. Types of citizen social interactions taking place within urban green areas [77], contextual awareness and social interaction [92], social activity monitoring in healthcare settings [88], social isolation [93], and social cohesion and socially active lifestyles during the aging process [7] were all documented. More specific accounts of social inclusion were seen in some of the implications expounded on, specifically those explaining how smart technologies could potentially help to convey emotional states and better connect individuals [94], create more opportunities for people to make significant social connections with each other [95], and help build better support for caregivers [96].…”

Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

Buttazzoni

Veenhof

Minaker

2020

IJERPH

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Urban infrastructure systems responsible for the provision of energy, transportation, shelter, and communication to populations are important determinants of health and health equity. The term “smart city” has been used synonymously with other terms, such as “digital city”, “sustainable city”, and “information city”, even though definitional distinctions exist between terms. In this review, we use “smart cities” as a catch-all term to refer to an emerging concept in urban governance practice and scholarship that has been increasingly applied to achieve public health aims. The objective of this systematic review was to document and analyze the inclusion of equity considerations and dimensions (i.e., a measurement, analytical, or dialectical focus on systematic disparities in health between groups) in smart city interventions aimed to improve human health and well-being. Systematic searches were carried out in the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Psychological Information Database (PsycINFO), the PubMed database from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Elsevier’s database Scopus, and Web of Science, returning 3219 titles. Ultimately, 28 articles were retained, assessed, and coded for their inclusion of equity characteristics using the Cochrane PROGRESS-Plus tool (referring to (P) place of residence, (R) race, (O) occupation, (G) gender, (R) religion, (E) education, (S) socio-economic status (SES), and (S) social capital). The most frequently included equity considerations in smart city health interventions were place of residence, SES, social capital, and personal characteristics; conversely, occupation, gender or sex, religion, race, ethnicity, culture, language, and education characteristics were comparatively less featured in such interventions. Overall, it appears that most of intervention evaluations assessed in this review are still in the early testing phases, and thus did not include or feature robust evaluative designs or commercially available technologies

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Place Of Residencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

Buttazzoni

Veenhof

Minaker

2020

IJERPH

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“…As indicated earlier the strict eligibility/exclusion criteria used in this systematic map resulted in those studies, which exclusively addressed green space, without a comparator, being excluded. For example, Ferrara et al [29] conducted a pilot study aimed at better understanding how citizens interact with urban green areas and purposely excluded the non-green built environment, as they did not consider it relevant for their study.…”

Section: Lack Of Studies To Support Policy Decisions Outside Urban Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

How are nature-based solutions contributing to priority societal challenges surrounding human well-being in the United Kingdom: a systematic map

et al. 2020

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Background The concept of nature-based solutions (NBS) has evolved as an umbrella concept to describe approaches to learning from and using nature to create sustainable socio-ecological systems. Furthermore, NBS often address multiple societal challenges that humans are facing in the medium to long-term and as such can enhance human well-being (HWB). This study was commissioned to fulfil the need for a targeted systematic evidence map on the linkage between NBS and HWB to support focused research going forward that addresses the key knowledge needs of policy makers in the UK and beyond. Methods A consultation with policy makers and government agency staff (n = 46), in the four component parts of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) was conducted in spring 2019. This identified four key societal challenges of operational experience lacking a scientific evidence base. Three of these challenges related to management issues: NBS cost-efficacy, governance in planning, environmental justice. The fourth challenge related to the acoustic environment (soundscape). Using systematic methods, this study searched for and identified studies that assessed NBS on HWB with regard to these four selected societal challenges. Review findings A total of 7287 articles were returned from the systematic search and screened for suitability at the level of title and abstract. A total of 610 articles passed screening criteria to warrant full text screening. Of these, 115 studies met the full text criteria for eligibility in the final systematic map database. Included studies were coded for twelve NBS interventions and ten HWB related outcome categories. Most of the evidence reviewed referred to natural, blue or green infrastructure in the urban environment and focused on economic, material and health aspects of HWB. Less than 2% of studies identified in the searches robustly reported the role of NBS actions or interventions on HWB compared with non-NBS actions or interventions Conclusion This systematic map found the evidence base is growing on NBS-HWB linkages, but significant biases persist in the existing literature. There was a bias in favour of the urban environment and restoration studies focused on conservation aspects, with only a few studies investigating the full suite of advantages to HWB that can be delivered from NBS actions and interventions. The soundscape was the least studied of the societal challenges identified as being of key importance by policy makers, with cost-efficiency the most reported. There was a lack of robust long-term studies to clearly test the potential of NBS regarding the HWB outcomes compared with non-NBS alternatives. This lack of robust primary knowledge, covering all four key societal challenges identified, confirms that the knowledge gaps identified by the policy makers persist, and highlights a clear research need for long-term, transdisciplinary studies that focus on comparisons between NBS and non-NBS alternatives

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“…In [32], we analyzed the interaction of users with the green spaces through the app utilization and we did a chart of the top 10 areas based on the number of observations. In this paper we look at a similar analysis.…”

Section: Comparison Between Objective and Subjective Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Objective and Subjective Data in Social Sciences: Implications for Smart Cities

et al. 2019

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The ease of deployment of digital technologies and the Internet of Things gives us the opportunity to carry out large-scale social studies and to collect vast amounts of data from our cities. In this paper, we investigate a novel way of analyzing data from social sciences studies by employing machine learning and data science techniques. This enables us to maximize the insight gained from this type of studies by fusing both objective (sensor information) and subjective data (direct input from the users). The pilot study is concerned with better understanding the interactions between citizens and urban green spaces. A field experiment was carried out in Sheffield, U.K., involving 1870 participants for two different time periods (7 and 30 days). With the help of a smartphone app, both objective and subjective data were collected. Location tracking was recorded as people entered any of the publicly accessible green spaces. This was complemented by textual and photographic information that users could insert spontaneously or when prompted (when entering a green space). By employing data science and machine learning techniques, we identify the main features observed by the citizens through both text and images. Furthermore, we analyze the time spent by people in parks as well as the top interaction areas. This paper allows us to gain an overview of certain patterns and the behavior of the citizens within their surroundings and it proves the capabilities of integrating technology into large-scale social studies. INDEX TERMS Data analysis, data science, smart cities, social science, urban analytics, urban planning.

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A Pilot Study Mapping Citizens’ Interaction with Urban Nature

Cited by 8 publications

References 15 publications

Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

How are nature-based solutions contributing to priority societal challenges surrounding human well-being in the United Kingdom: a systematic map

Analyzing Objective and Subjective Data in Social Sciences: Implications for Smart Cities

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