ERI: From Data to Design: Enhancing Pedestrian Infrastructure for Well-Being through Mobile Sensing and Experience Sampling in the Wild

该工程研究启动（ERI）奖将推进研究，以了解行人基础设施对幸福的各个方面的影响，包括情绪，压力和认知能力。行人基础设施在影响幸福指标方面发挥着至关重要的作用，可以鼓励或阻止步行作为一种交通方式，即使在有安全人行道的地区。透过采用创新的人体感应技术，该项目将建立一个全面的行人数据收集框架。通过与焦点小组中的从业人员和道路使用者合作，将使用沉浸式虚拟环境开发和评估替代基础设施设计。这项研究弥合了现实世界的数据，基础设施设计和步行采用的行为方面之间的差距差距。该项目有可能通过数据驱动的见解推动城市规划，设计和公共政策的积极变化。由此产生的自然主义数据集可以使行为科学，心理学和计算机科学等各个学科的研究受益。该项目将为研究生和本科生研究人员以及博士生带来机会。目前的行人研究主要集中在安全性方面，在与健康相关的数据方面存在很大差距，尤其是在现实环境中。幸福指标虽然包括身体方面，但包括不同的参数，如感知压力、效价、唤醒和情绪指标、创造力、社会互动和认知能力等因素。本研究的第一个组成部分介绍了一种新的自然主义框架，全面监测和收集数据的各个方面的行人福祉。该框架通过专门设计的应用程序将来自移动的传感设备（如智能手表）的数据与野外体验采样技术智能地整合在一起。在第二部分中，该框架应用于郊区，以创建首个同类的纵向和自然主义数据集，解决行人健康数据稀缺的问题。这一部分将产生定量和定性模型，将基础设施要素与现实世界的行人健康指标联系起来，采用观察研究和计算机视觉技术。该项目将开发热图，突出显示与不同福祉指标相关的区域，这些指标将与更广泛的研究社区共享。第三个组成部分将产生初步准则，以确定考虑到人类福祉的行人基础设施的设计缺陷。最后，沉浸式虚拟环境将被用于客观和主观地评估替代设计，在施工前完成改善行人基础设施的循环。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) award will advance research in understanding the impact of pedestrian infrastructure on various aspects of well-being, including emotions, stress, and cognitive abilities. Pedestrian infrastructure plays a crucial role in influencing well-being metrics and can either encourage or discourage walking as a mode of transportation, even in areas with safe walkways. By employing innovative human sensing techniques, this project will establish a comprehensive pedestrian data collection framework. Through collaboration with practitioners and road users in focus groups, alternative infrastructure designs will be developed and evaluated using immersive virtual environments. This research bridges the gap between real-world data, infrastructure design, and behavioral aspects of walking adoption. This project has the potential to drive positive changes in urban planning, design, and public policy through data-driven insights. The resulting naturalistic dataset can benefit research in various disciplines such as behavioral science, psychology, and computer science. This project will bring opportunities for graduate and undergraduate researchers as well as Ph.D. students from all walks of life to learn, grow, become trained in an academic environment, and contribute to the science of human-centered infrastructure design.Current pedestrian research predominantly concentrates on safety, leaving a substantial gap in well-being-related data, especially in real-world settings. Well-being metrics while including physical aspects, encompass different parameters such as perceived stress, valence, and arousal and emotion metrics, creativity, social interactions, and cognitive abilities among other factors. The first component of this study introduces a novel naturalistic framework to comprehensively monitor and collect data on various aspects of pedestrian well-being. This framework intelligently integrates data from mobile sensing devices, such as smartwatches, with in-the-wild experience sampling techniques through a specifically designed app. In the second component, this framework is applied in a suburban area to create a first-of-its-kind, longitudinal, and naturalistic dataset, addressing the scarcity of pedestrian well-being data. This component will yield quantitative and qualitative models connecting infrastructural elements with real-world pedestrian well-being metrics, employing observational studies and computer vision techniques. The project will develop heatmaps highlighting regions associated with different well-being metrics that will be shared with broader research communities. The third component will result in preliminary guidelines for identifying design flaws in pedestrian infrastructure considering human well-being. Lastly, Immersive Virtual Environments will be utilized to assess alternative designs objectively and subjectively, closing the loop in enhancing pedestrian infrastructure prior to construction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.