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Elements of the Street and its Users – iCity webinar series #4 of 5
June 15, 2020 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The fourth in the five-webinar series presented by iCity, Elements of the Street and its Users features four presentations.
1. A ‘Gamification’ Survey Approach to Assessing Parking Behaviour – Mehdi Nourinejad, Bo Wang
iCity Park investigates on-street parking choices made by drivers. Deciding where to park involves complicated trade-offs between cost of parking, cost of fines for illegal parking, parking availability, probability of a ticket, information availability, and distance from destination. Given the challenge of assessing these trade-offs by drivers we use a novel ‘gamification’ approach to develop a survey about parking behaviour. This presentation outlines the survey and the results of a behavioural model of parking choices based on the data we collected. The model assesses the impact of parking information systems, and other policies such as parking price, illegal parking fine, and enforcement levels.
Speakers
Dr. Mehdi Nourinejad is an assistant professor at the Civil Engineering Department of York University. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto and worked for two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Rotman School of Management. Mehdi’s research focuses on optimal planning and control of transportation systems in smart cities with autonomous vehicles. He has published his research in several peer-reviewed journals and he is on the editorial board of “Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review.” His research on autonomous vehicles has received media coverage and is published in outlets including Forbes, University of Toronto Engineering News, Popular Science, Design Quarterly, Global News, Gizmag, Science Daily, and Tech Xplore.
Bo Wang completed his BASc and MASc at the University of Toronto, supervised by Professor Matthew Roorda, with a research focus on parking behaviour investigation, including survey design, and multiple logit models development.
2. Capturing Pedestrian Tours and Activities through Smartphone Data: Lessons Learned – Ming Xiaomeng Xu
To improve the representation of the behavioral demand for travel, travel forecasting models have shifted from being trip-based to activity-based. Pedestrian tours both link pedestrian activities and related trips and reflect the access mode, sequence, frequency, and duration of scheduled pedestrian activities. Process-oriented experiences learned throughout the data collection and analysis will be discussed. From designing and generating the travel diary, assessing the value of GPS travel data, to extracting pedestrian activities and tours from smartphone data, linking the pedestrian tours to locational attributes and urban forms.
Speaker
Ming Xiaomeng Xu is a PhD candidate working with the Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative (WPTI) led by Dr. Jeff Casello, University of Waterloo. She has a BE in Software Engineering and a Master of Community and Regional Planning (MCRP) from Iowa State University. Her research uses automatically-collected trip data to study pedestrians’ travel behavior for use in planning studies. Ming’s interests lie in active transportation and their impacts on healthy and environmentally-friendly neighborhoods and communities.
3. A Dashboard Tool for Mapping and Evaluation of Complete Streets in Toronto – Greice Mariano, Matthew Roorda
The iCity Complete Streets Dashboard, developed by iCity researchers at the Visual Analytics Lab from OCAD University and UTTRI, is an interactive web-based dashboard visualization tool designed to help urban planners and engineers design, assess and visualize the features and benefits of Complete Streets. This work builds on literature surveys on “best practices” in Complete Street design conducted in 2015 and a novel 3D animated survey conducted in 2016, in which iCity researchers identified priorities and competing interests that must inform the design. The iCity Complete Streets Dashboard will soon be implemented within the Esri product suite.
Speakers
Dr. Greice C. Mariano is a postdoctoral research fellow in Data Visualization at the Visual Analytics Lab (VAL), OCAD University. She earned her MASc and PhD in Computer Science in 2018 and 2013, respectively, at the Institute of Computing (IC) from University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo State, Brazil. In 2009, she graduated in Information Technology at the Faculty of Technology, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her experience and main research interest is related to the investigation and use of visualization techniques to explore multidimensional and multivariate temporal data. She also has experience in software development, as well as information system with emphasis in corporate web applications. As a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Visual Analytics Lab, she has been working on iCity-ORF project, collaborating with the development of user-centred visualization tools.
Matthew Roorda is a Professor of Civil and Mineral Engineering and has been faculty at the University of Toronto since 2005. Dr. Roorda obtained his P.Eng. in 1999. He completed his BEng at McMaster University, and his MASc and PhD degrees at the University of Toronto. Dr. Roorda has extensive experience in the development of new models of urban systems (freight and passenger), the use of those models for forecasting and analysis, and in supporting data collection initiatives. Dr. Roorda’s research interests include urban freight transportation, freight planning and operations, freight and passenger travel survey methods, city logistics, agent-based simulation, parking and curbside management, emissions analysis, activity-based travel demand modelling, and firm behaviour. Dr. Roorda is an experienced teacher at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Dr. Roorda is a Canada Research Chair in Freight Transportation and Logistics. Dr. Roorda is also co-chair of the University of Toronto Infrastructure Engineering Program, and he is the Chair of the Smart Freight Centre, a three-university research centre focused on freight research and implementation projects across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
4. KidScore: Child-Friendly Cities Assessment Tool – Josh Fullan and Susie Saliola
The KidScore is an engagement tool and metric for evaluating the child-friendliness of urban places. It measures and scores what matters to kids and youth in cities and towns, and provides decision makers with actionable data to improve quality of life at the neighborhood level.
Speakers
Josh Fullan brings over 15 years’ experience of delivering successful projects for governments, communities, and private enterprise in public consultation, community facilitation, education and engagement. In 2019, Josh acted as Project Lead for the City of Toronto’s KidScore Pilot, the City of Vaughan’s Traffic Management Strategy Communications and Engagement program, and the Halton District School Board’s Stakeholder Engagement Plan for its next Multi-Year Plan. He also acted as Strategic Advisor for the City of Toronto Children’s Services’ Strategic Plan, facilitating community workshops and discussions in diverse Toronto neighbourhoods. He is currently leading a national study on the impact of COVID-19 social and physical distancing on Canadian children and youth, and acting as a stakeholder and community relations advisor on a number of development and infrastructure projects.
Susie Saliola is an Education and Research GIS Analyst at Esri Canada’s Toronto office where she provides support for various teaching, learning, and research projects, facilitates workshops for both entry level and experienced GIS users, and works with different partner organizations to create meaningful maps and apps. Susie has a special interest in using GIS for community research, engagement, and development. Susie’s background includes doing GIS work for municipal planning, public health, and international non-profit organizations. She has an M.Sc. in Physical Geography with a specialty in GIS and Remote Sensing from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from York University.
Note: Registration closes Monday, June 15, at 10:59 a.m. and Zoom details will be forwarded to all registrants by email via Eventbrite at 11 a.m.
Click here for PDF of full webinar series agenda, speakers and registration links.
About this webinar series
This webinar series, hosted by UTTRI Executive Director Dr. Judy Farvolden, will summarize, share and celebrate the research initiatives and innovations produced over the course of the project, wrapping up with a preview of research proposed for iCity 2.0.
The online presentations are scheduled over five days as shown below. Admission is free and all are welcome. Registration for each webinar is required.
– June 8, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.: Ontologies and Platforms
– June 10, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.: Visualization
– June 12, 2020, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.: Foundations for Planning and Operations
– June 15, 2020, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.: Elements of the Street and its Users
– June 17, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.: The Long View and Next Steps
Details and registration links for all webinars
About iCity: Urban Informatics for Sustainable Metropolitan Growth
The iCity: Urban Informatics for Sustainable Metropolitan Growth project is coming to a close after five years of successful collaboration between UTTRI, OCAD-U and University of Waterloo. Led by Principal Investigator and UTTRI Director, Dr. Eric Miller, the goal of iCity was to find innovative ways to improve urban transportation system performance and design efficient, sustainable cities for the well-being of individuals and society.
iCity researchers co-created innovative ways to improve urban transportation system performance through the design of complete streets, understanding parking behaviour, improving transit resilience, exploring the behaviours of pedestrians, and extending our understanding of the interactions between land use and transportation. Rigorous transportation research, built on a foundation of data, ontologies and platforms was effectively enabled by novel visualizations, resulting in a suite of data standards, dashboards and tools we hope will be useful to our iCity partners and others.
iCity: Urban Informatics for Sustainable Metropolitan Growth is funded by the Ontario Research Fund, Research Excellence, Round 7.