“Digitalizing Walkability”: Comparing Smartphone-Based and Web-Based Approaches to Measuring Neighborhood Walkability in Singapore

ABSTRACT

We evaluated two digitally enabled approaches to measuring neighborhood walkability: a smartphone-based, on-site pedestrian environmental audit tool, WalkTracker (WTracker), and remote, Web-based (Web) observations. Specifically, we examined street segments and intersections of a neighborhood in Singapore assessing: (1) the Inter-Rater Reliability (IRR) of each approach; (2) the Inter-Method Reliability (IMR) across the two approaches; and (3) the average observation times of the two approaches. Each approach had high IRR for the land use and traffic-related domains, with the Web performing better than WTracker for land use. In these same two domains, the two tools were relatively consistent (high IMR), although higher agreement was found within the tools than across them (IRR higher than IMR). For subjective or fine-grained features, both approaches had low IRR, with the Web-based approach performing worse than the app-based approach. Performance across the instruments was also worse than the reliability of measurements within each instrument (IMR lower than IRR). Some items were not observable via the Web. In terms of observation time, there was no statistically significant time difference in measurements between the two observation methods, not including the round-trip travel time to the site. A hybrid approach, combining the two approaches, might be most appropriate.

KEYWORDS:

• Smartphone app-based
• on-site audit
• web-based audit
• Inter-Rater Reliability
• Inter-Method Reliability
• observation time comparison

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

We, especially, thank Dr Keng Hua Chong, Assistant Professor at SUTD, for his help with site selection and four SUTD undergraduate students, Jin Xi Ng, Lek Ee Kee, Rebecca Ong Mei Shi, and Kenneth Tung Jun Hong for the data collection.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Hae Young Yun was a SUTD-MIT postdoctoral fellow and is now a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at National University of Singapore (NUS).

Christopher Zegras is an associate professor of transportation and urban planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Daniel Heriberto Palencia Arreola is a developer of and project lead for Flocktracker (an Android-based platform for field data collection) at the Future Urban Mobility Interdisciplinary Research Group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) through the SUTD-MIT postdoctoral fellowship and by the National Research Foundation Singapore through the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology’s Future Urban Mobility IRG research program.