A vision of healthy urban design for NCD prevention
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: Centre for Public Health
Abstract
Non-communicable diseases (NCD), such as cancer, heart disease, type II diabetes mellitus, chronic respiratory conditions like asthma, and poor mental health, are some of the most common causes of death in the UK and Australia. The design of our cities play an important role in preventing these chronic diseases and have a significant consequent impact on the quality of life and life expectancy of their citizens. However, in a rapidly evolving urban age, urban designers, urban planners and public health practitioners still know surprisingly little about how best to design our cities in order to prevent NCD and their known risk factors.
This proposal is innovative because we are harnessing perspectives of scientists from a wide range of different disciplines across urban design, public health and computer science. Through novel methods, we aim to provide better understanding of how the design of our cities impacts on NCD and their known risk factors in the UK and Australia, and how we can best effect change for the better.
Our overarching aim is to generate evidence and tools to support the urban planning and health sectors to better understand how to design our cities to prevent NCD. We will also involve local citizens in discussions about our findings so they can effectively and powerfully advocate for change in their own cities. The research project has the following objectives:
1. Use new methods in computer vision and artificial intelligence to explore the relation between urban design and NCD in cities across the UK and Australia.
2. Investigate how different designs within cities impact on health inequalities including NCD.
3. Combine data from different sources to investigate the mechanisms by which the design of our cities causes NCD.
4. Learn lessons about how different ways of designing our cities prevent NCD and their known risk factors.
5. Develop a toolkit for action for local citizens, urban designers and planners, public health practitioners and policy makers, to help inform future policies and lead to powerful, actionable changes in the city.
6. To build a legacy of transdisciplinary research capacity in public health science, urban design and computer science, with clear pathways to impact.
The project involves 3 work packages. The first involves building the evidence base on the relationship between urban design and NCD. This will be comprised of two levels of analysis: the city level and individual level. This acknowledges that people's health is affected by their immediate environment and, at same time, by the way the entire city is organised. This will help us better understand which features of the built environment are associated with city designs, NCD and their known risk factors, such as not being physically active, having poor diet, smoking, consuming alcohol and being exposed to air pollution. A further work package will then test changes to the design of our cities to analyse how they will help prevent NCD and reduce known risk factors. The findings will help inform future policies and practices leading to actionable changes in the design of our cities to make them healthier places for people to live. Finally, we will develop a toolkit that urban designers and planners, public health practitioners, students, policymakers and local citizens can use to advocate and lobby for actionable healthy changes to their cities. At the end of the study we will meet with experts from different fields of research, to help us further interpret our findings and discover how they might apply to other contexts and cities to prevent NCD.
This proposal is innovative because we are harnessing perspectives of scientists from a wide range of different disciplines across urban design, public health and computer science. Through novel methods, we aim to provide better understanding of how the design of our cities impacts on NCD and their known risk factors in the UK and Australia, and how we can best effect change for the better.
Our overarching aim is to generate evidence and tools to support the urban planning and health sectors to better understand how to design our cities to prevent NCD. We will also involve local citizens in discussions about our findings so they can effectively and powerfully advocate for change in their own cities. The research project has the following objectives:
1. Use new methods in computer vision and artificial intelligence to explore the relation between urban design and NCD in cities across the UK and Australia.
2. Investigate how different designs within cities impact on health inequalities including NCD.
3. Combine data from different sources to investigate the mechanisms by which the design of our cities causes NCD.
4. Learn lessons about how different ways of designing our cities prevent NCD and their known risk factors.
5. Develop a toolkit for action for local citizens, urban designers and planners, public health practitioners and policy makers, to help inform future policies and lead to powerful, actionable changes in the city.
6. To build a legacy of transdisciplinary research capacity in public health science, urban design and computer science, with clear pathways to impact.
The project involves 3 work packages. The first involves building the evidence base on the relationship between urban design and NCD. This will be comprised of two levels of analysis: the city level and individual level. This acknowledges that people's health is affected by their immediate environment and, at same time, by the way the entire city is organised. This will help us better understand which features of the built environment are associated with city designs, NCD and their known risk factors, such as not being physically active, having poor diet, smoking, consuming alcohol and being exposed to air pollution. A further work package will then test changes to the design of our cities to analyse how they will help prevent NCD and reduce known risk factors. The findings will help inform future policies and practices leading to actionable changes in the design of our cities to make them healthier places for people to live. Finally, we will develop a toolkit that urban designers and planners, public health practitioners, students, policymakers and local citizens can use to advocate and lobby for actionable healthy changes to their cities. At the end of the study we will meet with experts from different fields of research, to help us further interpret our findings and discover how they might apply to other contexts and cities to prevent NCD.
Technical Summary
This project uses state-of-the-art approaches to (i) generate evidence on the impacts of urban planning in NCD and health inequalities in UK and Australian cities, and (ii) provide stakeholders engaged in the urban planning and health sectors with tools for advocacy and informing decisions to achieve healthier cities for all. In WP 1, we will expand the evidence base on the relationship between urban design and NCD. First, we will sample local-level images of all UK and Australian cities with populations > 100,000 to obtain detailed information of urban characteristics of interest (e.g., road, cycling networks, greenspace). A combined process using convolutional neural networks and self-organising maps will identify cities and locations that can be grouped according to consistencies in urban design both between and within cities. The ecological association between city and area types and NCD risk factors and outcomes will be estimated. Second, we will apply Bayesian networks onto prospective health cohorts with objective built environment data to investigate, at the individual level, the causal pathway between built environment, lifestyle factors, and NCD incidence, and effect modification by socioeconomic position. In WP 2, we will estimate the health impacts of actionable changes, at different scales, in urban design. Using health impact assessment modelling, we will calculate the NCD burden that could be averted if cities were to adopt urban features of healthier counterparts. A similar approach will be applied on finer-grained scale within all case study cities, enabling assessment of health impacts of changes in individual locations. WP 3 will provide an interactive web-based toolkit to enable urban designers, planners, policymakers and the public to engage with our findings and inform the decision-making cycle, co-designed with the intended users through a usability study involving participatory workshops and user-testing of early versions of the toolkit.
Planned Impact
Our partners have identified a range of beneficial impacts. We have designed our communication strategy (see Communication Plan) to maximise these benefits both for our partners and for our wider stakeholder community. Benefits range from a deeper understanding of how urban design and effective urban planning can prevent NCD, how future programmes and policies may be better able to harness the power of the built environment to generate meaningful changes in NCD risk factors and consequent incidence at the population level, and practical pathways for changes using a nearest-neighbour strategy. This range of benefits is briefly discussed below.
Promoting transdisciplinarity and ensuring stakeholder engagement will help us to deliver high-impact research, with multiple beneficiaries in the UK, Australia and beyond, including: the general public; public health practitioners; urban designers and planners; and policy makers across the UK and Australia. A number of academic beneficiaries are detailed elsewhere (see Academic Beneficiaries).
Considerable time and resources have been included in the grant to ensure that key stakeholders are involved throughout the study in order to maximise benefits and that the proposed collaborations are ongoing. Long term, we envisage such benefits to include the development of programmes and policies that utilise the urban environment for NCD prevention and reduced NCD risk factors, leading to better quality of life and life expectancy. Our Impact Advisory Panel will ensure that study findings are disseminated in a meaningful and appropriate manner. Ongoing development of the research series will provide benchmarks and a methodological platform for future researchers to launch additional research efforts from.
The general public will benefit through the practical application of this research and embodiment into planning regimes. We aim to increase public engagement through events undertaken by organisations with a remit for NCD prevention such as the Public Health Agency, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Town and Country Planning Association UK, Heart Foundation Australia, Diabetes Australia, the Australian Local Government Association, and the Planning Institute of Australia.
Urban design and planning practitioners will benefit from a deeper understanding of how urban design and effective planning can prevent NCDs and reduce NCD risk factors.
Public health practitioners will benefit from knowledge gained through the workshops hosted in partnership with our multi-disciplinary stakeholders, and delivered as part of the implementation of the Public Health Agency's Knowledge Management Strategy and the work of the Northern Ireland Public Health Research Forum (of which Kee was the inaugural Director). Parallel workshops will be planned for practitioners in the rest of the UK and Australia in collaboration with our project partners, such as Public Health England and the NIHR's Public Health Policy Advisory Board. These workshops will particularly focus on how best we can incorporate and elicit mechanisms of urban design and planning to inform NCD prevention policy and practice.
Policy makers and funders of research will find the research of value in assessing the public health priorities and novel approaches to NCD prevention and reduction of NCD risk factors. We have engaged with urban design experts from the outset, to ensure that this work will have long term policy relevance and impact. While the timelines for research and policy may not always be aligned, we will maintain our strong relationships with key decision makers to ensure that they have access to updates on new research and emerging results.
All beneficiaries will come together in a parallel plenary workshop in the UK and Australia of thought leaders (from public health, urban design, artificial intelligence) to build consensus and think about how changes might be effected within complex urban systems.
Promoting transdisciplinarity and ensuring stakeholder engagement will help us to deliver high-impact research, with multiple beneficiaries in the UK, Australia and beyond, including: the general public; public health practitioners; urban designers and planners; and policy makers across the UK and Australia. A number of academic beneficiaries are detailed elsewhere (see Academic Beneficiaries).
Considerable time and resources have been included in the grant to ensure that key stakeholders are involved throughout the study in order to maximise benefits and that the proposed collaborations are ongoing. Long term, we envisage such benefits to include the development of programmes and policies that utilise the urban environment for NCD prevention and reduced NCD risk factors, leading to better quality of life and life expectancy. Our Impact Advisory Panel will ensure that study findings are disseminated in a meaningful and appropriate manner. Ongoing development of the research series will provide benchmarks and a methodological platform for future researchers to launch additional research efforts from.
The general public will benefit through the practical application of this research and embodiment into planning regimes. We aim to increase public engagement through events undertaken by organisations with a remit for NCD prevention such as the Public Health Agency, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Town and Country Planning Association UK, Heart Foundation Australia, Diabetes Australia, the Australian Local Government Association, and the Planning Institute of Australia.
Urban design and planning practitioners will benefit from a deeper understanding of how urban design and effective planning can prevent NCDs and reduce NCD risk factors.
Public health practitioners will benefit from knowledge gained through the workshops hosted in partnership with our multi-disciplinary stakeholders, and delivered as part of the implementation of the Public Health Agency's Knowledge Management Strategy and the work of the Northern Ireland Public Health Research Forum (of which Kee was the inaugural Director). Parallel workshops will be planned for practitioners in the rest of the UK and Australia in collaboration with our project partners, such as Public Health England and the NIHR's Public Health Policy Advisory Board. These workshops will particularly focus on how best we can incorporate and elicit mechanisms of urban design and planning to inform NCD prevention policy and practice.
Policy makers and funders of research will find the research of value in assessing the public health priorities and novel approaches to NCD prevention and reduction of NCD risk factors. We have engaged with urban design experts from the outset, to ensure that this work will have long term policy relevance and impact. While the timelines for research and policy may not always be aligned, we will maintain our strong relationships with key decision makers to ensure that they have access to updates on new research and emerging results.
All beneficiaries will come together in a parallel plenary workshop in the UK and Australia of thought leaders (from public health, urban design, artificial intelligence) to build consensus and think about how changes might be effected within complex urban systems.
Organisations
- Queen's University Belfast (Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Melbourne (Collaboration)
- University of Southern California (Collaboration)
- University of Michigan (Collaboration)
- Washington University in St. Louis (Collaboration)
- RMIT University (Collaboration)
- Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel) (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE (Collaboration)
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Collaboration)
- University of Cambridge (Project Partner)
- AIA Group (International) (Project Partner)
Publications
Beck B
(2022)
Developing urban biking typologies: Quantifying the complex interactions of bicycle ridership, bicycle network and built environment characteristics
in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
Cheung P
(2022)
Daytime irrigation leads to significantly cooler private backyards in summer
in Urban Climate
Cheung P
(2022)
Irrigating urban green space for cooling benefits: the mechanisms and management considerations
in Environmental Research: Climate
Giles-Corti B
(2022)
Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done.
in The Lancet. Global health
Lipson M
(2023)
Evaluation of 30 urban land surface models in the Urban-PLUMBER project: Phase 1 results
in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society
Lipson M
(2022)
A Transformation in City-Descriptive Input Data for Urban Climate Models
in Frontiers in Environmental Science
Nice K
(2022)
Isolating the impacts of urban form and fabric from geography on urban heat and human thermal comfort
in Building and Environment
Seneviratne S
(2022)
Self-Supervised Vision Transformers for Malware Detection
in IEEE Access
Seneviratne S
(2022)
DALLE-URBAN: Capturing the urban design expertise of large text to image transformers
in Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications
Stevenson M,
(2021)
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Global Public Health
Description | Member of the WHO Europe Urban Preparedness Working Group |
Geographic Reach | Europe |
Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
Description | Designing healthy urban forms using artificial intelligence |
Amount | $24,764 (AUD) |
Organisation | University of Melbourne |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | Australia |
Start | 12/2022 |
End | 11/2023 |
Description | Expanding the Gateway Research Infrastructure on Exposome Studies for the Health and Retirement Study and the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol International Network of Studies |
Amount | £2,000,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | National Institutes of Health (NIH) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United States |
Start | 08/2022 |
End | 08/2024 |
Description | HSC RDO leveraged funding |
Amount | £38,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Northern Ireland HSC R&D |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2021 |
End | 05/2024 |
Description | Health Data Research UK (HDR UK): UKRI Innovation/Rutherford Fund Fellowship |
Amount | £195,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | STL/5528/19 |
Organisation | Public Health Agency (PHA) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 08/2019 |
End | 08/2023 |
Description | Urban analysis with computer vision |
Amount | $15,000 (AUD) |
Organisation | University of Melbourne |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | Australia |
Start | 12/2022 |
End | 11/2023 |
Title | Bayesian Belief Network to understand impact of urban design scenarios on non-communicable diseases |
Description | This research model employs a Bayesian Belief Network to analyze the complex interrelations between urban design and 9 Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs): breast cancer, COPD, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), dementia, depression, diabetes, lung cancer, and prostate cancer. It incorporates 41 nodes spanning various domains such as urban design, neighborhood environment, transportation, greenspace, demographics, socioeconomics, and health behaviors. With 176 edges, the model maps the intricate causal relationships and dependencies among these factors. Designed to serve as the computational engine behind the web tool "CityVision," it facilitates the testing of various urban design scenarios to understand their potential impacts on public health outcomes related to these NCDs. |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | By allowing urban designers to simulate the health impacts of differentstrategies, the model can serve as a tool for informed decision-making, promoting healthier environments. |
Description | NIH Gateway to Global Ageing Data |
Organisation | University of Michigan |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Extending the research using satellite and aerial imagery data to investigate the urban environment impacts on dementia risk and healthy ageing in Northern Ireland, the US and India as part of an application to the NIH. |
Collaborator Contribution | Our partners lead the NIH Gateway to Global Ageing Data, and provide access to global ageing data where we will link our urban environment data. |
Impact | We are currently preparing a funding application to the NIH. This is due to be submitted in May 2022. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | NIH Gateway to Global Ageing Data |
Organisation | University of Southern California |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Extending the research using satellite and aerial imagery data to investigate the urban environment impacts on dementia risk and healthy ageing in Northern Ireland, the US and India as part of an application to the NIH. |
Collaborator Contribution | Our partners lead the NIH Gateway to Global Ageing Data, and provide access to global ageing data where we will link our urban environment data. |
Impact | We are currently preparing a funding application to the NIH. This is due to be submitted in May 2022. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel) |
Country | Brazil |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | Imperial College London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | RMIT University |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | University of Cambridge |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | University of Melbourne |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility |
Organisation | Washington University in St Louis |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Developed and leading the series entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Collaborator Contribution | Invited co-authors on the paper series. |
Impact | We are developing a series of papers entitled "Public health equity, pandemic preparedness, and climate action: A planetary experiment in future-proofing urban mobility". |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | The Lancet Global Health series - Liveability |
Organisation | RMIT University |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Co-authors on 2 papers in The Lancet Global Health series on liveability led by Prof Billie Giles-Corti, RMIT. The papers have been accepted and due to be published May 2022. Publication: Giles-Corti et al with Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson. Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Publication: Lowe et al with Ruth Hunter. City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson contributed to drafting the manuscripts. Ruth Hunter provided data on policies and GIS in Belfast for the related analyses. Hunter |
Collaborator Contribution | RMIT partners led the series and writing of the papers. |
Impact | The Lancet Global Health series on liveability led by Prof Billie Giles-Corti, RMIT. The papers have been accepted and due to be published May 2022. Publication: Giles-Corti et al with Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson. Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Publication: Lowe et al with Ruth Hunter. City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | The Lancet Global Health series - Liveability |
Organisation | University of Melbourne |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Co-authors on 2 papers in The Lancet Global Health series on liveability led by Prof Billie Giles-Corti, RMIT. The papers have been accepted and due to be published May 2022. Publication: Giles-Corti et al with Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson. Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Publication: Lowe et al with Ruth Hunter. City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson contributed to drafting the manuscripts. Ruth Hunter provided data on policies and GIS in Belfast for the related analyses. Hunter |
Collaborator Contribution | RMIT partners led the series and writing of the papers. |
Impact | The Lancet Global Health series on liveability led by Prof Billie Giles-Corti, RMIT. The papers have been accepted and due to be published May 2022. Publication: Giles-Corti et al with Ruth Hunter and Mark Stevenson. Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). Publication: Lowe et al with Ruth Hunter. City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities. The Lancet Global Health (accepted). |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | University of Melbourne |
Organisation | University of Melbourne |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We led the UK funding application to the MRC for this award which was a collaborative call between the UK and Australia. Our team provide expertise in the urban environment, NCDs, public health modelling and causal inference. |
Collaborator Contribution | Our partners in Melbourne provide expertise in capturing urban environment factors from satellite and aerial imagery data using computer vision techniques. |
Impact | We have been awarded a jointly funded project from the MRC and NHMRC to undertake a 3 year programme of research exploring the urban environment on NCD prevention using computer vision techniques and big data approaches. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Title | City Vision dashboard |
Description | The team have developed a dashboard to highlight the data and publications from the project. This is regularly updated. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The dashboard is in development and has yet to be launched. |
URL | http://cityvision.ada.hal.davecutting.uk/ |
Title | CityVision (development version) |
Description | Web-platform to collate and make publicly available a range of data and analyses arising from the research project and that can be used to inform healthy urban design in cities of the UK and Australia. Our aim is to provide an open, online, secure, interactive platform to support and facilitate discussions, plans and actions of policymakers, governmental and non-governmental organizations, industry, research and communities. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Impact | No notable impact yet as the tool is in its beta version. We will make the platform available to policymakers, governmental and non-governmental organizations, industry, researchers and communities to inform healthy urban planning. |
URL | http://cityvision.ada.hal.davecutting.uk/ |
Description | 11th International Conference on Urban Climate, Sydney, 28 Aug-1 Sep 2023 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Kerry A. Nice, Negin Nazarian, Mathew J. Lipson, Melissa A. Hart, Sachith Seneviratne, Jason Thompson, Marzie Naserikia, Branislava Godic, and Mark Stevenson, Isolating the impacts of urban form and fabric from geography on urban heat and human thermal comfort, ICUC11, 11th International Conference on Urban Climate, Sydney, 28 Aug-1 Sep 2023. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | 11th International Conference on Urban Climate, Sydney, 28 Aug-1 Sep 2023 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Mathew Lipson, Sue Grimmond, Martin Best, Gab Abramowitz, Andrew Coutts, Nigel Tapper, Jong-Jin Baik, Meiring Beyers, Lewis Blunn, Souhail Boussetta, Elie Bou-Zeid, Martin G. De Kauwe, Cécile de Munck, Matthias Demuzere, Simone Fatichi, Krzysztof Fortuniak, Beom-Soon Han, Maggie Hendry, Yukihiro Kikegawa, Hiroaki Kondo, Doo-Il Lee, Sang-Hyun Lee, Aude Lemonsu, Tiago Machado, Gabriele Manoli, Alberto Martilli, Valéry Masson, Joe McNorton, Naika Meili, David Meyer, Kerry A. Nice, Keith W. Oleson, Seung-Bu Park, Michael Roth, Robert Schoetter, Andres Simon, Gert-Jan Steeneveld, Ting Sun, Yuya Takane, Marcus Thatcher, Aristofanis Tsiringakis, Mikhail Varentsov, Chenghao Wang, Zhi-Hua Wang, Andrew Pitman, The Urban-PLUMBER model evaluation project: Phase 1 results, ICUC11, 11th International Conference on Urban Climate, Sydney, 28 Aug-1 Sep 2023. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | 2023 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Leveraging Segment-Anything model for automated zero-shot road width extraction from aerial imagery N Xu, K Nice, S Seneviratne, M Stevenson 2023 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Conference presentation: Self-Supervision. Remote Sensing and Abstraction: Representation Learning Across 3 Million Locations |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Conference presentation: Self-Supervision. Remote Sensing and Abstraction: Representation Learning Across 3 Million Locations. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9647061 Authors: Sachith Seneviratne, Kerry A Nice, Jasper S Wijnands, Mark Stevenson, Jason Thompson Publication date: 2021 Conference: 2021 Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA) Pages: 01-08 Publisher: IEEE |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9647061 |
Description | UK Department for Transport Senior Research Advisor visit to Queen's University Belfast |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Series of presentations of selected research activities led by Queen's University Belfast to UK Department for Transport Senior Research Advisor. The presentations showcased the expected and observed impacts of transport-related research conducted by the University that could inform future actions of the UK Department for Transport. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | UKRI-NHMRC Built Environment & Prevention Research Grant Recipient Workshop [3rd Feb 2021] |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Members of the research team participated in a workshop, hosted by RMIT, of the projects funded under the UKRI-NHMRC NCD prevention and built environment funding call. Small group discussions about modelling techniques, and access to health and GIS data were held. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | UKRI-NHMRC Built Environment & Prevention Research Grant Recipient Workshop [8th Dec 2022] |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Members of the research team participated in a workshop of the projects funded under the UKRI-NHMRC NCD prevention and built environment funding call. Small group discussions about overing where to next, extensions of this program and/or opportunities to facilitate collaboration between the group were held. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Workshop to co-develop an online tool to inform healthy urban design in the UK |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | An online co-design workshop with researchers, professional practitioners and policymakers to identify the features required in an online platform that will collate and make publicly available a range of data and analyses to inform healthy urban design in UK cities. We identified what the needs and tasks of potential end users of the platform are, as well as suggestions for its general structure and navigability. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | invited presentation: AI at QUB - 2nd Sept 2022 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Prof Ruth Hunter was invited to present at the AI at QUB seminar series about AI-related research in the area of health and environment which included showcasing this research project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |