Asian cities should be providing its pedestrians with comfortable, secured and walkable footpath. People are often dependent on cars even for short trips, thus creating a set of challenges such as increased congestion and air pollution that ultimately harm health and the environment and lower economic productivity, explained Parthaa Bosu, Indian Director and South Asia Liason with Clean Air Asia during the app's launch.
" The walkabilty app allows a citizen to audit the availability of walkable sidewalks and footpaths. At the same time it educates users on what basic facilities should sidewalks have to make walking more pedestrian-friendly" noted Bosu during the sidelines of the conference.
"The app enables a pedestrian to audit a footpath's walkability in terms of the basic facilities: the presence or lack of a footpath, its condition and security to promote safety for women, children or elderly, as well as access to vulnerable sectors such as persons with disabilities (PWDs)," said Sampath Ranasingha, Environment Management Officer, Ministry of Environment and Renewable Energy.
Users are prompted with a question under each factor and are given a scoring system to apply on these factors, which automatically generates a score out of 100 points as a perfect score.
The app, available in both Android, iOS and Windows, allows a pedestrian to take a geotagged photo of the sidewalk and problems identified with the sidewalk, which can be uploaded in real-time. The geotagging feature will allow authorities to quickly reach to the root of the issue and rectify it. The current version has features such as weather and social media and allows researchers to extract collected data in Excel format.
While the app produces qualitative results, the results are just as important because every person has a right to have universal access to a walkable and secure path and each feedback is important for this. Results of the audit scores are available online and have been used in university researches globally.
To Download app:
The New version of the android app is available;
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ft.walkability&hl=en
The New version of the iPhone;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/walkability-app/id931191736?Is==1&mt=8
(SDF/KH)
