PEOPLE

• Exposure to Environmental Factors in People’s Activity Spaces and the Resulting Inequality
• Reducing Environmental Inequality through Spatial Planning
• Formation of Urban Heat Islands in the Street Network and Their Impact on Pedestrians and Cyclists
• Measuring Traffic Noise and Comparing It with Modelled Data
• Public Transport Supply and Use Compared with Residents’ Mobility Needs in Estonian Urban Regions
• Cycling in Baltic Sea Cities
• Potential for Electric Car Use in the Tartu Urban Area

Detailed descriptions of these topics can be found on the Department of Geography page.

Thesis topics are linked to the project “Sustainable Mobility for All: Potential, Barriers, Enablers”, which studies how people’s travel practices form and how they can be made more sustainable through co-created interventions.

Possible research questions:

• Which mobility practices and patterns can be identified across residential areas, given residents’ social backgrounds and local travel options?
• How do material conditions, competences and meanings shape travel behaviour and the adoption of sustainable practices?
• What is the potential to increase the share of sustainable mobility among different social and residential groups?
• How can sustainable practices be promoted fairly through co-created interventions and targeted public policy?

Data: surveys, location data collected with the MobilityLog smartphone app, interviews, interventions, or a combination of these.

• Match between public transport services and daily commuting: the case of regional centres
• Developing mobility profiles of Estonian residents based on GPS data
• Impact of climate change on the mobility of winter ice-fishing tourists in Estonia
• Impact of climate change on tourism
• Studying time use and mobility using GPS data
• Patterns of mobile phone use

Detailed descriptions of these topics can be found on the Department of Geography page.

Change in satisfaction levels with living environment after smart retrofit.

How do people perceive their living environment before the renovation process? Does renovation improve the satisfaction levels and how does it relate to personal characteristics?

Dataset: before and after renovation survey in SmartEnCity project

Accessibility to electric vehicles among various neighbourhoods and socioeconomic population groups.

• What are the most important facilitators (financial gain, energy independence) and concerns (battery degradation, control over charging times) for (potential) V2G adoption?
• How do varying household sociodemographic characteristics influence the likelihood of EV adoption in large-scale housing estates?
• What are the differences in EV-related infrastructure accessibility between newly built and older apartment districts?