Author: Age Poom
Our long-term member Age Poom has returned to Tartu after two years of postdoctoral research at the Digital Geography Lab, University of Helsinki. Age has received funding from the Estonian Research Council for an individual research grant, which aims to provide a better scientific understanding of the experience of greenery and noise exposure in active travel environments. This research combines spatial and audio-visual data and applies attention and emotion analytics to measure the experiences of environmental exposure in the street network of Tallinn during different seasons. The research plan will be conducted in collaboration with the Laboratory of Neuromarketing at the University of Tartu. The results will provide cities new knowledge for planning and implementing urban green infrastructure in order to support active travel modes year-round and respond to the current challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The grant builds upon Age’s postdoctoral research experience from Helsinki, gained from the joint work with prof. Tuuli Toivonen, Elias Willberg, Joose Helle, and other colleagues. The research in Helsinki focused on inspecting multiple environmental exposures that people experience in travel environments, such as greenery, traffic noise, and air pollution. By developing an open source Green Paths routing tool, they studied how route choice can improve environmental exposures for pedestrians and cyclists in urban contexts. This work was part of the Urban Innovation Action HOPE – Healthy Outdoor Premises for Everyone – led by the City of Helsinki and conducted in collaboration with the Helsinki Region Environmental Services, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Forum Virium Helsinki, and other partners. As a whole, the project focused on advancing air quality measurement and modelling network as well as on citizen engagement and empowerment for data collection and action for improving local air quality.
Age’s individual grant lasts for two years with experiments conducted in three seasons: late spring/early summer 2022, autumn 2022, and winter 2023. In the experiments, the pedestrian travel environment is captured with street view images and 360° videos, while the attention and emotion tracking among participants is conducted in lab conditions with related equipment.
Stay tuned for more news and results!
See also: Poom, A., Willberg, E., Toivonen, T. (2021) Environmental exposure during travel: A research review and suggestions forward. Health & Place 70, 102584, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102584
The Mobility Lab of the University of Tartu is an interdisciplinary research group that studies human mobility and its associations with society and the environment using mobile (big) data.