NETWORK ATTRIBUTES FOR PEDESTRIANS WITH MOBILITY CONSTRAINTS IN A MODEL FOR ACCESSIBILITY EVALUATION

Abstract

This study is based on the assumption that qualitative attributes of pedestrians' pathways have a direct impact on the accessibility levels of the site in which these paths form a network. Starting from this hypothesis, the aim of this research was to incorporate qualitative measures in the configuration of a network of pedestrians' pathways that form an accessibility model, in order to evaluate the impact of the proposed changes on the model outcomes. An existing GIS-based multicriteria accessibility model was taken as a reference for the proposed changes, which were tested in a case study with the following procedures: data collection; calculation of the accessibility values with the original model; insertion of qualitative attributes in the model network and calculation of the accessibility values after the changes; comparison of the results obtained with the two models; and evaluation of relative accessibility levels. The results confirmed that the qualitative measures do affect the accessibility values, if compared to the values calculated with the model that considers only the distances between origins and destinations as impedances. In addition, the group of visually-impaired users had the worst accessibility conditions, what somehow contradicts the general assumption that wheelchair users constitute the group most affected by low accessibility conditions. Keywords: accessibility, pedestrians with mobility constraints, multicriteria evaluation, qualitative analysis of pedestrians' pathways, university campus.