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• 1. [Article] Transportation Planning Through Mobile Mapping Technology

  This report describes the development and testing of the Fix This Tool, a spatial, participatory, active transportation and built environment assessment tool created on an iPhone platform. The goal of ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Transportation Planning Through Mobile Mapping Technology Author: Schlossberg, Marc, Larco, Nico, Kato, Ken, Maher, Dana, Evers, Cody, Brehm, Christo Year: 2011 This report describes the development and testing of the Fix This Tool, a spatial, participatory, active transportation and built environment assessment tool created on an iPhone platform. The goal of this tool development was to create an instrument that could be widely distributed to communities across the country to develop a spatially based assessment of the micro-scaled elements of their local active transportation environment such that public officials and community members could focus energy in making appropriate improvements. The development of this tool emerged out of previous work with such tools built on a GIS platform and a workshop-based format to engage residents in data collection of their walking and biking environments. While this past work proved successful in both data collection tool use and in facilitating community conversations, the technological infrastructure had significant limitations in terms of being able to widely distribute the effort. In a GIS-based approach, GIS technicians must be present and when combined with community training and data processing, the cost of development, collection, and distribution is a significant limit to which communities could adopt such assessment tools for their own use. The Fix This Tool is designed to overcome these distribution and cost barriers by developing a tool that can be easily downloaded by community members using technology they already own. The report that follows outlines the philosophical positioning of a community-based data collection process, describes the tool itself, and provides some reflections between this smart phone based model and the previous GIS-based model of community-engaged active transportation assessment tools. Title: Transportation Planning Through Mobile Mapping Technology Author: Schlossberg, Marc, Larco, Nico, Kato, Ken, Maher, Dana, Evers, Cody, Brehm, Christo Year: 2011 This report describes the development and testing of the Fix This Tool, a spatial, participatory, active transportation and built environment assessment tool created on an iPhone platform. The goal of this tool development was to create an instrument that could be widely distributed to communities across the country to develop a spatially based assessment of the micro-scaled elements of their local active transportation environment such that public officials and community members could focus energy in making appropriate improvements. The development of this tool emerged out of previous work with such tools built on a GIS platform and a workshop-based format to engage residents in data collection of their walking and biking environments. While this past work proved successful in both data collection tool use and in facilitating community conversations, the technological infrastructure had significant limitations in terms of being able to widely distribute the effort. In a GIS-based approach, GIS technicians must be present and when combined with community training and data processing, the cost of development, collection, and distribution is a significant limit to which communities could adopt such assessment tools for their own use. The Fix This Tool is designed to overcome these distribution and cost barriers by developing a tool that can be easily downloaded by community members using technology they already own. The report that follows outlines the philosophical positioning of a community-based data collection process, describes the tool itself, and provides some reflections between this smart phone based model and the previous GIS-based model of community-engaged active transportation assessment tools. Close