Assessment method developed by Unicamp and Penn State University assists in new road projects
During the period she lived in Italy, the student and researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism (FECFAU/Unicamp), Marcela Noronha, did not need a car. She went everywhere on foot. The reality is different in Campinas, where the architect currently lives. Here, the use of vehicles, whether owned or shared, is almost essential to leave the house. The experience made Marcela rethink what makes urban streets so walkable in certain regions and dangerous or even unviable for pedestrians in others.
The result of the research was the development of a new evaluation method that uses computation and mathematics to assist designers and urban planners. The technology, with a patent application filed by Inova Unicamp, maps the design of streets and provides quantitative information that can support private projects or public urban mobility policies in an automated way.
The method, which makes up Unicamp's Portfolio of Technologies, evaluates the level of service of streets and sidewalks based on 11 standards described in the literature and some developed by the inventor during her sandwich doctorate, including intersections, parking lanes up to the radius of the turning of corners and the afforestation of roads. The analysis of these indicators generates an overall grade ranging from A to E, informing whether or not the road is fulfilling its role or whether, in the case of existing streets, it needs to be “retrofitted”, to enable sustainable urban densification. The term retrofit, now in Brazilian terms, indicates the adaptation of an infrastructure with the aim of adjusting it to new needs that were not foreseen in the initial project.
“Each street has different types, flow of cars, number of lanes and sidewalk width. What we did was think about what these rules are and how they combine, based on the grammar of the form”, said Marcela, who was guided by professor Maria Gabriela Caffarena Celani, from FECFAU. Using the new methodology, it is possible to compare the initial and final state of a street to know, before the work begins, the impact that interventions can have on flow, safety, accessibility and the level of comfort for drivers and, mainly, pedestrians. .
Automated analytics
The methodology was tested in State College, in the Center County district, located in the US state of Pennsylvania. The survey, carried out under the guidance of José Pinto Duarte, professor of architecture and landscaping at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State University), highlighted several walkability problems in the small university town.
According to Duarte, there is a belief that adapting an urban network to different traffic conditions to, for example, promote pedestrian traffic instead of vehicular traffic, implies major changes to the street layout and is expensive. “The interesting thing about this new approach is that it allows us to identify the key points where minimal changes to the route allow us to achieve the desired overall impact. Thus, interventions are punctual, can be done incrementally and with minimal costs deferred over time,” he explains.
The application of the methodology to the district's streets generated an improved design, expanding the space allocated for pedestrians. Using space syntax, road hierarchies and streets with the highest pedestrian flow were defined in the district's initial network and changes were proposed that included the installation of parking lanes next to curbs, elevated pedestrian crossings and even the transformation of one of the sidewalk streets. After the “retrofit”, the concept of one of the roads went from grade E to B, improving walkability.
The model focuses on the use of geometric rules and indicators that simplify data collection and allow automation of the process, and can be implemented in a computer tool. Another advantage of the methodology is the ability to generate multiple intervention options for the same street, which opens up dialogue with designers, including participatory processes, in which the choice is not determined solely by the user's perception or solely by the result of the machine. .
The work will provide subsidies for the development plan for the former CIATEC 2 area, in the Campinas High Technology Center, as Professor Celani recalls. “An urbanization project for the area is being developed with the aim of proposing the application of several sustainable city concepts, which include active mobility as one of its main attributes. Marcela’s work will provide data for this project and will certainly contribute to its success,” she said. “There are several manuals and rules of good conduct, but not a set that explains step by step what the best solution is for different types of roads. We managed to bring all of this together and intervene in this complex universe of sustainability, making small changes and producing smarter cities, designed from the project stage”, concludes Marcela.
This report was originally published in Inova Unicamp page.
