Meteorological gaps in audits of pedestrian environments: a scoping review

• Published in: BMC Public Health
• Main Authors: H. F Drapeau, P. Singh, F. Benyaminov, K. Wright, J. C. Spence, S. Nuzhat, A. Walsh, K. Islam, Z. Azarm, K. K. Lee
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2024
• Subjects: Climate change; Weather; Season; Winter; Built environment; Physical activity; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19441-6; https://doaj.org/article/b4a8abd2020745c9bb16571532200242

Abstract Background Weather and season are determinants of physical activity. Therefore, it is important to ensure built environments are designed to mitigate negative impacts of weather and season on pedestrians to prevent these losses. This scoping review aims to identify built environment audits of pedestrian environments developed for use during a specific weather condition or season. Secondly, this review aims to investigate gaps in the inclusion of relevant weather mitigating built environment features in pedestrian environment audit tools. Methods Following a standard protocol, a systematic search was executed in CINAHL, Medline and Web of Science to identify built environment audit tools of pedestrian spaces. These databases were chosen since they are well-known to comprehensively cover health as well as multi-disciplinary research publications relevant to health. Studies were screened, and data were extracted from selected documents by two independent reviewers (e.g., psychometric properties and audit items included). Audit items were screened for the inclusion of weather mitigating built environment features, and the tool’s capacity to measure temperature, precipitation, seasonal and sustainability impacts on pedestrians was calculated. Results The search returned 2823 documents. After screening and full text review, 27 articles were included. No tool was found that was developed specifically for use during a specific weather condition or season. Additionally, gaps in the inclusion of weather mitigating items were found for all review dimensions (thermal comfort, precipitation, seasonal, and sustainability items). Poorly covered items were: (1) thermal comfort related (arctic entry presence, materials, textures, and colours of buildings, roads, sidewalk and furniture, and green design features); (2) precipitation related (drain presence, ditch presence, hazards, and snow removal features); (3) seasonal features (amenities, pedestrian scale lighting, and winter destinations and aesthetics); and (4) ...