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Development of a Rating System for Implementing Health Impacting Features of Transport Facilities
Abdelrahman, Bassant Essam
Abdelrahman, Bassant Essam
Date
2020-12
Authors
Advisor
Type
Thesis
Degree
Description
A Master of Science thesis in Civil Engineering by Bassant Essam Abdelrahman entitled, “Development of a Rating System for Implementing Health Impacting Features of Transport Facilities”, submitted in December 2020. Thesis advisor is Dr. Ghassan Abu-Lebdeh and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Salwa Beheiry. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
Abstract
Transportation facilities have been recognized to strongly influence the health of urban populations. The design of transportation facilities can promote public health or impact it negatively. Several health concerns are associated with air pollution, increased urban heat, environmental noise, light pollution, water and soil pollution, social exclusion and community severance, and congestion and long commutes. Transport facilities contribute substantially to these issues, which in turn are associated with various health problems. However, transportation facilities can also promote physical activity and enhance exposure to green and blue spaces. This research aims to identify features of transportation facilities that are known to impact public health using qualitative literature analysis. These features are then used to map the impacts of transport facilities to health via the nine pathways identified in this research. The features are also used to create a methodology for rating transportation facilities with respect to health impacting features. The proposed rating system can be applied in the design of new transportation facilities or in the modification of existing ones. In addition, it can be applied to existing facilities with the aim of assessing their performance in addressing health impacts. The rating system provides an overall indication of the incorporation of health-supportive features in the rated facility. The proposed rating system is validated by an industry panel of experts. The developed rating system is composed of three rating components. The first component is the 95-potential health-promoting features of transportation facilities. The second is the number of points earned by implementing each feature. The third component is the relative importance weight of each feature, determined using the Relative Importance Index (RII). The proposed rating system was applied to 16 transportation facilities to demonstrate the rating methodology and to set thresholds for the different levels of incorporation of health impacting features. There are five levels determined in this research: very high (83% - 100%), high (76% - 83%), average (58% - 76%), low (48% - 58%), and very low (40% - 48%) levels of incorporating health impacting features.