Colouring Australia: A Participatory Open Data Platform

Abstract

Abstract. Colouring Australia is a digital platform for collecting and visualising building level information across several Australian cities. It provides a valuable resource for bringing together data on building age, material, sustainability ratings, walkability and other key metrics as we plan for net zero cities. Colouring Australia comprises part of the international Colouring Cities Research Programme, which supports the development of open-source platforms that provide open data on national building stocks. In this paper we outline the technical architecture of the platform, and the development and visualisation of a building level walkability metric based on pedestrian access to destinations. This platform provides a useful digital tool for planners to understand which parts of the city are walkable and in turn this can support future active transport programs and policies. Future research will be to validate this novel walkability index through a series of stakeholder and public workshops using the Colouring Australia platform in an interactive tabletop environment where usability testing can be undertaken.

Incorporating diminishing returns to opportunities in access: Development of an open-source walkability index based on multi-activity accessibility

“…When tested in Sydney, the median absolute difference is 5% because most buildings are not at the mid-block point, and many blocks are shorter than 200m. As building footprint data is often fragmented and incomplete (Roper et al, 2022), and the index takes much longer to run (2-3x) with these additional links, they are not worth adding when results will be visualized across a city or summarized at block locations, but may be worthwhile for property value research. Therefore, code to add these links is available in the project repository but was not used for the examples in this paper.…”

“…The implementation shown here uses walking behavior data to calibrate one parameter (diminishing returns to job opportunities), but as discussed in the introduction and section 4.1.4 this is a simplified model based on currently available data, and we plan to explore alternative data sources that can shed light on this issue of diminishing returns calibration. In particular, we plan to gather data on perceived walking access (Pot et al, 2021) to improve the model, potentially using participatory mapping platforms for broader and simpler data collection than in previous approaches to perceived walkability (Roper et al, 2022).…”