Comparative Research of Audit Tools on Built Environment for Active Living

Abstract

Nowadays, chronic non-communicable diseases have impacted the overall public health level of societies and caused severe socioeconomic burden. Empirical studies have revealed that physical activities can promote active living and help prevent and heal non-communicable diseases. Evaluation of built environment factors associated with physical activities is the precondition of promoting active living through environmental planning and design. This paper focuses on environmental audit tools related to physical activities, reviews the background, interests, and progress of international research, and compares the option forms, main measured factors, scoring methods, and application suitability of 26 audit tools. It then categorizes these audit tools into the ones for community, open space, and other scenarios, and examines their indicator items respectively. The paper concludes a preparation pattern across various audit tools, and identifies that facilities, accessibility, visual quality, and safety are the indicators most commonly measured. This paper attempts to introduce international experience of developing, analyzing, and verifying audit tools to inform Chinese research and practice and provide references for evaluating the design and construction of healthy cities or communities.

Detecting the Pedestrian Shed and Walking Route Environment of Urban Parks with Open-Source Data: A Case Study in Nanjing, China

“…First, it focused on the walking routes from residential buildings to the park, while ignoring users departing from the bus or metro stations and workplaces. Second, due to the fixed and limited data of the online map service used, it was difficult to evaluate some micro-environmental factors (e.g., pavement condition of the walking road and air quality) and immediate environmental factors (e.g., temporary obstacles and building construction) [49]. More research into street features that promote walking to parks is expected to refine this method in the future.…”

Development and reliability testing of an audit toolbox for the assessment of the physical activity friendliness of urban and rural environments in Germany

“…The categories for the toolbox were selected from existing categorizations of environmental characteristics assessed by audit tools ( 43 , 70 , 71 ) as well as the domains assessed by the tools identified in step 1 based on their relevance for physical activity and the availability of any evidence for their relevance in Germany. We inspected the results of 17 systematic reviews and one umbrella review on the relationship between characteristics of the built environment and physical activity in different population groups (see Supplementary Tables 2 – 5 ) ( 17 – 19 , 51 , 72 – 85 ).…”

“…In recent years, different assessment instruments examining built environment characteristics related to physical activity have been developed, including audit tools ( 42 , 43 ). Audit tools aim to measure the presence, quantity, and quality of environmental features by direct observation ( 42 ).…”