Walkability Assessment through Mobile Applications: the LONGEVICITY Project

In the context of global progressive urbanization and ageing of the population, the LONGEVICITY Project has the objective to study advanced solutions to assess and enhance the walkability of urban environments (level of pedestrian friendliness of a city in terms of usefulness, comfort, safety, attractiveness and accessibility), in order to sustain the social inclusion of the elderly citizens. The paper introduces one of the research activities of the project, focused on the design of a mobile application for the assessment of the level of walkability of the City of Milan (Italy). This is based on the possibility to collect geolocalized data about the walking behaviors/experiences of a large sample of elderly participants. This is aimed at providing applicative design solutions to enhance the level of comfort and safety of the elderly while walking through the city and to sustain their active ageing.