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New tools for healthy city transport

RMIT University is developing a generation of visualisation tools able to simulate the health impacts of town planning and transport infrastructure decisions.

The project, by the university’s Healthy Liveable Cities Lab, will create visualisation tools that lead to significant advances in planning for active transport and improvements to community health. 

Researchers develop complex modelling that can simulate health outcomes – negative and positive – generated by urban development and transport services, but they are difficult to deploy and the results are difficult to communicate.

The new visual tools will be useful for policy makers, practitioners and health advocates seeking to assess health impacts of multiple scenarios related to transport and planning to guide development and transport investment that optimise health.

The project is funded by Vic Health. Policy and practice partners for the project are the Department of Transport and Planning Victoria and Bicycle Network.

The RMIT academic team comprises: Dr Belen Zapata-Diomedi, Dr Afshin Jafari, Dr Alan Both, Prof. James Woodcock (University of Cambridge), and Professor Rolf Moeckel (Technical University of Munich).

Members of the team have published a study of some of the work that underpins their health modelling.This paper reports the development of a simulation model to measure health impacts of transport scenarios for Melbourne and aims to demonstrate active transport health impacts and support the implementation of policies for healthy cities and people. 

The model measured the health impacts of increased physical activity when short car trips were replaced by walking and riding distances of less than 5km.  The researchers concluded that shifting car travel to active modes would accrue important health benefits.

Based on the health-adjusted life years of the Melbourne adult population of 3.6 million people in 2017, the research looked at the health benefits gained by replacing trips under 1km and under 2km with walking, and found enormous gains.  

The study also estimated the benefits of reduced cases of diseases and deaths prevented. It concluded the greatest gains would be made for heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and type 2 diabetes.

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