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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21200 |
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| _version_ | 1866918263268573184 |
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| author | Hakiminejad, Yasaman Tavakoli, Arash |
| author_facet | Hakiminejad, Yasaman Tavakoli, Arash |
| contents | Pedestrian well-being is a critical yet rarely measured component of sustainable urban mobility and livable city design. Existing approaches to evaluating pedestrian environments often rely on static, infrastructure-based indices or retrospective surveys, which overlook the dynamic, subjective, and psychophysiological dimensions of everyday walking experience. This paper introduces a multimodal, human-centered framework for assessing pedestrian well-being in the wild by integrating three complementary data streams: continuous physiological sensing, geospatial tracking, and momentary self-reports collected using the Experience Sampling Method. The framework conceptualizes pedestrian experience as a triangulation enabling a holistic understanding of how urban environments influence well-being. The utility of our framework is then demonstrated through a naturalistic case study conducted in the Greater Philadelphia region, in which participants wore research-grade wearable sensors and carried GPS-enabled smartphones during their regular daily activities. Physiological indicators of autonomic nervous system activity, including heart rate variability and electrodermal activity, were synchronized with spatial trajectories and in situ self-reports of stress, affect, and perceived infrastructure conditions. Results illustrate substantial inter- and intra-individual variability in both subjective experience and physiological response, as well as context-dependent patterns associated with traffic exposure, pedestrian infrastructure quality, and environmental enclosure. The findings also suggest that commonly used walkability indices may not fully capture experiential dimensions of pedestrian well-being. By enabling real-world, multimodal measurement of pedestrian experience, the proposed framework offers a scalable and transferable approach for advancing human-centered urban analytics. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_21200 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A Multimodal Human-Centered Framework for Assessing Pedestrian Well-Being in the Wild Hakiminejad, Yasaman Tavakoli, Arash Systems and Control Pedestrian well-being is a critical yet rarely measured component of sustainable urban mobility and livable city design. Existing approaches to evaluating pedestrian environments often rely on static, infrastructure-based indices or retrospective surveys, which overlook the dynamic, subjective, and psychophysiological dimensions of everyday walking experience. This paper introduces a multimodal, human-centered framework for assessing pedestrian well-being in the wild by integrating three complementary data streams: continuous physiological sensing, geospatial tracking, and momentary self-reports collected using the Experience Sampling Method. The framework conceptualizes pedestrian experience as a triangulation enabling a holistic understanding of how urban environments influence well-being. The utility of our framework is then demonstrated through a naturalistic case study conducted in the Greater Philadelphia region, in which participants wore research-grade wearable sensors and carried GPS-enabled smartphones during their regular daily activities. Physiological indicators of autonomic nervous system activity, including heart rate variability and electrodermal activity, were synchronized with spatial trajectories and in situ self-reports of stress, affect, and perceived infrastructure conditions. Results illustrate substantial inter- and intra-individual variability in both subjective experience and physiological response, as well as context-dependent patterns associated with traffic exposure, pedestrian infrastructure quality, and environmental enclosure. The findings also suggest that commonly used walkability indices may not fully capture experiential dimensions of pedestrian well-being. By enabling real-world, multimodal measurement of pedestrian experience, the proposed framework offers a scalable and transferable approach for advancing human-centered urban analytics. |
| title | A Multimodal Human-Centered Framework for Assessing Pedestrian Well-Being in the Wild |
| topic | Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21200 |