As part of the Planning Studio Course: Smart City Practicum, this project was developed over the course of the Fall 2022 Semester. Here is an overview of what this entailed, and some preliminary findings through these first project steps.
Literature Review through UT Library database:
51 published peer-reviewed articles, national reports, and conference proceedings
Date range published: 2020-2022
Search terms: "climate," "transit shelter," "bus stop," "sustainable," "disability," "mobility," "amenities," "resilience," "weather"
Part of the project design included an informal interview with Marc Coudert, Climate Resilience and Adaptation Manager, CoA Office of Resilience.
This conversation shed light on some of the climate issues specific to the Georgian Acres community, as well as to the unique challenges and threats faced to disabled and elderly community members in Georgian Acres during extreme climate events.
Reduced Mortality and Morbidity:
"A meta-analysis on the risks and protective factors associated with heat-related mortality identifed that the act of visiting an air-conditioned space (not necessarily a cooling center) reduced risk of mortality by roughly 66% compared to those who did not visit air-conditioned spaces." (CDC Report on the use of cooling shelters)
Equity and Efficacy
"If sheltering of waiting passengers is not explicitly incorporated into policies guiding the placement of transit shelters… ineffectiveness and inequities can arise" (Law and Taylor, 2001). User preferences regarding climate should be taken into consideration when designing transit shelters (Kim & Macdonald, 2016)
Mobility and ridership
Extreme weather events affect urban mobility, with greater impacts in lower income neighborhoods, parks and commercial areas (Ngo, 2019)
Ridership and fee collection are negatively impacted by weather events (heat, snow, rain, wind, etc.) (Singhal and Yaziki, 2014)
Disability and Accessibility need to be prioritized:
"Heat extremes are linked with elevated emergency room visits, hospital admittance, and mortality for individuals with mental health, cardiorespiratory, and other disabilities; pre-existing psychosocial disabilities triples the risk of death during heatwaves. High ambient temperatures also negatively affect the health of individuals whose disabilities are affected by temperature sensitivity or thermoregulation, including multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. Numerous medications, including diuretics and antidepressants, can affect the thermoregulation of people with mental and physical disabilities." (Stein & Stein, 2022)
"People with disabilities are 2 to 4 times more likely to die due to disasters than people without disabilities. In addition to more frequent and severe storms, disabled people also face compounding factors such as "poverty and other barriers that may make them less likely to be evacuated safely, more prone to health risks, and less likely to have insurance that protects their assets and homes" (Butler & Rehr, 2022)
Based on this review, I went ahead and put together a list of comprehensive best practices for planning a smart resilience hub, in addition to thinking through next steps for the project when moving along with its goals. Check these out below: