Research On Quantitative Health Impact Assessment And Equity Of Active Travel Facilities

Active travel can increase physical activities of travellers but can also increase the risk of road injury and exposure of air pollution.Conducting Health Impact Assessment can help decision makers increase the health benefits of policies or projects as well as minimize the health risk.World Health Organization set equity analysis as an essential part of Health Impact Assessment.There was no significant innovation of the Health Impact Assessment approach since 2011,and current approach was always used to assess a macro policy or a strategy,cannot focus on a specific project.And current approach cannot accept new indicators or adapt new situation.In practice,current approach was always based on over optimistic hypothesis.However,there is almost no domestic research.Based on the problems above,the facilities were focused,and population density,land use mix near the facilities as well as facilities density,segregation between the active travel and motor traffic,and the junction design will affect public health from the aspects of physical activities,air pollution and road injury.Because of the lack of the understanding of the quantitative relationship between active travel facilities and health impact,from the idea of machine learning,the Health Impact Assessment based on BP artificial neural networks was build,which can output the impact of active travel facilities from the aspects of active travel distance,motor traffic travel distance,road injuries,all cause mortalities and Disability Adjusted Life Years(DALYs).As an essential part of Health Impact Assessment,some mainstream equity indicators were introduced.The Health Impact Assessment model was used to assess the health impact of Leeds-Bradford cycle highway,and population data,social economic data,road accident data,traffic flow data are collected.The results show that when the superhighway maximizes its benefits,within the study area,the all cause mortalities per 1000 people will decrease 9.46,and DALYs per 1000 people will decrease 12.53 years,the main benefit contributor is physical,and the superhighway can help to decrease the inequity.