Assessing Walking and Cycling Environments in the Streets of Madrid: Comparing On-Field and Virtual Audits

• Published in: Journal of urban health 2015-10, Vol.92 (5), p.923-939
• Main Authors: Gullón, Pedro, Badland, Hannah M., Alfayate, Silvia, Bilal, Usama, Escobar, Francisco, Cebrecos, Alba, Diez, Julia, Franco, Manuel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bicycling; Bicycling - statistics & numerical data; Cities - epidemiology; Data Collection - methods; Environment Design; Epidemiology; Health Informatics; Humans; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Neighborhoods; Population density; Public Health; Roads & highways; Safety; Spain - epidemiology; Traffic accidents & safety; Urban environments; Walking; Walking - statistics & numerical data
• ISSN: 1099-3460; 1468-2869
• DOI: 10.1007/s11524-015-9982-z

Audit tools are useful for exploring the urban environment and its association with physical activity. Virtual auditing options are becoming increasingly available potentially reducing the resources needed to conduct these assessments. Only a few studies have explored the use of virtual audit tools. Our objective is to test if the Madrid Systematic Pedestrian and Cycling Environment Scan (M-SPACES) discriminates between areas with different urban forms and to validate virtual street auditing using M-SPACES. Three areas ( N  = 500 street segments) were selected for variation in population density. M-SPACES was used to audit street segments physically and virtually (Google Street View) by two researchers in 2013–2014. For both physical and virtual audits, all analyzed features score significantly different by area ( p   0.6). Inter-rater agreement was generally poor (ICC